This article juxtaposes the recently excavated archaeological remains of St. Clement's church in medieval Niðaróss (five wooden churches on top of each other with a material connection to a sixth older church) to the way the church is described in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, the long saga about Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Icelandic Laxdaela saga. The main aim of this article is to investigate whether the material continuity of the site, as attested by the archaeology, is directly reflected in the literary sources, or whether cultural continuity is emphasized in a different way in the literary sources. The material and textual evidence will be interpreted to reveal new insights about the nature of and dynamics between natural/material and cultural/ideological continuity in medieval Christendom. The discussion also has further implications concerning interdisciplinary methods in medieval studies and environmental history.