Canute the Great DNA

Olof III "Skötkonung" Erikson, Kung av Sverige is my 25th great grandfather.

Olof III "the Treasurer", king of Sweden

Ulf, here we have a mistake somewhere: Olof is my 29th but your 25th (!) great grandfather. That would mean, that you must be 4 generations (= approx. 120 years) older than me... :)

Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' of Normandy is my 28th great grandfather.
Born 860, that's 1155 years ago...
Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' Ragnvaldsson

Kong Erik I Ejegod av Danmark is my 22nd great grandfather.
( Died on an holy trip in Cyprus around 1056 )

Konge av Danmark Eric I "the Good" Estridson

You have 17 woman in your line Sten, I got 10....

Well, - not unnatural if you look away from average age and accept that some become a parent in young age and some when older, - I have rather close living relatives with as much as 4 generation difference between us.

If the oldest child in a family get a child with the youngest child in another family you will also see huge differences in generations if following a different path to a common ancestor.

Even statistically, - if looking at average age when getting a child on males versus females two paths might end up with a huge generation difference to the same ancestor depending on number of males and females in the path.

A lot of woman means a younger line, in general. They are only fertile under circa 30 year, meaning that they must have their children before the age of 45, thus actually making the lines longer. In general they would often likely be mothers in the range between 16 - 30.

well actually I have several woman in my bloodline that became a parent at the age of almost 50.
My grandfather on my fathers side had 16 children that survived the childbirth.
The first child she had ad the age of around 20 and the last close to 50. So under thirty is a little to little, eventhough it was'nt a normal feture to have that many children.

One thing you should also be aware of when it comes to direct ancestor lines, especially long back: If finding females there it is likely a fabricated construction made by people who want some royal or noble ancestors, - simply because the sources from that time usually only mention the father. That is a quite common method "professional" genealogists used to give people what they paid for and expected, and once printed in a book it became the truth for many, - even if it cannot be controlled.

I agree to both Bjørn and Anette, woman can indeed be over 50, but then again, that is unusual considering that the most woman peak down considerable during the cessation of menstrual periods which generally occurs in the ages of 40 to 50, and that really marks the end of fertility.
There are very few exceptions, I guess under 2% that could have a child after the age of 50. When we do estimation in our tree, we should not count that upper limit in, because it's very unlikely, but than again, someone might see it as a family sign of latecomers...

When it comes to women occurring in a tree before the 1600, they really need to belong to the higher class, because otherwise it would be rare that they were mentioned at all, unless they had something to do with the court by selling property, inheritance, or had any legal problems.
They are often really badly followed up anyway.

In my experience in genealogical research based on documentary sources - women could give birth to children from the day they got fertile until they went on their menopause.

If they lived longer than 50 years, they could easily give birth to children up till 50 years give or take..

I had such a discussion earlier with a woman, who by the way thought that she was more familiar with the topic because, 1, she was a woman, 2, she had a lot...of old age woman in her tree, and 3, she was highly educated, more than me, how ever she knew what kind of educations i gone, but that stated that the top range should be 65, end of discussion. I call that bs.

In the known history, there a a handful of women that they know of that have by a natural way become a mother after the age of 60, that's how hard it is, you would find them in the Guinness book of world records.

But around 50, at the other hand, it's not impossible, but even then, the chance of having a malformed child, or that the child dies short after the birth are probably 3 to 4 against that the child survives.

I would sum it up as following, if someone have a long row of 50s+ women in their tree, it's either extremely rare and totally extraordinary and that itself would be something to research further in by geneticists, or that it is a strong sign of something really fishy in that tree.

I have to agree that below 50 is what would be considered normal. Exstemely few is over 50 and the only time I have heard of a case of 65 is a Italien Woman that in reasent time recieved assistance in having a child.

And you should also take into account that many wmona died in childbirth.
I read resently about the viking age woman i n York. These woman where unlikely to live above the age of 35. However they often started early, so there was still about 20 years where they would have children. That meens that it was possible that there was 20 years of age difference between the youngest and the oldest child. That ofcause would meen that the brother or sister could have a child at the same age as their own brother or sister.

Constructed bloodlines was not unsual at all. That tradition actually goes back as far as 1500 where it became very importend to be able to present a long and fine pedegree. Hence the nobles sometimes made there bloodline a little finer and further back than they actually had documentation for.
So the only thing you can trust in this regard is when you can find an old paper with the mention of a woman as a heir for instance. That is as mentioned, mostly the noblewoman.

King Fortnot is the common ancestor of my Mother and Father. Edward and Phlilipa are the common ancestors of my 3 of my Grandparents = 7x total so far. Charlemagne's family is about 21 x an ancestor if not more.

Rollo is my 28th Grandfather through my Paternal Grandmother.
http://www.geni.com/path/Wanda+is+related+to+Gange-Hr%C3%B3lfr-Roll...

Rollo is my 27th Grandfather of my Paternal Grandfather taking a different route. http://www.geni.com/path/Gange-Hr%C3%B3lfr-Rollo-of-Normandy+is+rel...

Lastly, Rollo is a 28th Grandfather yet again through my Mother's Father's line.
http://www.geni.com/path/Gange-Hr%C3%B3lfr-Rollo-of-Normandy+is+rel...

Surely more people than this existed on the planet back in that time period. If not, my question is if all of you can trace at least 3 of your Grandparent's will Rollo be your Grandfather or is this just some strange occurrence? To find out go to Rollo first anc click the pin then type in each of your Grandparent's names in the search bar.

