Thorgils Sprakalägg - Disconnected parents

Unfortunately, there is no plan B on Geni, accept it or go somewhere else.

Justin thinks that I'm wrong about it, but it's a general feeling I have, of course there would be exceptions, curators debating and agreeing on some solution, but often when a bad decision is made, it stays that way. If I for example reinstated the line, that C ( lack word for express my true feelings here, without risking being blocked), would cut it off again, then lock the profile, making it impossible for us to do anything more at all. That's their solution, no discussion, no debate, just a single minded action from someone who thinks he knows what's right or best. Am I wrong?

I have seen this a lot of times, in some cases it seems to be sprung out from some secret agenda, like the same methods used to describe some ancient people who made exquisite creations in gold, explained by the modern "experts" to have been work of barely civilized people troubling with trying to find grass for their cattle, yeah.

Some really do not want us to believe that the people in power inherited that position, they want us to think that anyone could be anything, that the father could have been a simple random fisherman so to say, or just any unknown nobody, so they cut off lines not supported by contemporary documents almost without any hesitation, locks the profiles with N.N. placeholders as a parental breaking pad, nearly don't respect or discredit historians previous 2000, naming their work unscientific or just crap.

There are two specific lines that could have been quite easily restored, Gorm the old and Rurik's if it weren't for this historian revisionist people, and there are plenty of other examples that have been severed in this similar manner by stating; not contemporary sources, equal, fabrication.

That doesn't make much sense, Ulf.

The reason someone would cut and lock this relationship if you added it back is that there no evidence for it.

There is a difference between a theory and a documented fact. It's as simple as that.

If you think a line has been disconnected wrongly, all you have to do is post the primary source that proves it.

I do take that as a joke Justin ; )

You know how detectives work, first they might not have any clue at all, then they investigate, they build hypotheses and theories, after a while they might end up with some suspect, they dig further and tries to find more evidence, finally, if they lucky, they hit the right and only guilty individual. When doing genealogy we fronts a similar task sometimes, we have to research and draw conclusion from our findings. If no one else have done this before us, then it means that we are the first one doing it.
The further back we goes, the harder it can get, until we hit a solid wall and that's the end of that line. Sometimes that wall isn't as solid as people claim and we could see possible solutions, actually recreating lost pieces, of course, not inventing them, but putting them together. Usually if this is done by experts in their field it's accepted, but it will always be footnoted to the one/s who laid it out and the value of their result may vary and there could also be different opinion about it. This is genealogy, it's not always about birth records and 100% known relationships, sometimes it's just about being able to lay out the puzzle right.

Some people are better than others and naturally, some are worse, there is nothing that says that authorities always have done a good work, all humans makes errors regardless of their position in the society. The ability to be able to fully understand text and to spot mistakes are important tools in this line of work, without that capacity we should do something else or just settle for the ones with birth records.

It's not a joke, Ulf.

But you are right that historical analysis moves forward, just like other fields. New sources, new methods, new insights. But it very often works in the opposite direction.

The emerging analysis works to tear down old theories more often than it builds them up. Or suddenly something that was a minority theory no one ever seriously considered becomes the main contender.

Today, we often look at the work of older historians and think OMG, it's hard to imagine there was ever a time when people thought that was good research. It's very much like looking at Ptolemy's idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth. We don't deny he was an excellent scientist for his day, but we have new and better information now.

The idea of what constitutes good history is a dialog across generations of researchers and historians. If you dig very deeply you will often find there are dozens of theories that are as good or better than the one you know and like. They just haven't gotten the same PR. (Meaning they aren't spread across thousands of websites that all copied each other.)

With all of the different theories, you should be waiting for a time when all the experts are saying to each other, "Yes, it had to be like this. Nothing else makes sense." And even then you could be making a bet that in another generation it might have changed again ;)

I once again agree with you Justin, in general I think that we share more common ground than we disagree on. (Did that make any sense in english, try to keep in mind that I never speak your language and sometimes I have to actually guess how to express myself ?).

Perfect sense. There's nothing wrong with your command of English ;)

Getting back to our original topic --

I think this article lays out the problem:

Ulf jarls herkomst, by Peter Lawaetz (April 2011)
http://www.vikingekonger.dk/Vikingekonger%20HTML/Artikler%20B/Ulf%2...

It's part of a larger work on Danish viking kings.

