It runs in the family II: Harald Hårfagre (Harald Finehair)

This old possible ancestor of ours had many names, Harald Hårfagre (Harald Finehair, Harald Fairhair, Harald the Fairhaired, Harold Haarfarer), Harald Halvdansson, and Harald I of Norway. He was born in 852 and died in 933, at age 83. These old Vikings had great names, such as his father, named Halvdan Svarte (Halfdan the Black) Gudrödarson. Harald had several wives, including a 'Snøfrid' (‘Snow peace”).

His most famous claim to fame was as the winner of the battle of Hafrsfjord in 872, which united Norway as one country for the first time. There is a giant sculpture at this place in Norway commemorating this event shaped as three swords stuck in solid rock, with the tallest sword representing Harald.

The long-haired tale is that the woman that Harald wanted to marry said she would not marry him until he was king of all of Norway, so then Harald vowed not to cut his hair until this was accomplished. This took a few years, so he got known for his long, blond hair, and earned nicknames such as "Shockhead" or "Tanglehair" (I think there was a lack of shampoo back then…).

Harald left a mess after himself, with something between 11 and 20 sons with 7 mothers (one of them a maid) fighting over the inheritance and the kingdom, and sometimes the sons were killing off each other. Over half of them considered themselves kings at some point in their lives, and the son our family traces back to is Olav Haraldsson. Olav died only one year after his father, in 934, at a battle in Norwegian Tønsberg, which might be the first founded city in Scandinavia. Both Harald and his half-brother Sigrød Haraldsson are buried here, and their killer was their half-brother Eric Bloodaxe, who again united Norway under one ruler . These Vikings really have a bloody history, and we haven’t even gotten to the arrival of Christianity around 1000.

Of course Harald and Snofrid have a Norwegian stamp – but look at them, don’t you think they are arguing? Over what? And that is that man behind them doing with his finger on his nose?

Previous blog posts on this topic:
Finding your (possible) roots in deep time

It runs in the family I: Finding your (possible) roots in deep time

My mom (AnS) and her sister (MB), our aunt, have been digging deep into the genealogical online mines of Swedish historical documents and found some amazing tracks back in time.  As you go back in time you of course have more and more ancestors, and if you are lucky some of these were historically important enough to have been part of the record-keeping for centuries.  First AnS e-mailed me and told us that, in fact, we had royal blood in the family down there in the medieval 1400s.  “1400s!” That was before Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the Caribbean, Galileo, and da Vinci (well, Leonardo was born 1452).

A few days later and a new e-mail from mom revealed lineages even deeper in time – now back in time from a princess of Sweden in the early 1200s (Brigida Haraldsdotter).  From her, the old histories and folktales lead the genealogy of our family far back in time into Viking Age (which was approximately during years 700-1100).  Not only that, the old Icelandic sagas and other historical documents trace the family lineages of these famous Vikings all the way back to, you guessed it, the Nordic Gods. 

These mythological and folktale texts, poems, and documents (often called Sagas) provide genealogies like the Bible, but more exact with birth and death dates, which of course might be wrong.  But so far, mom and MB have traced our family back to Yngvi Frej Odinson Tyrkjekonung (year 125-214), son of Odin and Freja, two of the Gods in Nordic mythology.  How is that for amazing genealogy?  It is like being able to trace your family back to Abraham in the Bible.  Do you think the Mormons would be jealous of us?  For Mormons genealogy is very important for religious reasons, while I just think it is interesting and curious, and it roots you in a place and time.

So, we can trace our family nearly 1900 years back in time, and so can probably most Nordic people, since nearly everybody is at least distantly related to some old royal nobleman.  In our case these relationships are directly back in time, based on direct bloodlines not some 'third cousin twice removed' or anything.

In a little series here on the blog we will highlight some of the ancestral people of the family, directly related to us even if their DNA by this time is pretty diluted, maybe 25-50 generations later. This is based on historical documents and who knows who really slept with who (which undoubtedly sometimes led to pregnancies outside of marriage), and it doesn’t help that sometimes kids got adopted, two children could have the same name, cousins married cousins over and over, and so on. It is often unclear who the mother was, and that was less important since only the sons inherited the father, and mothers and daughters were less important (except as marriage material).  It is a tangled but interesting web of stories, people, and places. 

 And, for Stamp of the Day, some viking stamps from Isle of Man.