After being named to Canterbury in 941, Oda was instrumental in crafting royal legislation as well as involved in providing rules for his clergy.

[3] His father was said to have been a Dane who came to England in 865, together with the Viking army of Ubba and Ivar, and presumably settled in East Anglia.

[4] In Byrhtferth of Ramsey's Life of Saint Oswald, Oda is said to have joined the household of a pious nobleman called Æthelhelm, whom he accompanied to Rome on pilgrimage.

[5] Other stories, such as those by the 12th-century writer William of Malmesbury, describe Oda as fighting under Edward the Elder and then becoming a priest, but these statements are unlikely.

Other statements in the Life have Oda being named "Bishop of Wilton" by the king, who is stated to have been Æthelhelm's brother.

[16] During his time as archbishop, he helped King Edmund with the new royal law-code,[4] which had a number of laws concerned with ecclesiastical affairs.

[19] Oda reworked some statutes from 786 to form his updated code, and one item that was dropped were any clauses dealing with paganism.

[21] The work is extant in just one surviving manuscript, British Library Cotton MS Vespasian A XIV, folios 175v to 177v.

[25] The exact cause of the rupture between the two brothers that led to the division of the previously united kingdom is unknown, but may have resulted from Eadwig's efforts to promote close kinsmen and his wife.

[28] Frithegod's verse Life of Wilfrid has a preface that was written by Oda, in which the archbishop claimed that he rescued the relics from Ripon, which he described as "decayed" and "thorn-covered".

[29] He also acquired the relics of St Ouen, and Frithegod also wrote, at Oda's behest, a verse life of that saint, which has been lost.

[5] He was also active in reorganizing the diocesan structure of his province, as the sees of Elmham and Lindsey were reformed during his archbishopric.