The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.

https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen

A story reconstructed from Saga's, chroniclers, historical facts and what ifs.

https://www.academia.edu/search?q=Vikings%20on%20the%20river%20Somme

This is a new paper open for comment.

With regards,
Hans Vogels

On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
>
> https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen

This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.

> https://www.academia.edu/search?q=Vikings%20on%20the%20river%20Somme

This one took a bit longer, but I still found nothing to recommend it.

Stewart Baldwin

Op zondag 5 december 2021 om 02:01:59 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> >
> > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.

Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?

With regards,
Hans Vogels

> > https://www.academia.edu/search?q=Vikings%20on%20the%20river%20Somme
>
> This one took a bit longer, but I still found nothing to recommend it.
>
> Stewart Baldwin

On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 4:17:55 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> Op zondag 5 december 2021 om 02:01:59 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> > On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> > >
> > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?

Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.

Stewart Baldwin

On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 5:58:15 PM UTC-5, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

> > > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> > Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> > Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?
> Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.
>

I know you mean "birth of"; but that only makes it more hilarious. The idea that we can 'determine' the birthdate of someone who is far more legendary than historical, and whose parents were only 'named' in surviving sources nearly *350 years* after the fact..is...silly.

This author (a retired computers teacher?) has a very broad set of subjects that they post papers on, from this, to analyzing Jesus's pre-teen years; and shows an over-abundance of surety in his conclusions (like the exact locations and dates for King Arthur's battles) that no amateur, and no expert would ever claim merely by re-examining sources that have been available for hundreds of years.

I don't recommend this author's work in any way whatsoever.
--Joe C

On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 8:19:45 PM UTC-6, joe...@gmail.com wrote:

> I know you mean "birth of"; but that only makes it more hilarious.

Yes, that was a typo on my part.

> I don't recommend this author's work in any way whatsoever.

No kidding. The other paper of his that I saw tries to trace the Pictish monarchy WAY back using the prehistoric part of the Pictish king lists.

Stewart Baldwin

A domingo, 5 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 22:58:15 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 4:17:55 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Op zondag 5 december 2021 om 02:01:59 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> > > On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> > > >
> > > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> > Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> > Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?
> Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.
>
> Stewart Baldwin
Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 4:23:30 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> A domingo, 5 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 22:58:15 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> > On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 4:17:55 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Op zondag 5 december 2021 om 02:01:59 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> > > > On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > > > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> > > Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> > > Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?
> > Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.
> >
> > Stewart Baldwin
> Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?

He may have existed, but the evidence is not very good. The verifiable history of the Norwegian monarchy begins in the late tenth century with Olaf Tryggvason.

Stewart Baldwin

A terça-feira, 7 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 07:27:12 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 4:23:30 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > A domingo, 5 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 22:58:15 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> > > On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 4:17:55 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > Op zondag 5 december 2021 om 02:01:59 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> > > > > On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > > > > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> > > > Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> > > > Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?
> > > Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.
> > >
> > > Stewart Baldwin
> > Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?
> He may have existed, but the evidence is not very good. The verifiable history of the Norwegian monarchy begins in the late tenth century with Olaf Tryggvason.
>
> Stewart Baldwin

Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:45:25 AM UTC-5, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:

> > > Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?
> > He may have existed, but the evidence is not very good. The verifiable history of the Norwegian monarchy begins in the late tenth century with Olaf Tryggvason.
> >
> > Stewart Baldwin
> Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?

This question implies there is a binary choice when there is not. Its a matter of how much of what the sagas say about this person is true from 'there never was a guy names harald' at all to 'there was an ancestor who did one of the things mentioned', on up.

It's also unclear what useful information is relayed by an answer to your question. If one expert says there is a 48% chance "they existed" vs a "52% chance" that doesn't really relay any useful information beyond what has already been stated, which is "he may have existed, but the evidence is not very good" which I think sums it up very well without needing to be reductive.

Joe cook

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:07:18 AM UTC-8, joe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:45:25 AM UTC-5, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?
> This question implies there is a binary choice when there is not. Its a matter of how
> much of what the sagas say about this person is true from 'there never was a guy
> names harald' at all to 'there was an ancestor who did one of the things mentioned',
> on up.

