Skjold Odinsson, King of Skjælland - Any source for Skjold's mother?

You can add a "wife" to Oden called No mother Identified that is fine by me but i have his mother as Rind Billings dotter Princess of Ruthenia Born 221 Died 250 (29) http://www.geni.com/path/Judy-Rice+is+related+to+Rind-Billingsdotte...

Private User but where do you have that information from?

I'm happy to leave his mother that way, but only if I can cite a source for it - ideally the saga it was taken from, but at least a history book or historian's article that claims it's so.

Rind Billingsdotter wikpedia.org/wiki/rind this is were i got my information

Private User thanks for the pointer! The Rind legend explains the parentage of Våle/Bous - Skjold is not mentioned, and the relationship between Rind and Odin (rape in order to produce a child who could kill Odin's son Hod in revenge for Hod killing Odin's son Balder) can hardly be described as "marrriage".

Always learning more.... but she seems unrelated to Skjold the peacemaker of the Danes.

I'd like to add another question.

Where do the dates in this profile come from? I can only imagine that someone has worked backwards from a known date using a set value for each generation, that works ok for a generation or two but extending it over hundreds of years is extremely dubious.

Also if Harald's supposition in his first post is correct, which is to say if no source actually say Odin is Skjöld's father, then i think we should disconnect him from Odin. My reading is that Skjöld could be a derivative of the Moses in a basket story, an innocent baby washed up on the shore sent by the god(s). That is not the same as saying he is Odin's son.

I look forward to hearing a lot of responses from the 206 managers of this profile!

Sorry, make that 208.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Odin gives a number of sources for the relationship, including Yngilingesoga. My first post was only concerned with who his *mother* was; I think the link to his father is well documented.

The first attempt at dating the gods I know of comes from Tormod Torfæus, who added dates to his history book written in 1711 - people have been guessing dates for quite a while!

Skjold is an interesting figure.

Here is a Wikipedia article about him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skj%C3%B6ldr

He is usually the son of Sceaf:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceafa

Variations on Sceaf's lineage in different sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceafa#Variations_on_Sceaf.27s_lineage

I have some books at home that pretend to know dates for these guys. I'll see what I can find, but any date is going to be pure garbage.

Ah yes, i did read your post wrong.

I asked about the dates because this is the first profile in Odin's immediate family where I have not felt comfortable deleting the dates. Saying Buri was born in 167 AD makes no sense because Buri was a primordial "born" before the world was created. Perhaps i am being too dogmatic but this is a question which hinges on whether we show this mythological version of Odin as being an ancestor of living humans.

I checked Michel Call's Royal Ancestors of Some LDS Families. The information there will have been distributed so widely in LDS circles and across the Internet it becomes almost the base you're arguing against.

He has "Skjold, King of the Danes" born about 237 of Hleithra, Denmark, married to Gefion, and son of Odin (born abt 215, of Asgard, Asia) and wife (1) Frigg (born abt 219, of Asgard, Asia).

This is about what you'll find all across the Internet.

I don't recommend you use any of this, except as a filter to understand what people are trying to reproduce. This same book has Odin as son of Frithwald and Beltsa, and this particular book is the ur-source for all those weird genealogies that say Frigg was daughter of Cadwalladr.

I've seen three different dating guesses for Odin. First, this one, which arrives at the early 200s by collating (supposed) connections to other European genealogies. Second, the 400s, which comes from collating information only from Scandinavian sources and guessing that Odin might have lived during the Migration Period. And Third, about 60 BCE, which was Thor Heyerdahl's guess.

Just so everyone can judge fairly, I want to point out that the passage about Skjöld is from Skáldskaparmál (Poetic Diction) in the Prose Edda, not from Gylfaginning. I know you've rejected other bits from outside Gylfaginning.

XLII. "Why is gold called Fróði's flour? There is a story about this to the effect that there was a son of Óðin's called Skjöld from whom the Skjöldungar have come. He ruled the county which is now called Denmark (and at that time Gotland) and had a palace there. Skjöld had a son called Friðleif who ruled the country after him. Friðleif's son was called Fróði. He inherited the kingdom after his father at the time when when the Emperor Augustus made peace over the whole world. Christ was born then. However, because Fróði was the most powerful of all the Scandinavian kings, all the northern nations ascribe that peace to him, and the Norsemen call it the Peace of Fróði. No man injured another, even although he was confronted with the slayer of his father or brother, free or in bonds. Neither were there any thieves or robbers, so that a gold ring lay untouched for a long time on the Heath of Jelling. King Fróði was invited to stay with the king Fjölner of Sweden ..."

So, for Snorri's idea of dates there are some clues. Skjöld's grandson Fróði lived in the time of Caesar Augustus, and at the same time as Fjölner.

Oh, so THAT is how Cadwalladr gets dragged into this!

I could not figure that out.

I haven't found yet where Call got the info about Cadwalldr. Must be something in LDS Family Group Sheets before the creation of the Medieval Families Unit in 1975.

When I lived in Salt Lake and the old binders of family group sheets were still available to the public, I tried to find something. No luck.

Skáldskaparmál
http://www.germanicmythology.com/ProseEdda/BRODEURSkaldskaparmal.html

This data about Skjold "born about 237 of Hleithra, Denmark" is what i deleted this morning, it interesting to know its source.
The version i have read is that SKjold floated ashore as a baby so how could anyone know the location of his birth?