Keep in mind that Rollo's ancestry is thought to be fake by many scholars. The issue is something that people argue about all the time.

For someone who has royal ancestry, descent from Rollo is a certainty because of all the intermarriages. It's as common as dirt to be descended from him.

My father's father is his 27th great grandson
http://geni.com/lqxkN

My father's mother is his 26th great granddaughter
http://geni.com/l6jjj

My mother's father is his 29th great grandson
http://geni.com/qNvwS

My mother's mother is his 25th great granddaughter
http://geni.com/2mcpT

I have something similar, on both my parents line, then on two lines on my fathers side, which splits up later in several lines, and then on my grandmothers both parents, all up to Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' of Normandy.

The shortest path should be 27th great grandson, 31st great granddaughter on my parents.

And also on at least 4 paths to my parents on his brother Hrollaug Ragnvaldsson Eyjafjörður, Íslands, that makes their father something of an multiple grandfather.

Thank you Justin :) for taking the time to show me. That is fascinating. Why would they think Rollo is fake? How many people of Royal Ancestry were alive during that time period do you think?

I guess it would be almost impossible for anyone with a central west nordic European blood to not be related, than we also have the fact that the population on the whole earth might just have been under 450 million people under that time.

450 million people seems like a lot of people to be alive during a time that people still had to go out and hunt for their food but I suppose farming put an end to a lot of that. There is still the water problem though. I imagine that a lot plagues and illness occurred from drinking foul water or reusing water for multiple purposes without the knowledge of sanitation and such. I suspect our Ancestors suffered a good deal of the time, especially with dental problems, injuries and chronic illness or infections.

Yes, and then it took a 1000 years more before they reach a billion, but already before they even started to colonize America, they were in desperate hunt for more land, the growing population demanded more products than they could harvest out of the natural resources by that times methods that still were partly ineffective and not fully satisfactory.

It fueled the development of technology in such a way that the world never before had seen, today humanity is like a giant swarm of locusts and we all known what will be the outcome of that.

God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply. Yes, we have done that, isn't time to say stop now God? ; )

Wanda,

For the dispute about the ancestry of Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' Ragnvaldsson I think the best summary is Stewart Baldwin's article at The Henry Project, although the profile itself contains a lot of good information.

http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/rollo000.htm

A quick summary: "The most prominent argument of the case for accepting the Scandinavian account that Rollo was the same person as Hrólfr, son of Rognvaldr of Møre, was given by D. C. Douglas [Douglas (1942), 419-23], and this view has been widely followed by others, including standard genealogical reference sources like ES (generally without any reexamination of the underlying evidence). . . . Most of the argument of Douglas consists of accepting the tale of the sagas and rejecting evidence from the Norman sources which contradict the saga version, while explaining away the problems."

Baldwin goes on to say, "The saying that 'nature abhors a vaccuum' is particularly apt in cases like this, and many genealogists are extremely reluctant to leave a parentage as 'unknown' when such an attractive candidate is available to 'fill in the blank.' Nevertheless, given the the serious problems with the Icelandic sources mentioned above, it is sensible to regard Rollo's parentage as unknown."

Considering the state of the evidence, I'm very surprised that Geni continues to support one particular version.

That was great information Justin, thank you :)

There's also an interesting backstory here. The debate over Rollo's father has historically been between Norwegian scholars who support the saga genealogy that he was Norwegian and Danish scholars who support Norman sources that say he came from Dacia (Denmark). If you watch the discussions on Geni you'll see that it's still often Norwegians versus Danes.

There was a study published last year that suggested, very tentatively, that the Scandinavian influence on the Norman French dialect seems to have been Danish rather than Norwegian. That has Norwegian scholars up in arms, and Danish scholars feeling a bit smug, even though the study is very preliminary.

Not trying to cause an argument, just pointing out an interesting dimension to the debate ;)

I wouldn't say that Geni supports one particular version, more that Geni features the evidence for one version more forcefully than the evidence for any other version..... Baldwin's account is pretty clear, and fits the sources I have personally read, but I fail to see a scientific consensus on the issue.

The fact that I'm Norwegian makes my judgment somewhat suspect, however - my closest Geni "relationship" to Rollo this week is through his brother, not through his descendants.

Harald, when there is conflicting evidence in the primary sources and scholars cannot agree on how to resolve it, I think the the best way to handle it is to cut the line and put a discussion of the alternatives in the Overview.

There are hundreds of places on Geni where I think we need to do this. I'm not singling out Rollo. More like grabbing a chance to make this point ;)

Ulf,

"Kong Erik I Ejegod av Danmark is your 28th great grandfather."

And he is your 22nd great grand father only...

?

Ulf, it really looks like I have a whole line of "quickies" in my tree :)

Many of them will occur att more than one place in the tree, making it hard to find the shortest path. Look at this example, he is the son of Harald Hårfagre and is my 25th great grandfather.

http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+Olav-Haraldss...

But Harald, his father shows up as my 35th great grandfather instead of
my 26th great grandfather, which should be the shortest path.

http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+Harald-I-Halv...

Ulf, what I wanted to express is that Erik Ejegod came up as my 28th great granny while he seems to be your 22nd great granny only.

OK, sometimes Geni may not find the closest line as you point out.

That said, for sure looks like my great grannies - both genders - worked on it faster and better than yours :)