To summarize: there is disagreement about whether Ulf's father (Thorgils) was Anglo-Saxon (Arup 1931) or Swedish (Gallen 1992). Lawaetz thinks Thorgils was Danish.

When talking about Langebek's theory that Thorgil's father was Styrbjörn, Lawaetz says it is pure guesswork and doesn't even fit the chronology.

He adds, "Mange anerkendte historikere har desværre købt dette gæt uden kommentarer, og derfor lever det stadig i bedste velgående i diverse slægtstavler på nettet." (Unfortunately, many renowned historians have bought this guess without comment, so it still thrives in various genealogies online.)

Heh - Peter Lawaetz is an interesting character on his own; he was the source of the theory that Gorm the Old's father's birthplace should be listed as England, which sparked another long set of Geni discussions.

On that background, it's amusing to find him quoted as the source of a statement that "we don't have evidence for this parentage".

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Law%C3%A6tz

Yes, I know. Read his stuff. He's full of theories about everything. And he's in love with the idea the Skancke family is descended from the kings of Man.

But it's not surprising to see him scoff at other theories. This is what historians do. Tear apart the existing evidence, then replace it with their own new theory. The hope is always that they'll be remembered for the new theory, but somehow it always turns out that they're remembered for helping destroy the old ;)

The point I would want to make here is that there are always other theories floating around. Don't jump at the first one you find. Play hard to get. Make it a long, slow courtship.

It's great that the discussion about the profile has returned to the rails.
However, there is a collapse in the tree due to unwanted interventions.
I'm sorry. I'm defending anyone who's upset about it!
There are people who tell me (off-line) something like what Ulf said.

Sandro, when you say "collapse in the tree" do you mean cutting off upper generations?

I think it might be important to understand that the idea of "unwanted interventions" is a bit odd when applied this far back. Thousands of Geni users share these old lines. For example, I have a dozen different lines that go back to Thorgills, and that doesn't even put me on the high end.

What that means is that this far back the tree is very much a shared tree. With so many people there are going to be disagreements in philosophy about which links are good and which links are bad.

And that means there has to be a way to settle those disagreements. The way we do it on Geni is that a line is "good" if there are primary sources to support it. It's "bad" if there are no contemporary or nearly contemporary sources.

This is exactly what the modern "genealogical standard" demands.

As a curator I get many, many messages on this topic from people with many different ideas. The overwhelming majority of those messages are from people who are upset that Geni is showing a line that isn't true. I believe you that you know people who are upset by cuts to lines, but my experience is that there are many more people out there who want Geni to be a reliable site.

Justin, this quote, "When talking about Langebek's theory that Thorgil's father was Styrbjörn, Lawaetz says it is pure guesswork and doesn't even fit the chronology."

That is just as much a wild guessing, and those who accept this statement as valid, shouldn't they also demonstrate how it didn't fit the chronology?

Okay, let me rephrase it again. "Lawætz er uddannet cand.polyt. i elektrofysik", we have in fact an electro engineer, that claims that the parents of Thorgils Sprakalägg couldn't be Styrbjörn "the Strong" Olafsson and Thyra Haraldsdotter, of Denmark,

"Ikke noget med Styrbjörn: Det skal her nævnes, at problemet med Ulfs herkomst allerede blev løst af Langebek på 1700-tallet ved det gæt, at Ulfs farfader Bjørn var identisk med den svenske Styrbjörn Olofsson, som giftede sig med Tyra Haraldsdatter. Han forsøgte o.990 at erobre kongemagten i Sverige, men det lykkedes ikke (se artiklen Styrbjörns oprør). Det er dog rent gætteri, og det passer heller ikke ind i kronologien, hvor der i givet fald ville være en generation for meget. Mange anerkendte historikere har desværre købt dette gæt uden kommentarer, og derfor lever det stadig i bedste velgående i diverse slægtstavler på nettet."
http://www.vikingekonger.dk/Vikingekonger%20HTML/Artikler%20B/Ulf%2...

He claims that it is a guesswork and that it also don't fit the chronology. Why doesn't it fit? That's the question I'm asking you.

Of course they have to demonstrate how it doesn't fit the chronology. And Lawaetz does.

Lawaetz puts Styrbjörn's marriage to Thyra about 990. He puts Ulf's birth about 988. It doesn't work. Ulf cannot be a grandson of people who got married about the same time he was born.

