Ragnar "Lodbrok" Sigurdsson - 31st Great Grandfather

31st for me!

34th great grandfather for me!

I boys and girls

Made a new project about Ragnar Lodbrog and sons.

http://www.geni.com/projects/Ragnar-Lodbrog-and-his-legend/27426

I always have doubts about the relationship between Rollo and Ragnar. Without questioning the fact that information on both not be surely confirmed, I would like to know: What is understanding today, in Geni, on the relationship between them?

I have dozens of paths to Ragnar but, as an example, I found these paths:

Direct path extracted from http://www.geni.com/path/Ragnar-Lodbrok-Sigurdsson+is+related+to+Cl...:

Ragnar "Lodbrok" Sigurdsson → Sigurd "Snake-in-the-eye" Ragnarsen (his son) → Thora Sigurdsdóttir (his daughter) → Ásdís (Ascrida) Ragnvaldsdóttir (her daughter) → Ragnvald Eysteinsson, Earl of Møre (her son) → Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' of Normandy (his son)

Indirect path, where the relationship occur by Guðþormr (Gudröd) Ívarsson King of Dublin, Dau Ragnarsdatter's husband (Ragnar's daughter):
http://www.geni.com/path/Ragnar-Lodbrok-Sigurdsson+is+related+to+Ga...

Ragnar "Lodbrok" Sigurdsson → Dau Ragnarsdatter (his daughter) → Guðþormr (Gudröd) Ívarsson King of Dublin (her husband) → Ivarr Gudrodson, king of Dublin (his father) → Guðrøðr Ragnvaldsson, Konge av Vestfold (his father) → Ásdís (Ascrida) Ragnvaldsdóttir (his sister) → Ragnvald Eysteinsson, Earl of Møre (her son) → Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' of Normandy (his son)

Note that in this path, Rollo is Ásdís's grandson, in turn Ragnar's great granddaughter in the previous path!

There is no sources to confirm the link between Rollo and Ragnar.

Nobody known for sure the ancestry of Rollo as far as I know. THerefor the connection this way around might not be correct. At least there is no sources to document it.

It might be right it might not,

Yup! Especially with regard to the Thora Sigurdsdóttir. She has several versions.

The weakest point in this chain is actually Asdis (Ascrida), the wife of Eystein Glumra. I haven't found a single historical source that mentions her.

Sigurd "snake-eye" is attested to by Ragnarsona þattr; it is mentioned in Eyrbyggja saga at least one daughter named Thora (but with the wrong husband), so Thora Sigurdsdóttir, Unsourced is also doubtful, but Ásdís Ragnvaldsdóttir comes up a complete blank on sources.

I'd like to have even an "oldest known sighting" for these ladies. They sure have lots of copies on the Internet.

... the links between Rollo and Eystein Glumra Asdis' husband) is attested to by Snorre. Snorre might have been wrong, but at least I know where the claim comes from. That's more than I have for the ladies.

Before I dedicate to Geni, I had saw these records:

Rollo
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ragnvaldsson-11
http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Ragnvaldsson-Family-Tree-11

Thora Sigurdsdottir
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sigurdsdottir-2
http://familytree.millay.bastard.ddns.net/individual.php?pid=I1410&...
http://fabpedigree.com/s007/f560507.htm
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~stoneyfield/4463.htm

Ascrida Ragnvaldsdattor
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~stoneyfield/4498.htm
http://fabpedigree.com/s073/f484646.htm

Sandro, you will note that the only references in Ascrida on the rootsweb-hosted are to "54 Michael Call, SLC 1989 #425." I have no idea who that is or on what basis he made his statement.

These are the kind of "sources" I refer to when I say "copies on the Internet".

Wikitree and fabpedigree are great for giving hints on what family relations *might* exist - but they (like Geni) are only as strong as the references they cite.

These sites will always have to be considered. Secondary sources.

If you want to have something more Solid or semi solid you will have to go to the sagas or the Annals from the Christian areas of that time.
Again the sagas however will also have to be removed in time from the actual event.
But its the best we got. In this case it is very much about how strongly you can believe the events was writen down thrue to the oral tradition prior to them.
I believe you can get some information out of the sagas, by comparing them with eachother. Ofcause one should always be cautious about it and be clear that this is not sources that are 100% acurate!

For that period of time, that is however the closest we get!

Actually Google Book Search claims that the word "asdis" exists in "The Complete Peerage" from 1898.

But at least in Sweden, this book is invisible in Google Books, so I can't check if it is the right Asdis. Can anyone else check?