I’m still not happy with how the Odin profile has a mixture of gods and humans. Looking at Skjold this morning has reignited the issue in my mind.
Odin, Thor, Baldur, et al hang out with giants, go on adventures and have fun in Asgard.
Men like Skjold and Saeming are to my mind later attempts to legitimise royal dynasties by linking them to Odin the same way the English did.
I think having gods like Thor and men such as Skjold showing on Geni as brothers is over-legitimising these “fake” descents, not suggesting we delete the fakes but I still think we should have a third “Odin” OR just disconnect these men from their father. Perhaps not useful until Relationship Locking comes about.

It's all part of a centuries-old attempt to euhemerize ("humanize") Odin. If you believe he was a famous man who was turned into a god, which is what Snorri believed, then it all makes sense -- and it stays true to the sources without adding any of the academic judgment.

I think the question of how to handle it will be easier after we've defined our goals. Are we trying to accurately reflect the source(s)? Or trying to create a plausible tree for these lines? We can't do both.

In my own, private database I leave everyone connected most of the time. The advantage is that I can easily navigate the different lines. The disadvantage is that it would look to an outsider like I believe it. It would be the same on Geni.

I think if I were creating a database for someone else to use, I would be tempted to create two different Odins. One to stand at the center of Norse mythology, and one to stand at the top of the royal trees that claim descent from him. Odin the god would have no human descendants. Odin the ancestor would have no divine ancestors.

Having said that, now I should expand a bit. I actually do have several other Odins in my database. One of them stands at the bottom of the fake Trojan line. Another is part of my notes on the proto-Germanic tree, as taken from Nennius, Jakob Grimm, and modern scholars. And, a third is part of a research project I'm doing about the blending of Odin and Gaut.

Did Snorri believe that? Or did Snorri just concoct the whole Asia link to avoid getting burnt at the stake for writing down pagan mythology to preserve it in the face of Christian hegemony?

As someone who's name rhymes with Semi says often on Geni there is basically no way to prove anything in northern Europe pre-1500 so trying to link yourself (or anyone else) a ultra-famous migration era warrior is a bit silly.

I think one Norse pantheon Tree on Geni based on Snorri unconnected to the WFT. A second Woden pedigree backwards from the Saxon kings and perhaps another lineage (or several?) based on the saga ancestries of men like Skjold and Saeming.

Geni is fantastic for nice simple clear family trees but not so good when things get a bit grey. Odin's about as grey as things get!

I don't like leaving everything connected as one big lump as it was recently. Odin might be the same person in all these mythologies but Brand is not Thor's brother and Brand is not Borr's grandson, likewise Thor is not Frithuwald's grandson.

I think we agree with each other? Anyway have to get out in the yard while it's not raining, have a good weekend.

I disagree with much of that, although you and I agree in most places.

Trying to answer each point will make this seem a bit scattered.

First, I vehemently disagree with our friend who says it is impossible to prove anything in northern Europe pre-1500. It's possible to prove a great many things, including many genealogies.

What's hard is to create a connected line for Scandinavian families because most records fail at critical times. However, there are other lines outside Scandinavia that go back to Scandinavia by evading the records drought.

It's one of the ironies of history that many English and Scottish (and other) people have documented lines into medieval Scandinavia that most modern Scandinavians can never hope to have.

Similarly, many Americans with Colonial ancestry have easily documented lines into medieval Britain that would be a struggle for the modern British themselves to find.

Secondly, did Snorri believe Odin was a man?

Almost certainly he did. Assuming he was an educated man, and not some semi-literate nutcase.

The whole idea that our ancestors disguised their true beliefs to avoid being executed for heresy is a bunch of overblown 18th and 19th century romanticism that has caught the public imagination and won't let go.

These were educated people, taught in church schools. They were up to date with the science of their day. They knew Odin couldn't have been a god, although if they were a bit on the superstitious side they might still have made little offerings to the house spirits "for luck". (As I do!)

The only avenue open to them to understand the old myths was to adopt one of two popular strategies. Either, the old gods were demons who led the people astray, or they were humans who had become gods. Different writers adopted one theory or the other. It's noticeable that the worldly and sophisticated people mostly went for the idea their ancestors were just humans, but still worthy of respect, while the rabid priests are the ones who thought the old gods were demons.

And, they knew if Odin was human he must be descended from Adam. How could he not be, if that's what the latest and most sophisticated histories were saying?

The death knell for the old indigenous history was that their tales were oral and went back only a bare number of generations, while the Roman world had written histories that were thousands of years old.

You're going to feel pretty foolish if your guy created the world maybe 800 years ago but the other side has written records going back 5000 years.

Third, I think we need to have a public discussion specifically directed at the question of which Odin groups to have.

Thor is not Frithuwald's grandson, but that's an easy one because Frithuwald is a Christian invention.

But Brand really might be Thor's "brother" (actually nephew), particularly if he was really part of a stellium of light gods.

We need to plan this out. Either we will follow the sources, or we must have an easy to understand reason for not doing so. Personal inclination to accept this or reject that is not good enough.

Skjold father Odin, mother Rind

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_nordiske_guders_stamtr%C3%A6

I've added "source missing" to Rind's page on https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_(nordisk_mytologi) because ... well, it is.

Sigh.

maybe u could cite Geni as a source??

I don't think our friend has said it is impossible to prove anything before 1500 in Northern Europe. I even think I've heard that our friend has said that he has proven lines back to the 13th century in his own genealogy.

I think this discussion is way out of line, and nothing can be proven.

All the sagas I've read that reference Skjold mention that he's a son of Odin in some fashion, but none of them mention his mother.

If I get a saga source that says his mother was named Rind, I'll add it in an instant.
No source, no listing.

Wikipedia's slogan is "verifiability not truth". There are depths to that philosophy...

Skjöld, King of Denmark is my grandson Joshua's 49th great grandfather.