You could play with the dates but there isn't a lot of room here. If Styrbjörn was leader at the battle of Fyrisvellir in the 980s and married Thyra, a daughter of Harald Bluetooth, that limits the possibilities.

And, Ulf seems to have been an adult by 1013 and married Estrid about 1015, and his sister Gytha married Earl Godwin in 1019, so that limits the possibilities on the other end.

We should be clear, though -- Langebek is making a guess. He himself says so. He put his discussion in a footnote that begins "Ænigma hoc" (This is a mystery). He says Danish and English historians have been confused but the wild bear who was Thorgils' father could not be a real bear, so he must have been someone named Björn. He thinks Styrbörn is an obvious candidate because his name means ferocious bear. (Jacobus Langebek, Scriptores Rerum Danicarum Medii Aevi, 1774, pp. 281-82 note m).

Later, Langebek refers back to his earlier note. He says Torgils was son of Ursus (Björn) "ex mea supra proposita conjectura Styrbiörnus esse potuit" -- who could be Styrbiorn according to my earlier conjecture (p. 287).

https://books.google.com/books?id=Bn5lAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA281#v=onepa...

"Ulf seems to have been an adult by 1013", seems is pretty vague, lets say Ulf was at least 15, at that time and was born before ca. 998, lets say that his father Thorgil was born before ca. 984, this would be the smallest possible margin that we have with that previous presented line, without changing pretty much anything, so you say that even if we stretched Thorgils birth just a couple of years back it wouldn't work?

To begin with, Styrbjörn Starke probably didn't married in 990, most believe that he died during the 980's, does anyone have any proof of him actually marrying in 990, or is that just another wild guess?

All you're doing is making the case for how wildly speculative it all is. You're taking something that is already speculative and add more speculation to it. Once you start down the path of a theory like this, you get deeper and deeper into trying to rationalize the evidence. You're adding wild guesses to wild guesses.

Yes, it's possible -- just barely -- to make the chronology work. But it's extremely tight, and there is a cascading effect to it, versus the more modern chronology that gives some room.

Ulf seems to have been an adult by 1013 because he is thought to have been in England with Svein. I'm not sure this isn't an error for Ulf being there in 1015 with Canute (Knytlinga Saga). My guess is that the logic here is recursive -- we are told the men who were there in 1015 were all "men of mature age" (Encomium Emmae Reginae).

My notes show at some point I was playing with a chronology where Styrbörn was born about 955, his son Thorgils about 975, and Ulf about 995. According to Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa Styrbjörn was 20 when he defeated the Jomsvikings in the 980s, so a bit more than that when he married Thyra. But if Styrbörn really married Thyra after he defeated her father (980s, before his death 985/86, then I couldn't have Thorgils himself born until say 982 to 985, and that pushes Ulf's birth to around 1000 at the earliest, which doesn't let him be a "mature man" and (apparently) a married man in 1015.

Maybe some poetic license there, but it is all pushing the chronology very hard to make an already speculative theory work.

One of the problems here is that where we have evidence for men's age at their marriage, it is older than late teens. The firm examples are always older men, established warriors, not youths.

It's possible to speculate that a boy in his late teens might have made a politically advantageous marriage but we have no examples of it, and it seems unlikely that a father would give a virgin daughter to anyone who was not already established in life.

In fact, the point of giving Ulf's ages in Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa seems to be that he was unusually young to be doing what he did. He demanded his birthright when he was 12 but he was denied because of his age. His uncle told him to come back when he was 16, but when he was 16 he was said to be unfit. So, his uncle gave him ships, and at the young age of 20 he conquered the Jomsvikings, then married the daughter of Harald Bluetooth.

The source here is a þáttr (short story), so the ages could be fictitious, just there to make the story better -- but the fact that the story centers around them shows we are supposed to see them as remarkable.

"Yes, it's possible -- just barely -- to make the chronology work." I had this thought all the time in my mind, it's also why I suggested to leave the line with just a note about it as it was, because I also see a greater value in having some line presented on Geni, even if they are a bit speculative. I think its a big difference between obvious fake and fraudulent lines, compared to lines like this one, and I would like that more would see it like I do because otherwise, I'm afraid that not more than a handful of very well back upped lines would be left from the earlier medieval time, whereof the majority of those older profiles would just become isolated islands without any greater interest in.