Google search comes up with Complete Peerage but a search in the individual volumes doesn't find Asdis. Same with archive.org.

It might simplify the search to know that English sources call her Aseda.

Catching up.

"54 Michael Call, SLC 1989 #425." is Michel L. Call, Royal Ancestors of Some L.D.S. Families". Michel, not Michael. I have a copy of the 1975 edition. It shows Aseda. It says it is compiled from LDS Temple records, but I know from working with it that the ultimate source is standard English sources like Turton and Complete Peerage.

She is not named in Orkneyinga Saga or Heimskringla.

She is not mentioned in English or Norwegian Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eystein_Glumra
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnvald_M%C3%B8rejarl

French Wikipedia calls her Aseda Ragnaldsdottir:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurd_Eysteinsson

Spanish Wikipedia calls her Ascrida [Ásdís] Rognvaldsdatter:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eystein_Glumra

German Wikipedia calls her Åsa Ragnvaldsdatter (Aseda Rognvaldsdatter) and adds the helpful note that she is mentioned in a later text:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnvald_Olafsson

None of these Wikipedia articles cite a specific source.

Hi all,
Ragnar Lodbrok is my 33rd Great-Grandfather...hello to all my relatives!!!
Sending hugs! x

Forgot to mention that in a different article on Spanish Wikipedia, she is also called Ascrida:

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnvald_Olafsson

In this article, there is a source: The mammoth book of British kings and queens, Ashley, Michael, (New York, New York: Carroll & Graf, c1998), D5 942, p.. 439.

I have a later edition of the same book, re-titled British Kings and Queens (1998). It shows Aseda in a chart on p. 439 referenced to her father in a chart on p 209, but no accompanying text or references.

Roderick Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (1988) gives the whole line in one block (Line 166, Njord to Richard I of Normandy), with citations only to Complete Peerage. Stuart is extremely unreliable, but often a good clue to sources. He says he used "Cokayne, George Edward: Complete Peerage (new revised), Vols. I-XIII, pt. 2, (1910-1959)." His specific citation for this section is "CP, I 22; CP, IV 670 (chart III); CP, V 694-695, 737; CP, VII 520; CP, IX 590; CP, X 348-357, 364 and note e."

Worth noting that she is not mentioned in Frederick Weis, Ancestral Roots (7th edition, 1995), Line 121E. There are scattered references on the Internet that seem to show she was mentioned in earlier editions, so it appears she was removed at some point. That's common in this series where later research reveals problems.

Harald, what specifically was your search syntax?

In all my searches for "The Complete Peerage" I have not found "Asdis".

I found the following profile:Malahulc
"The Complete Peerage V6.P448.j Parents: Jarl Of The Uplands Eystein Ivarsson GLUMRA and Countess Of Oppland, Jutl Ascrida RAGNVALDSDOTTIR. Parents: Jarl Of The Uplands Eystein Ivarsson GLUMRA and Ascrida RAGNVALDSDOTTIR."

I also found the following research:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Complete%20Peerage

So, from all of this, if I were going to look for the earliest reference to Aseda, I would guess she appears in some later text, after the sagas (12th to 13th centuries) but probably before the age of genealogical invention (16th century).

I would start by guessing that the text is in Latin, and that her name might appear there as Ascrida, which has been normalized in later sources to Aseda, Åsa, and Ásdís.

She is not mentioned at MedLands, so I'll have to think what that text might have been.
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/SCOTTISH%20NOBILITY.htm#_Toc359671993
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/NORWEGIAN%20NOBILITY.htm#Ragnvalddi...

The weakest point in this chain might be Asdis (Ascrida), but the rest of it isn't very reliable either.

Rollo's ancestry is in doubt:
http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/rollo000.htm

Rognvald's ancestry is also in doubt:
http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/rognv000.htm

I wish Geni would cut the connection to Rollo's parents. I can live with saga genealogies, but when there is such a sharp difference of opinion among scholars, the honest approach would be to acknowledge it.

This is some random thoughts that awakes, first, the invention of genealogy 16th century, mention by Justin, okay, that must referred to some special methods and systematization because genealogy have existed as long as people have married, the methods of preserving names, etc, may have looked different, not always lasted in general over time, but considering rules from the early Christianity days, that regulated how close related someone were allowed to be with the husband, they surely must have known at least 3 generation upwards.

When we go further in time, to about 1400's they sometimes known 16 people up, if they belonged to the aristocracy, that was sometimes carved in their tombstones. If we look at pagan time in northern Europe,
i'm pretty sure that even without the christian god, they did not married their siblings at all or first cousins in general, meaning that they must have a genealogical guideline if than so orally.

