Starting from the N-particle Nelson Hamiltonian defined by imposing an ultraviolet cutoff, we perform ultraviolet renormalization by showing that in the zero cutoff limit a self-adjoint operator exists after a logarithmically divergent term is subtracted from the original Hamiltonian. We obtain this term as the diagonal part of a pair interaction appearing in the density of a Gibbs measure derived from the Feynman-Kac representation of the Hamiltonian. Also, we show existence of a weak coupling limit of the renormalized Hamiltonian and derive an effective Yukawa interaction potential between the particles.