Dating the battle of Fyrisvellir, in which Styrbjörn died --

Most sources date the battle to 984 or 985 or 986. Many more just say the 980s.

But there is nothing sacred about this date. It comes from the idea that Styrbjörn defeated the Jomsvikings in the early 980s. Add a bit of time to bring Harald to his knees, give up his daughter, and the two of them to invade Sweden. Somewhere around 985 seems reasonable.

That's it.

Lawaert puts the marriage a bit later, based on other chronological considerations. I probably wouldn't go quite that late but I don't think he's unreasonable or that it's a wild guess.

Ulf,

You said, " I suggested to leave the line with just a note about it as it was, because I also see a greater value in having some line presented on Geni"

And that's exactly where we disagree. Very strongly. The line as it was is an 18th century theory. It's not a traditional line for which there is no evidence. It's an actual fake, just an old one.

And you said, "not more than a handful of very well back upped lines would be left from the earlier medieval time".

That should be exactly the point of doing genealogical research. Leave the legends and guesses, focus on provable lines. If you can only get a particular line back to the 10th century, why is it so important to push it further?

Justin, it's not a fake just because someone did make a conclusion, where do you really got that weird idea from? A fake or a fabrication of a line, is to deliberately deceive, it's belong to the group of imitation or counterfeit. How do you explain your view in logic terms?

If you look at the profile for Thyra Haraldsdotter, Queen of Norway you will see how these problems and debates have a cascading effect on real people.

Right now Thyra is born about 972, daughter of Harald Bluetooth and his wife Gyrid. Then in 970 (two years before she was born) she marries Styrbjörn. Thorgils, who is no longer linked as her son, is said to have been born about 970.

These dates represent several conflicting theories.

First, Thyra probably shouldn't be the daughter of Gyrid. There is no source that gives Thyra's mother, but it probably shouldn't be Gyrid. According to the story, when Styrbörn made peace with Harald, he gave his sister Gyrid to Harald as a wife, and received Harald's daughter as his own wife. Whenever that happened, it's not likely that Styrbörn's sister Gyrid immediately produced a full grown daughter for Styrbjörn to marry.

Thyra must actually have been the daughter of one of Harald's earlier wives (or an unknown concubine). There is some doubt here but Harald's wives seem to have been Gunhild, whom he married before 950, and Tove, whom he married in 970. (English Wikipedia makes a total hash of this.)

The idea that Styrbjörn was the father of Thorgils requires that Thyra must have been a daughter of Gunhild, so she was probably born in the 950s, married Styrbjörn about 970, and Thorgils would have been born about 970. This is the chronology used by Langebek, who puts the marriage about 970. One casualty of this dating is that it moves the conquest of the Jomsvikings to the 960s, which seems far too early (assuming the story is true), and it moves Styrbjörn's death from the 980s to the early 970s.

The idea that Styrbjörn was not the father of Thorgils allows a more relaxed chronology. Styrbjörn can conquer the Jomsvikings in the 980s and marry Thyra shortly after. But, if Thyra was anywhere near a young woman at the time of her marriage, she probably wasn't the daughter of someone Harald married before 950. More likely she was daughter of Tove, whom he married in 970. That would put her birth say 972 (a very common guess) and make her probably about 13 or 14 if she married Styrbjörn about 985/86. This is the chronology used by Lawaert, who places the marriage about 990 so that Thyra is about 18.

These wives are a bit speculative because they could have been the same woman. The idea that Harald's wives Gunhild and Tove were two different women whom he married 950 and 970 is dependent in part on chronological considerations that include the dating of his daughter Thyra.

Gunhild is usually said to have been the mother of Sweyn Forkbeard (born say 960), but some sources say he was illegitimate. Gunhild is named as Harald's wife by Adam of Bremen, who says she accepted Christianity. There is no source that names her as mother of Sweyn Forkbeard, but if Sweyn was legitimate then his mother must have been an early wife.

Tove is known from a runestone she erected where she names her father and husband, but there is no historical evidence she had any children with Harald.

Ulf, you said: "A fake or a fabrication of a line, is to deliberately deceive, it's belong to the group of imitation or counterfeit. How do you explain your view in logic terms?"

I using the word fake very deliberately to make the point that it has deceived you.

Langebek didn't set out to deceive anyone. He explicitly used the words "proposita conjectura" (possible conjecture). But if think that has some ancient and hallowed authority against all the modern historians who have rejected his idea, then for you it is in the same category as a fake.

