Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Jim,
I can see that the reference sources are cautious about Ragnar, and for good reason. He became so famous people in the early medieval period started plugging his name into their geneologies right and left, so there are lots of contradictory and anchronistic features to various lines that feature him. There's a good overview that makes an attempt to boil down the legend and extract a little history in A.P. Smyth, "Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850-880" with some handy lineage charts derived from various sources, and it's the skewed timelines of some of those charts (plus Gwyn Jones mentioning that Ragnar would have to have lived 150 years to do what all the "sources" said) that made me wonder about an earlier Ragnar who became fused with his grandson when people were trying to sort through the scraps of poetry referring to them and come up with a coherent narrative.
Smyth is interesting and knowledgeable, although his rhetorical style depends a bit on sledgehammer repetition. I'm convinced enough by his assault on the authenticity of "Asser's Life of King Alfred the Great" in his both biography of the latter, and his translation with commentary of the "source" itself to regard as "speculation" category anything about Alfred's family that is found only in "Asser."
By the way as soon as I got through with my last message suggesting that I hadn't seen anything on female fosterage I turned almost directly to a page in "Heimskringla" about the fostering of Harald "Fairhair's" wife Gyda, so I'm easier about the notion of Assur Toti as foster dad.
David
Notify Administrator about this message?
Followups:No followups yet |
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/medieval/messages/2204.html | ||
 |
Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|