Along these lines, if a Harald existed who was elaborated upon to create the legend, it seems unlikely he was from Vestfold, related to the Inglingas, conquering king of 'all Norway' nor ancestor of the 11th century kings, at which point one has to ask if such an individual could rightly be referred to with the name of the legendary king Harald Fairhair considering how little they would have in common, even if one was the remote basis for the other.

taf

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 3:45:25 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> A terça-feira, 7 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 07:27:12 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> > On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 4:23:30 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?
> > He may have existed, but the evidence is not very good. The verifiable history of the Norwegian monarchy begins in the late tenth century with Olaf Tryggvason.
> >
> > Stewart Baldwin
> Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?

When you are talking about a legendary figure around whom there have been a huge number of embellishments, what does that question even mean? For example, if there is a tiny grain of underlying truth around which a large amount of fiction has been added, how much "truth" is needed to say that he really existed. If there is a 1 percent grain of truth surrounded by 99 percent fiction, is the 1 percent sufficient to qualify him as having "existed"? What kinds of errors are allowable before the story is rejected? Does the name have to be right? etc.

Several English sources (John of Worcester, Orderic, etc.) state that in the eleventh century there was a famous Norwegian king named Harald Harfagar, who was killed in 1066 at the Battle of Stamford Bridge by king Harold II of England. Later Icelandic and Norwegian sources called this king Harald Hardrada, and instead applied the nickname Harfagar to an obscure legendary king from the early tenth century. So, to the question of whether or not Harald Fairhair existed, I could legitimately (if misleadingly) reply that Harald Fairhair was a well-documented Norwegian king who died in England in the month prior to the Battle of Hastings. After all, the English sources giving that nickname to the king killed in 1066 are somewhat earlier than the earliest known Icelandic and Norwegian sources applying that nickname to a king from a prior century.

Stewart Baldwin

A quarta-feira, 8 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 07:15:06 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 3:45:25 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > A terça-feira, 7 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 07:27:12 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> > > On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 4:23:30 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > > Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?
> > > He may have existed, but the evidence is not very good. The verifiable history of the Norwegian monarchy begins in the late tenth century with Olaf Tryggvason.
> > >
> > > Stewart Baldwin
> > Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?
> When you are talking about a legendary figure around whom there have been a huge number of embellishments, what does that question even mean? For example, if there is a tiny grain of underlying truth around which a large amount of fiction has been added, how much "truth" is needed to say that he really existed. If there is a 1 percent grain of truth surrounded by 99 percent fiction, is the 1 percent sufficient to qualify him as having "existed"? What kinds of errors are allowable before the story is rejected? Does the name have to be right? etc.
>
> Several English sources (John of Worcester, Orderic, etc.) state that in the eleventh century there was a famous Norwegian king named Harald Harfagar, who was killed in 1066 at the Battle of Stamford Bridge by king Harold II of England. Later Icelandic and Norwegian sources called this king Harald Hardrada, and instead applied the nickname Harfagar to an obscure legendary king from the early tenth century. So, to the question of whether or not Harald Fairhair existed, I could legitimately (if misleadingly) reply that Harald Fairhair was a well-documented Norwegian king who died in England in the month prior to the Battle of Hastings. After all, the English sources giving that nickname to the king killed in 1066 are somewhat earlier than the earliest known Icelandic and Norwegian sources applying that nickname to a king from a prior century.
>
> Stewart Baldwin

Yes, you, Joe and Todd are right, this isn't a binary question.

Op woensdag 8 december 2021 om 08:15:06 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 3:45:25 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > A terça-feira, 7 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 07:27:12 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> > > On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 4:23:30 AM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > > Do you believe Harald Fairhair existed at all?
> > > He may have existed, but the evidence is not very good. The verifiable history of the Norwegian monarchy begins in the late tenth century with Olaf Tryggvason.
> > >
> > > Stewart Baldwin
> > Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?
> When you are talking about a legendary figure around whom there have been a huge number of embellishments, what does that question even mean? For example, if there is a tiny grain of underlying truth around which a large amount of fiction has been added, how much "truth" is needed to say that he really existed. If there is a 1 percent grain of truth surrounded by 99 percent fiction, is the 1 percent sufficient to qualify him as having "existed"? What kinds of errors are allowable before the story is rejected? Does the name have to be right? etc.
>
> Several English sources (John of Worcester, Orderic, etc.) state that in the eleventh century there was a famous Norwegian king named Harald Harfagar, who was killed in 1066 at the Battle of Stamford Bridge by king Harold II of England. Later Icelandic and Norwegian sources called this king Harald Hardrada, and instead applied the nickname Harfagar to an obscure legendary king from the early tenth century. So, to the question of whether or not Harald Fairhair existed, I could legitimately (if misleadingly) reply that Harald Fairhair was a well-documented Norwegian king who died in England in the month prior to the Battle of Hastings. After all, the English sources giving that nickname to the king killed in 1066 are somewhat earlier than the earliest known Icelandic and Norwegian sources applying that nickname to a king from a prior century.
>
> Stewart Baldwin