You know that I once did post you my view on this line, from Gorm the old, his father and mother, to his children, explained why all the experts denied this as a reality, etc, but when looking at my explanation, it puts things more in order, chronologically speaking, looking at Harald from my presented perspective gives that he earliest would have become a father around the first quarter of 950's, I also hold the view that there exist absolutely no guarantee that Sweyn Forkbear really was his biological son, because Harald might have been deceived into believing that, anyway, Sweyn ought to have been born in the later part of 950's or very early in the next decade, so far regarding his children, they all share this time span which give us exactly 952-986, under this period Harald became a father and that's exactly just about how sure we can be.

When people add an exact date to his children, it could become very misguiding, so I keep that in mind when looking at this so called chronology disorder toward Langebeks suggestion, it doesn't affect me too much, I would say that nothing in it disproves this possibility.

Considering other known facts about how the elite behaved it sums up pretty fully with his solution. The top elites male children was seen as adult already between the age of 14-16 (some times earlier), boys had their first children before turning 18 in general, because they had to leave an offspring, girls were seen as adults as fast as they had their first period, often giving birth before the age of 16, and this lived on for centuries among royals and nobility, so when later more straitlaced people adds a modern "normal adult marrying" age back onto this time it becomes a serious wrongly disposition, a fabrication that ruins real possible solutions and no, none of you including "modern historians" have yet debunked this "proposita conjectura" at all.

I've seen much more recent cases (but still before modern medicine) of men becoming fathers in their 60s and women becoming mothers in their 40s.
Similarly, having a child in your teens is not even uncommon, but having a child at the age of 10 would be highly unusual. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_birth_mothers for documented cases in modern times (and grieve for the evils of humanity...)

Gorm is one of the few people who is solidly anchored in time, because we know the date of cutting (958) of the logs used to build his grave. (https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorm_den_gamle - not mentioned in the English version). But for many others, the dates drift a *lot* because it's hard to know where the speculation entered the chain of evidence. Care is needed, and we should use the "between" style of dating much more.

But the point is not the biological age of reproduction. It's the cultural norms that determine when a man is old enough to be taken seriously.

Ulf said: " none of you including "modern historians" have yet debunked this "proposita conjectura" at all."

Not debunked, certainly. It's remains possible. But Occam's Razor. If you accept the theory you have to either discard parts of the story or you have to re-date the events. If you reject the theory, you keep the story and the dating.

Harald, no one has advocated a mother that young, the estimated date on her unchanged presented a mother barely between 14-15, giving some error margin she would likely have been a bit older than younger, and the actual precise year of the battle at Fyrisvallarna are only said to have occurred in the 980's, giving us just as an equally vague idea of the battle when Björn got Haralds daughter to some years before that. The earliest date for the battle of Fyrisvallarna is 980, the lates is 985, so with this is mind, the son of Björn, Thorgil, (if this was true), could have been born before the year 981 anyway, indicating that the mother would have been born before ca. 967, instead of ca. 972. It all falls within the margin of credibility, no need for Occam here at all.

It's important to understand that Langebek is using a different dating system. He has Styrbjörn born about 954 and married to Thyra about 970. That leaves plenty of room for a son Thorgills

This is quite a bit off from the modern idea that he was married to Thyra in the 980s, probably about 985. This dating is tied to the death of Harald Bluetooth probably in 986 or perhaps in 985, as well as the chronology that places the defeat of the Jomsvkings in the early 980s.

Lawaetz places the marriage about 990, still easily within the margin of error.

There is nothing sacred about the modern chronology, but it's important to notice attempts to use Langebek have to give up the dating on which he based his theory, or else shift all related events back in time about 15 years.

When we follow the sons and grandsons careers into the very top positions in Denmark, it would be very hard to accept that they didn't had the right bloodline behind them, this made cut actually partly or by my view, totally deny this, I say that Langebek mainly gave us the right track where to look, but as most people, he got the dates wrong, but the main concept of his idea still holds, I would not hesitate to say that to 99% it's the right parents to Thorgils.

But it's still just a theory -- and there are other theories, including the theory that Thorgils' father is someone for whom we do not have surviving sources.

This is a case where you personally do not like and do not accept modern historical and genealogical methods. You are always going to be unhappy with the result if you want a world where genealogists don't worry about facts.