Was Harold II, Kg. of Staelland, Denmark married twice???
Don Matson
To Elgiva of Wessex, daughter of Aethelred I of Wessex?
and to Bertrade, Princess of Norway?
Which one was mother of Gorm "the Old", King of Denmark???
Thanks
Don
The Bibliographer
Don Matson <donm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Was Harold II, King of Staelland in Denmark married twice???
>To Elgiva of Wessex, daughter of Aethelred I of Wessex?
>and to Bertrade, Princess of Norway?
Possibly.
>Which one was mother of Gorm "the Old", King of Denmark???
Elgiva is perhaps more likely than Bertrade, but there is no
certainty. This topic has been discussed here many times before. You
should search the SGM archives, and especially note:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~medieval/gorm.htm
--
Regards, Frank Young
tip...@wam.umd.edu 703-527-7684
Post Office Box 2793, Kensington, Maryland 20891
"Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate... Nunc cognosco ex parte"
Todd A. Farmerie
Gorm the Old was founder of a new dinasty of Danish Kings, with a
different center of power than the group his family supplanted. Adam of
Bremen, who was informed by his descendant Svein Estrithson, is usually
taken to have preserved a (somewhat garbled) account of his origins,
reporting that a Hardegon, son of Svein, came to Denmark, and that
hefought the ruling dinasty founded by Olaf of Sweden, and represented
by Gnupa(Chnuba) and Sitrigg. The latter family is confirmed by
runestones, so at least that part of the story seems to be reliable.
Elsewhere reference is made (in relation to the same period) to a
'Hardacnudth Vurm, a terrible worm, I say' (or something like that), who
with his son Harald completed the conquest of Denmark. This is taken to
refer to Gorm, son of Hardacnut, who is usually equated with Adam's
Hardegon. If one chooses to accept this interpretation of Adam, then
this is Gorm's line, he being son of Hardacnut Sveinsson, an invader.
As his name suggests ("the Old" has been suggested to have been asigned
long after the fact to dinastic founders, rather than being a
contemporary signifier of age), he was a new man not connected (or at
least not known to be connected) to the previous group. Anyhow, his
father is either Hardecnut or if you reject Adam, completely undocumented.
As to the wives, their interpretation depends on who this Harold is
meant to refer to. The kings of Denmark in this period can only
accurately be reconstructed from the contemporary record, because the
later traditions reported by Saxo and others differ enough from the
documented reality that they cannot be trusted even when there is no
contemporary record to compare them to. In this case, Harold is
probably intended to be the king usually called Harald 'Klak', a
competitor in the interfamily struggle for rule in Denmark in the
mid-ninth century. If this is the case, then the marriage to a daughter
of AEthelred probably results from a confused attempt to 'correct'
conflicting material. Gorm's wife, Thyra, while herself commemorated in
a contemporary rune stone (at Jelling - for what it's worth, Denmark
just issued a set of postage stamp depicting two Jelling runestones,
including hers) is of unknown parentage. Two later authors report two
different connections, one calling her daughter of AEthelred, the other
of Klak Harald. It looks like the source you have followed here has
garbled this confusion, making AEthelred the father of Harald's wife,
and then further confused things by making Harald father of Gorm, rather
than of Gorm's wife. As to the reality of the situation, various
speculation has been presented trying to rectify these conflicting
statements, including suggesting that there were two Thyras, one
daughter of AEthelred, and one of Harald, marrying Gorm in succession.
(It is generally a bad idea, when faced with conflicting undocumented
accounts, to try to force both of them to be true, rather than
considering that one or both may be false.) In fact, it is likely that
both are false, the AEthelred connection invented to justify Svein
Haraldson's (Thyra's grandson) invasion of England, and his son Cnut's
eventual reign, while the Harald Klak connection was probably invented
to provide continuity with the earlier kings. As to Bertrude, Princess
of Norway, I have never seen this before, but it seems unlikely a
Norwegian princess would have a Merovingian/Carolingian name at this
early date. I strongly suspect that she too was invented somewhere
along the way.
For a better discussion of the Danish kings, I would suggest pages based
on detailed posts by Stewart Baldwin on the subject:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~medieval/danking.htm
http://www.rootsweb.com/~medieval/gorm.htm
taf
Stewart Baldwin
wrote:
The claim that Gorm "the Old" was son of a king Harald is based on the
writings of the Danish pseudohiostorians like Saxo Grammaticus, and is
without any historical foundation whatsoever. The somewhat imprecise
account of Adam of Bremen (who got his information from king Svend II)
would suggest that Gorm was the son of a certain Hardeknud who was in
turn son of an otherwise unknown Svend, but Adam was writing more than
100 years after the fact. Still, his account of Gorm's immediate
ancestry is the best that we have. Attempts to trace Gorm from such
fictional figures as Sigurd Ring, Dan Mykillati, and Skjold are, of
course, completely worthless.
Stewart Baldwin