This sums it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Fairhair

Hans Vogels

A terça-feira, 7 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 14:57:34 UTC, taf escreveu:
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:07:18 AM UTC-8, joe...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:45:25 AM UTC-5, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > Are you more inclined towards him having existed or not, though?
> > This question implies there is a binary choice when there is not. Its a matter of how
> > much of what the sagas say about this person is true from 'there never was a guy
> > names harald' at all to 'there was an ancestor who did one of the things mentioned',
> > on up.
> Along these lines, if a Harald existed who was elaborated upon to create the legend, it seems unlikely he was from Vestfold, related to the Inglingas, conquering king of 'all Norway' nor ancestor of the 11th century kings, at which point one has to ask if such an individual could rightly be referred to with the name of the legendary king Harald Fairhair considering how little they would have in common, even if one was the remote basis for the other.
>
> taf

Could you, please, expand on why those things are unlikely? I am especially interested in why it's unlikely he came from Vestfold and was ancestor of later kinga (I know all Norwegian kings traced descent from him through very doubtful lines but i wonder why some could not, in fact, have descended from him.

On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 1:55:19 AM UTC-8, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:

> Could you, please, expand on why those things are unlikely? I am especially interested in
> why it's unlikely he came from Vestfold and was ancestor of later kinga (I know all Norwegian
> kings traced descent from him through very doubtful lines but i wonder why some could not,
> in fact, have descended from him.

Addressing the second first, the family of Harald Fairhair is clearly a construct, with more than a dozen children that tie into specific stories or specific lines, all with different mothers. The saga account of Olaf Trygvesson, discovered as a child slave in Kievan Rus' yet recognized as a royal prince, does not merit serious consideration as reflecting accurate history.. We have here an adventurer of obscure origins with an invented pedigree. Turning to Olaf Haraldson, there is every reason to view him as similarly an adventurer who took the kingdom, and for Harald Hardrada, his claim was as half-brother of Olaf Haraldson, plus the following he had built as a leader in the Varangian guard. Once one accepts the manufactured nature of Harald Fairhair's family, there is no reason to think the pedigrees linking them to Harald Fairhair are anything by political constructs, no more authentic than the later instances of a previously unknown illegitimate son of a former king showing up and claiming the crown, in some cases successfully.

As to Vestfold, I should have said he was not originally from Vestfold. I am going a little from memory here, because it is not worth the effort of digging out sources I haven't looked at for decades. That said, this requires one to first accept that there was a historical Harald, son of Halfdan the Black. The latter had a dedicated saga that seems to predate the Heimskringla account. This saga makes no mention of Vestfold, while mentioning lands elsewhere. Coupling this with Heimskringla's clumsy linkage of Halfdan to the Inglingas leads to something that doesn't look that dissimilar to the later pattern - you have a royal family with an established historical tradition, the Inglingas, including what may be contemporary verse about the last of them, Ragnvald, and then you have a new king only documented in other places in the earliest source, and having a seriously awkward pedigree link to the earlier dynasty. I am not the first to conclude that, if you accept that there is any history underlying Heimskringla at all, this is another fabrication to cover a conquest of the Inglingas by outsiders.

