Ole's Blog

About a month ago, I announced that I was “nearly finished” tracing all the threads of the European nobility to which a certain ancestor of Dan Myers had led me. At that time, Dan’s pedigree had over 800 names in my records. It took all this time, but now I really have finished, and the count stands at over 1,000! In the course of adding these names, and cleaning up some data problems, Anna Moen’s pedigree also increased to over 1,000 names. Isaac Larson’s increased by a handful, still in the low 200′s (but one line does go back to the early first millennium). I have updated the “Full Pedigrees” pages for those three individuals. Please visit them and let me know what you think.

One further ancestor of note: the Roman Emperor Constantine I.

Constantine, you may recall, was the first emperor to embrace Christianity and end persecution of Christians. He also conquered large swaths of territory, reunifying the fragmented empire for the final time. Soon after his reign, the Roman Empire went into steep decline. Constantine is not an ancestor of Charlemagne (surprise!), yet is an ancestor of both Anna Moen and Dan Myers by a very different path. which includes a marriage between a proto-Viking king and a princess of the Vandals(!)

A century and change after Constantine, his great-grandson, Valentinian III was murdered, and his daughter Eudoxia (438-530 CE) married to Hunneric, king of the Vandals, who, well, you know, “vandalized” Rome, big-time, in 455.  Hmmm. Not what I would call a peaceful union;  nevertheless they had children together. Eudoxia & Hunneric’s “Vandal” grand-daughter, princess Hildis, married a certain Valdar Hroarsson (b. 547), a king in some part of Denmark, who was one of the earliest Vikings. They passed their genes on through Scandinavian nobility for almost 400 more years, until one of their someteenth-great-granddaughters married Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and had sons named – OMG! – Harold Godwinson and Tostig Godwinson of 1066 fame, both of them 28th great-grandfathers of ours, by two different routes.

And now I just read that the Vandals themselves came from Scandinavia, centuries before they sacked Rome! Looking into this …

Here is another link documented by cousin Orrin Moen, but overlooked by me until now due to a software glitch. The “loser” of the Norman Conquest, Harold Godwinson, had three children  who escaped to Denmark after Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings. One of those was a daughter, Gytha of Wessex, who later married duke Vladimir II of Kiev. Well, guess what? Vladimir II was Lovell Larson’s 26th great grandfather, the son of Vsevold I Yaraslovic, mentioned in a recent post. Therefore, Harold Godwinson is my 28th great. Also, Harold’s treachorous brother, Tostig, who joined forces with Harald of Norway in his invasion, had children who escaped to Norway.  One of them became an ancestor of Earl Skule Baardson, father-in-law and deadly rival of King Haakon IV, and so, another ancestor of mine! So here is the score:

William the Conqueror: ancestor of Reatha Larson via Dan Myers, through a succession of kings of England;

Harold Godwinson, Tostig Godwinson, and Harald Hardrada: all ancestors of Lovell Larson via Anna Moen, through various branches of the Fairhair dynasty of Norway.

Harald III Hardrada

Harold Godwinson

As threatened, I attempted to tie in my mother, Reatha Larson, back to ancient Norway via the Kiev connection. In an earlier post, I concluded that both Reatha and Lovell were descendants of a certain Yaroslav I “the Wise,” Grand Duke of Kiev (lived 1019-1054 CE). Hold on to your thinking caps, this gets a bit involved.

Lovell is related through Yaroslav’s son Vsevold I, whose descendant several generations later married into Danish royalty, then later yet, one of the Danish princesses married King Magnus VI (or V) “Lagaboter” of Norway (lived 1238-1261), our approx. 21st great-grandpa (those of us in the “Isaac Larson dynasty”).  This is at about the end of Norway’s Fairhair dynasty. Of the 38 kings and pretenders that Wikipedia lists in their article about the dynasty (click on the link), a goodly handful are direct ancestors; the rest are some degree of granduncle or far-removed first cousin.

Reatha, on the other hand, is descended from Yaroslav’s daughter, Anne of Kiev, who married King Henry I of France.

Yaroslav’s wife, the mother of both the aforementioned ancestors, was Ingeborg Olofsdotter. Hmmm. Obviously Scandinavian; could she be related to our ancestor Olaf II “the Saint” of Norway? Yes, but only as a sister-in-law.

Ingeborg’s father was Olof III “Skötkonung,” king of Sweden. His pedigree is in some dispute, but seems to be limited to Sweden and perhaps Denmark.

However, it seems that Olof III reached out to his neighbors in several directions. Not only did his daughter Ingeborg marry the Grand Duke of Kiev, but another daughter (this one illegitimate), Astrid, married “Saint Olaf,” and became our ancestor via a completely different line, i.e. the Fairhair dynasty of Norway.

Thus, Olof III Sweden is an ancestor of  both Lovell and Reatha by one line, and again of Lovell by a  different route. That is genealogy for you. And to further confuse, the father-in-law of Olaf II (Norway) is Olof III (Sweden).

So far, I have not managed to trace Reatha into Norway, but this gets us pretty close: Sweden, and possibly Denmark.

I just read “The Pretenders,” a play by Henrik Ibsen. It is a fictional account of the tortured relationship between Haakon IV and Earl Skule Baardsson, who was chosen by the Birkebeiner council to rule as regent for Haakon until he came of age, and to permanently rule 1/3 of the kingdom. By some accounts, it was Skule who actually accomplished many things that are usually credited to Haakon.

Years later, Skule Baardsson ended up rebelling and being put to death, and Ibsen makes a great fiction of it, complete with an arch-evil bishop (or was it an evil archbishop?). The opening scene is the mother’s trial by ordeal, which in the play is just the first of many ordeals.

Many basic facts are true, e.g. Haakon married Skule’s daughter Margrite to try to keep the earl on board (this fact makes Skule Baardsson my ancestor). The timeline may have been altered a bit, and some elements were no doubt made-up. But the best part is the (wholly fictional) dialogue and the vivid, three-dimensional characters. Quintessential Ibsen; I read it in one long sitting. Google books has it for free (English translation of course – as if I could read anything else!)