Oswald was of Anglo-Danish stock — his uncle Oda was Archbishop of Canterbury, his nephew Oskytel was Archbishop of York. Trained at Fleury Abbey on the Loire (one of the great Continental Benedictine centers) before becoming Bishop of Worcester in 961.
With Dunstan of Canterbury and Æthelwold of Winchester, he was the third leader of the English Tenth-Century Monastic Reform. He founded the great abbey of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire (969) which became the principal scholarly center of late Anglo-Saxon England, and rebuilt Pershore, Winchcombe, and a half-dozen other monasteries.
From 972 he held the archbishopric of York along with the bishopric of Worcester — joint office that lasted for nearly a century in his successors. He died in February 992 at Worcester while washing the feet of the poor as he did every day of Lent. The scene of his death is one of the most beloved in medieval English hagiography.