That said, it is all reading tea leaves and among scholars and genealogists with too much free time, and the more prudent conclusion is the null conclusion - there is so little sourcing, and that so poor of quality, that it is unwise to draw any conclusions at all.

taf

On 11-Dec-21 1:44 AM, taf wrote:
> On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 7:58:44 PM UTC-8, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
>
>> Treating Harald Fairhair as a real historical figure is still current in
>> some academic work - for example, Björn Weiler in /Paths to Kingship in
>> Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200/ (Cambridge, 2021) writes
> [snip]
>> "While the sixteen sons attributed to Harald may
>> have been a symbolic rather than an accurate number (other sources
>> counted twenty), the dynastic wars of the eleventh century were rooted
>> partly in the sheer number of Harald's progeny."
>
> Of course, Weiler's view presupposes that they were 'dynastic wars' to begin with. The alternative scenario is that 'the sheer number of Harald's progeny' was rooted in a recasting of a non-dynastic free-for-all as if it was dynastic in nature.

Recent specialist scholarship appears to be taking a more nuanced view
than was usual not long ago about the historicity of Harald Fairhair -
for example, Bruce Lincoln in /Between History and Myth: Stories of
Harald Fairhair and the Founding of the State/ (Chicago & London, 2014)
wrote in the introduction (pp 2-5):

'I was drawn — no doubt, for idiosyncratic reasons—to the Old Norse
sagas and, more particularly, to the subgenre of Konunga sögur ("Kings'
Sagas"), which treat the institution of the state as a series of royal
lives. And most particularly of all to the stories of Hálfdan the Black
(said to have ruled ca. 839-58) and his son, Harald Fairhair (ruled ca.
858-930, as king of a unified Norway from the mid-870s), for these two —
and the space in between them — mark the transition from legendary
prehistory to that which modern scholars regard as history proper. The
distinction between the two figures is not made primarily on evidentiary
or epistemological grounds, for we do not know much more of Harald than
of his father. Rather, it is the sagas themselves that construe the
difference as ontological, even cosmogonic, for they recount how Harald
changed existence itself and created a new world by consolidating
monarchic power, unifying the Norwegian nation, and establishing a
modern state.'

and

'Stories of Harald's state-founding activities began to circulate more
or less contemporarily with the events themselves. This was not a
spontaneous reaction to the unfolding drama, however, for Harald
employed a number of skalds as his propaganda corps. He is said to have
valued them most highly among his retainers, and he placed them in
positions of signal honor. In turn, they were expected to bestow still
greater honor upon him, for it was their task to transform the king's
accomplishments into unforgettable verse and undying fame. Their poems
circulated widely, as did other accounts of royal deeds that gradually
took the shape of legends, tales (þættir, sing. þáttr), and sagas. One
of the earliest of the Kings' Sagas gestures toward the abundance of
material in circulation, stating, "Many things and wondrous ones are
remembered of [King Harald], but now it would take too long to narrate
these individually." ... All told, we have fewer than a dozen variants
of Harald's story ... The chief surviving sources include Theodricus
Monachus, Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensum Chapter 1, Historia
Norwegiæ 10–11, Ágrip af Noregskonunga sögum 1–4, Fagrskinna 1–3, the
"Tale of Hálfdan the Black" (Þáttr Hálfdanar svarta, in Flateyjarbók
1.561–67), the "Tale of Harald Fairhair" (Þáttr Haralds hárfagra, in
Flateyjarbók 1.567–76), Hálfdan the Black's Saga, and Harald Fairhair's
Saga (the second and third sagas included in Heimskringla). Pieces of
the narrative and allusions to it are also scattered in other sagas,
including Orkneyinga Saga, Egil's Saga, Laxdæla Saga, Flóamanna Saga,
Barð's Saga, and others. We should not, however, mistake this dossier
for the full body of evidence. As we have seen, all of these sources are
relatively late and all drew on prior variants — written and oral,
poetic and prose, learned and popular, Norwegian and Icelandic — some of
which survive, some of which are known only by name, and many of which
are lost altogether. What each version could assume, however, was an
audience already familiar with the story and keenly interested in it.
They could address themselves to readers (or hearers) who could
recognize modifications to the conventional shape of the story and
appreciate such nuances as these innovations conveyed.'

Peter Stewart

On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 7:16:01 PM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> Thanks. Did the Inglingas exist at all?

The answer to this would have to be almost certainly not, unless you wanted to make a convoluted argument that historical kings from the twelfth century and later believed themselves to be descended from kings who were called Ynglings in the twelfth century and later sources, and would therefore qualify as Ynglings themselves on that basis.

