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.