Then we have another perspective that often seems to be forgotten, that is the rigid class society, you have a minority of people with the highest social rank, a bit more in the middle and the majority in the bottom consisting of a bunch of slaves. The ones in the top are those marrying among the top, here, a lot of you really seems to not have understand this very simple point, believing that anyone could marry anyone, or some complete stranger, that may work today among 7 billion of people, but certainly not back then, it would have been unthinkable.

Lets see, another point, the population. Today we have 7 billion, in the early 1800's there were just 1 billion, the year 1000, there were 350 million people on the WHOLE WORLD.

In Scandinavia, around 1000 lived approximately 400.000 people in all, that is just about the amount of an average minor city.

Well, they weren't more people if you go back 200 years, and no, they weren't more if you go forward either, because of the black death.

In Sweden, as one example, in the beginning of the 1400's lived 350.000 people, that's all and that's pretty much also the reason why all ethnic swedes of today are so closely related with each other.

If we go back to the period called the viking time, i'm quit sure that they could keep track of those family in the top, extremely well, guarantee that the spouses did belong to each one, by both social status and heritage, and that goes the same for all countries in the northern Europe.

@Ulf Ingvar Göte Martinsson good points - and don´t forget the plagues and hunger in the middle ages that really did cut down the population.

This maintenance of marriages between members of the same family or other aristocratic families was the rule rather than the exception in this end of the world called Brazil, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth (maybe even today). Corroborating that Ulf said, here also had a rigid control of the families for the maintenance of wealth and power. As would occur with the minority of the people with the highest social rank in Europe.
This minority had the most of the resources that made possible their survival, maintaining the hereditary chain and enabled even go to the faraway lands!
Thus, it makes perfect sense that Ulf said!

Remember too that humans don't always mate by the rules ;)

And, in a society without written records only the most famous achieve lasting fame. If you go back a few generations, it's easy to fake the genealogy. You can always find some old person who remembers hearing that -- for a small price.

I'm not saying she's definitely fake but she's certainly suspicious ;)

She lived in the 800s but she isn't mentioned in Heimskringla / Orkneyinga saga circa 1230 or in any earlier source. That's 400 years with no one mentioning her.

Then, when she does appear she's, oh so magically, the only known child of her father (contrary to Geni). And she just happens to give the illustrious English ancestor Duke Rollo a descent from Geirstad Alf on one side and from Ragnar Lodbrok on the other.

And, as if that isn't good enough, her father turns out to be a 1st cousin of Harald Fairhair, the illustrious king from whom the Norwegian kings were busy inventing descents.

She's just a little too perfect.

For women, it has probably always been a particularly hard stigma to be revealed with unfaithfulness in the Western world, the view may have been alleviated somewhat, but given that I recently (yesterday) read about a man who ripped out his wife's guts with his bare hands after that she for the third time loudly screamed out her ex's name during the sex act, I do not think so, though most men do not go to such extremes...

Another thing to consider, at least here, that women had few or no reports on public records. As an example, I'm looking for records of Gertrudes Marianna de Azeredo Coutinho, my fifth great grandmother.
I found some notes in baptism records of a godson and his son's wedding registry. While I found more records about your husband in government documents (renewal letters from their representation in the Portuguese court in Brazil). Nothing about Gertrudes! I do not even know who their parents (I put his parents as a hypothesis)! And that's very close to me!

Private User and sometimes not - three of Ragnvald Mørejarl's six sons were of his "frille", not products of his marriage. This was not unfaithfulness, but it was "how things were done at that time". (from Snorre).

Florida Man is a special breed, though.

Private User my search link was this:
https://books.google.se/books?id=6K8KAAAAYAAJ&dq=the+complete+p...

The Complete Peerage seems to be in the public domain as seen from the Internet Archive, as visible here:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Complete%20Peerage%20vol...

but neither volume 6 nor volume 8 seem to list Asdis on page 448.

The search goes on....

@Harald Tveit Alvestrand - "spot on" what you say about concubines. This system was quite common in Iceland well into the 16th century.

This system opened the possibility to the men that they could own it assets in many places and who was a better caretaker than a mistress or a wife.

Of course the men had children with all their women. The problem of illegitimate children was simply solved by the parents who were´t married, they simply adopted their children so they could inherit their assets.

A whole duplicate tree with 116 profiles if anyone feels like merging it in.

Randver Rádbardsson, {Mythical King of Sweden and Denmark}