Stewart Baldwin

A sábado, 11 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 05:37:28 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
> On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 7:16:01 PM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > Thanks. Did the Inglingas exist at all?
> The answer to this would have to be almost certainly not, unless you wanted to make a convoluted argument that historical kings from the twelfth century and later believed themselves to be descended from kings who were called Ynglings in the twelfth century and later sources, and would therefore qualify as Ynglings themselves on that basis.
>
> Stewart Baldwin
Is Ragnvald no longer considered historic? Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngling calls them semi-historic and says some of them may have been real.

On 11-Dec-21 11:13 PM, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> A sábado, 11 de dezembro de 2021 à(s) 05:37:28 UTC, Stewart Baldwin escreveu:
>> On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 7:16:01 PM UTC-6, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
>>> Thanks. Did the Inglingas exist at all?
>> The answer to this would have to be almost certainly not, unless you wanted to make a convoluted argument that historical kings from the twelfth century and later believed themselves to be descended from kings who were called Ynglings in the twelfth century and later sources, and would therefore qualify as Ynglings themselves on that basis.
>>
>> Stewart Baldwin
> Is Ragnvald no longer considered historic? Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngling calls them semi-historic and says some of them may have been real.

According to the Norwegian historian Claus Krag in *The Cambridge
History of Scandinavia*, vol 1 (2003) p. 188, "In the formation of a new
political order in Trøndelag and north Norway Earl Håkon Grjotgardsson
was perhaps more important than Harald [Finehair]. Another earl whose
name is known is Ragnvald, earl of Møre in northern Vestlandet. Harald's
relationship with such earls would probably entail their formal
recognition of the king as their overlord but in such a fashion that
they would keep a relatively strong and independent position in their
own territories. The core of Harald's kingdom appears to have been
central and southern Vestlandet."

Peter Stewart

Op vrijdag 10 december 2021 om 08:14:08 UTC+1 schreef Hans Vogels:
> Op vrijdag 10 december 2021 om 04:58:44 UTC+1 schreef pss...@optusnet.com..au:
> > On 10-Dec-21 12:42 PM, taf wrote:
> > > On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 5:16:01 PM UTC-8, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > >
> > >> Thanks. Did the Inglingas exist at all? They are even earlier than Harald Fairhair.
> > >
> > > I am hampered here in that most of the scholarly material I read on the subject back in the day was generations old even then, so I don't know what the modern thinking is. At least at that time, it was accepted that the skaldic poetry dedicated to him was taken as demonstrating Ragnvald existed, and there certainly seems to have been royalty at Vestfold during the approximate period, if the burial mounds are any indication, but I suspect that a lot of the other argumetns made at the time are now thought to have been overly credulous. i would assign basically zero probability fo the pedigree being accurate back to the time of settlement, five generations before Ragnvald.
> > Treating Harald Fairhair as a real historical figure is still current in
> > some academic work - for example, Björn Weiler in /Paths to Kingship in
> > Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200/ (Cambridge, 2021) writes (pp.
> > 132-133): "The anonymous 'Historia Norwegie' from c. 1170–5 (though
> > possibly conceived as early as 1152–3) recorded the history of Norwegian
> > kings from their mythical origins in Sweden to the reign of Olaf
> > Haraldson (d. 1030). The 'Historia' ordered time via the sequence of
> > rulers ... Writing about a past for which he had only fragmentary
> > information, the anonymous author constructed a strict sequence of son
> > succeeding father. There was no disruption in the line of kings. They
> > might drown in barrels of mead, disappear into stones in the pursuit of
> > dwarves or be suffocated by goblins, but they were still succeeded by
> > their sons. The pattern was broken only when the author reached the
> > reign of Harald Fairhair in the late ninth century – when, in short, he
> > entered historical time. While the sixteen sons attributed to Harald may
> > have been a symbolic rather than an accurate number (other sources
> > counted twenty), the dynastic wars of the eleventh century were rooted
> > partly in the sheer number of Harald's progeny."
> >
> > Peter Stewart
> https://www.academia.edu/5676309/Historia_Norwegie
>
> Hans Vogels

https://www.academia.edu/7849058/Kings_sagas_and_Norwegian_history_problems_and_perspectives

Hans Vogels

On 13-Dec-21 6:08 PM, Hans Vogels wrote:
> Op vrijdag 10 december 2021 om 08:14:08 UTC+1 schreef Hans Vogels:
>> Op vrijdag 10 december 2021 om 04:58:44 UTC+1 schreef pss...@optusnet.com.au:
>>> On 10-Dec-21 12:42 PM, taf wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 5:16:01 PM UTC-8, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks. Did the Inglingas exist at all? They are even earlier than Harald Fairhair.
>>>>
>>>> I am hampered here in that most of the scholarly material I read on the subject back in the day was generations old even then, so I don't know what the modern thinking is. At least at that time, it was accepted that the skaldic poetry dedicated to him was taken as demonstrating Ragnvald existed, and there certainly seems to have been royalty at Vestfold during the approximate period, if the burial mounds are any indication, but I suspect that a lot of the other argumetns made at the time are now thought to have been overly credulous. i would assign basically zero probability fo the pedigree being accurate back to the time of settlement, five generations before Ragnvald.
>>> Treating Harald Fairhair as a real historical figure is still current in
>>> some academic work - for example, Björn Weiler in /Paths to Kingship in
>>> Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200/ (Cambridge, 2021) writes (pp.
>>> 132-133): "The anonymous 'Historia Norwegie' from c. 1170–5 (though
>>> possibly conceived as early as 1152–3) recorded the history of Norwegian
>>> kings from their mythical origins in Sweden to the reign of Olaf
>>> Haraldson (d. 1030). The 'Historia' ordered time via the sequence of
>>> rulers ... Writing about a past for which he had only fragmentary
>>> information, the anonymous author constructed a strict sequence of son
>>> succeeding father. There was no disruption in the line of kings. They
>>> might drown in barrels of mead, disappear into stones in the pursuit of
>>> dwarves or be suffocated by goblins, but they were still succeeded by
>>> their sons. The pattern was broken only when the author reached the
>>> reign of Harald Fairhair in the late ninth century – when, in short, he
>>> entered historical time. While the sixteen sons attributed to Harald may
>>> have been a symbolic rather than an accurate number (other sources
>>> counted twenty), the dynastic wars of the eleventh century were rooted
>>> partly in the sheer number of Harald's progeny."
>>>
>>> Peter Stewart
>> https://www.academia.edu/5676309/Historia_Norwegie
>>
>> Hans Vogels
>
> https://www.academia.edu/7849058/Kings_sagas_and_Norwegian_history_problems_and_perspectives

Regarding the question raised about historicity of Harald Fairhair, on
pp. 66-67 the author wrote:

"We should note that like Ludwig in Francia, Haraldr and Óláfr were
extremely common names in the north, so a name (itself often absent in
the verse) would not really inform us whom the poem is about; nicknames
are also not necessarily present in the verse, and thus also not always
reliable. The case of the two most famous Haraldrs - Haraldr hárfagri
Hálfdanarson, the supposed unifier of Norway in the late ninth century,
and Haraldr harðráði Sigurðarson, who lived in the mid-eleventh century
- is an excellent example. While the latter Haraldr is relatively
well-attested in contemporary sources, his earlier namesake remains a
shadowy figure, known only from much later writings; it seems to be
impossible to determine how much of what is attributed to him really has
anything to do with a real historical figure. A number of scholars have
recently suggested that the material accruing around him has little or
no basis in fact, and is a product of a much later creation of legend,
tied to contemporary political situations in the twelfth century. Krag
has argued that the Norwegian kings' claim to legitimacy was rooted in
the fact that Norway was purported (in the extant and late histories) to
have been the 'oðal', or family property, of Haraldr and thus his
descendants, but in Krag's view, this is a retrospective claim, having
little to do with the realities of Haraldr's reign. Krag, and more
recently Pesch and Sverrir Jakobsson, have also argued that neither
Haraldr nor his supposed father Hálfdan svarti were actually from
Vestfold; this geographical location also has more to do with the
situation in Norway from the mid-twelfth century onwards than the period
c.900. Approaching the problems from an archaeological perspective,
Pesch presents a thorough analysis of all that is known about Hálfdan
svarti, concluding that - as with Ynglingatal and Ynglinga saga - there
is little archaeological information to support the saga narratives,
which are in themselves not consistent with each other; she argues
furthermore that if there was a Hálfdan as a predecessor to Haraldr
hárfagri, he may not have had the nickname of 'svarti'; he was not a
'Yngling'; he did not rule in Vestfold; he was not buried in four
different places; and he probably did not father Haraldr. She suggests
that the origins of the narratives about Hálfdan and the Ynglingar were
in a saga about Haraldr, from which a tale about his father developed,
which was then attached both to Vestfold and to the Swedish Ynglings, in
an effort to create a seamless genealogy for Haraldr hárfagri, who had
such an important role in Norwegian and Icelandic traditions about their
early history. Taking these suggestions further, Sverrir Jakobsson
presents an even more critical view: beginning his argument with the
fact that there are no contemporary sources (even from outside
Scandinavia) on Haraldr, he suggests that Haraldr is perhaps best seen
as a legendary figure; the sources provide no solid evidence that we
could connect to any real historical personage."

Peter Stewart

On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 1:01:59 AM UTC, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
> On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> >
> > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
>
> > https://www.academia.edu/search?q=Vikings%20on%20the%20river%20Somme
>
> This one took a bit longer, but I still found nothing to recommend it.
>
> Stewart Baldwin

Regarding Rolf the Ganger: Hmmmm....In the first place this is because you have not read my book, Stewart. The resort to invective in the place of reasoned argument should be beneath you - but I do understand that my work challenges the comfort zone within your world view. Clearly you have an agenda, albeit I am not sure just what it is. Your "slip" confusing the birth and death of Harald Tanglehair is extremely instructive - illustrating your frame of mind at the time. No doubt you will claim that you do not have time to discuss the issues, but it is rude to be insulting and this is exacerbated by not defending yourself.

My agenda has been to see how much of the old legends can be seen as feasible and if so on what basis - and it turns out that it is a good deal more than smug modern academics will allow. I invite readers to think for themselves - to read my papers for themselves (they include synopses of my books). Feel free to try to pick holes (this is how scholarship advances) - but you will be hard pushed to do so.

Regarding the Somme: As a matter of fact I do not agree with Willy, but that is no reason to rubbish his work either. I understand WHY he has conflated Hrollaug Hrolfsson and Hrollaug Ketilsson, but there is no need to be dismissive here. Often there are still gems to be recovered.

On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 10:58:15 PM UTC, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
> On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 4:17:55 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Op zondag 5 december 2021 om 02:01:59 UTC+1 schreef Stewart Baldwin:
> > > On Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 7:06:07 AM UTC-6, hansvog...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > The vikings are again a popular subject. I bumped yesterday into two other papers elswhere.
> > > >
> > > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> > Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> > Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?
> Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.
>
> Stewart Baldwin
On what basis? Clearly you have not read my book - yet you feel able to pontificate?

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 2:19:45 AM UTC, joe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, December 5, 2021 at 5:58:15 PM UTC-5, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
>
> > > > > https://www.academia.edu/62070193/Rolf_the_Ganger_NOT_the_first_Count_of_Rouen
> > > > This one stood out as garbage before the end of the first page.
> > > Like I wrote (more viking fun) with a lot 'what ifs'.
> > > Would you care to elaborate on the eye-catching misconceptions?
> > Too many absurdities to list, but one pretty obvious one is the claim to have narrowed down the death of Harald Fairhair to between 20 and 25 March 851. For someone first mentioned in sources from a few centuries later, this is not even close to being credible.
> >
> I know you mean "birth of"; but that only makes it more hilarious. The idea that we can 'determine' the birthdate of someone who is far more legendary than historical, and whose parents were only 'named' in surviving sources nearly *350 years* after the fact..is...silly.
>
> This author (a retired computers teacher?) has a very broad set of subjects that they post papers on, from this, to analyzing Jesus's pre-teen years; and shows an over-abundance of surety in his conclusions (like the exact locations and dates for King Arthur's battles) that no amateur, and no expert would ever claim merely by re-examining sources that have been available for hundreds of years.
>
> I don't recommend this author's work in any way whatsoever.
> --Joe C
Clearly you have not read the book. Pretty well every book on Arthur claims to be able to locate the battles. Naturally I think I have got them right when everyone else has got them wrong - but obviously you need to read the rationale. Try arguing against any of the sites I propose - you will be hard pushed.