Ancestors of the House of Denmark who became Kings of England:
Step 2nd ggf of 30th ggf, Harthacnut I, King of Denmark
Paternal grandfather of 31st ggm, Gorm the Old, King of Denmark
Paternal grandmother of husband of 31st ggm, Thyra (wife of Gorm)
Father-in-law of 31st GGM Harald Bluetooth, King of Denmark and Norway
Husband of 31st GGM Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark and England
31st GGM Sigrid the Haughty m1: 31st GGF Eric the Victorious, King of Sweden (parents of Olof II Skotkonung, King of Sweden). m2: Sweyn Forkbeard. *King of England (1013-1014)
Husband of 30th g-aunt Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England and Norway m1: Elfgifu of Northampton; parents of Harold Harefoot, King of England (1035-1040). m2: 30th great-aunt Emma of Normandy; daughter of Richard I the Fearless, 1st Duke of Normandy (grandson of Rollo); their son, Harthacnut, King of Denmark and England (1035-1042). Note: Emma m1: 3rd cousin 33x rem, Ethelred the Unready, King of the English; parents of Edward the Confessor, King of the English (1042-1066) *Cnut the Great, King of England (1016-1035)
Stepson of 30th g-aunt Harold Haretooth, King of England (1035-1040) he succeeded his father; he was succeeded by his half-brother
1st cousin 30x rem Harthacnut, King of Denmark and England (1035-1042) childless, he was succeeded by his half-brother Edward the Confessor (restoring the throne to the House of Wessex 1042-1066) |
| Danish Kingdom, ca 947-959 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark Denmark. The united kingdom of Denmark emerged in the 10th century as a proficient seafaring nation in the struggle for control of the Baltic Sea. Later years. Denmark, Sweden and Norway were ruled together under the Kalmar Union established in 1397 and ending with Swedish succession in 1523. Denmark and Norway remained under the same monarch until outside forces dissolved the union in 1814…
Etymology. The first recorded use of the word Danmark within Denmark itself is found on the two Jelling stones (illustration, right, raised by Harald Bluetooth), which are runestones believed to have been erected by Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth. The large stone of the two is popularly cited as Denmark’s baptismal certificate, though both use the word “Denmark”, in the form of accusative “tanmaurk” on the large stone, and genitive “tanmaurk” on the small stone. The inhabitants of Denmark are there called “tani”, or “Danes”, in the accusative.
Prehistory. The earliest archaeological findings in Denmark date back to 130,000-110,000 BC… The tribal Danes came from the east Danish Islands (Zealand) and Scania and spoke an early form of North Germanic. Historians believe that before their arrival, most of Jutland and the nearest island were settled by tribal Jutes. The Jutes migrated to Great Britain eventually… granted the south-eastern territories of Kent, the Isle of Wight and other areas… They were later absorbed or ethnically cleansed by the invading Angles and Saxons, who formed the Anglo-Saxons. The remaining Jutish population in Jutland assimilated in with the settling Danes… The Danevirke defence structures were built in phases from the 3rd Century forward and the sheer size of the construction efforts in 737 AD are attributed to the emergence of a Danish king. A new runic alphabet was first used around the time and Ribe, the oldest town of Denmark, was founded about 700 AD.
Viking and Middle Ages. From the 8th to the 10th Century the wider Scandinavian region was the source of the Vikings. They colonized, raided, and traded in all parts of Europe. The Danish Vikings were most active in the eastern and southern British Isles and Western Europe. They conquered and settled parts of England (known as the Danelaw) under King Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013, and France where the Danes and Norwegians founded Normandy with Rollo as head of state. More Anglo-Saxon pence of this period have been found in Denmark than in England. Denmark was largely consolidated by the late 8th Century and its rulers are consistently referred to in Frankish sources as kings. The extant Danish monarchy traces its roots back to Gorm the Old, who established his reign in the early 10th Century. The Danes were Christianized around 965 by Harald Bluetooth. It is believed that Denmark became Christian for political reasons so as not to get invaded by the rising Christian power in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, which was an important trading area for the Danes. In that case, Harald built six fortresses around Denmark called Trelleborg and built a further Danevirke. In the early 11th Century, Canute the Great won and united Denmark, England, and Norway for almost 30 years with a Scandinavian army.
https://en.wikipedia. Jelling stones, are massive carved runestones from the 10th century, found at the town of Jelling in Denmark. The older of the two Jelling stones was raised by King Gorm the Old in memory of his wife Thyra. The larger of the two stones was raised by King Gorm’s son, Harald Bluetooth in memory of his parents, celebrating his conquest of Denmark and Norway, and his conversion of the Danes to Christianity. The runic inscriptions on these stones are considered the best known in Denmark… They are strongly identified with the creation of Denmark as a nation state and both stones feature one of the earliest records of the name “Danmark”...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96land Oland, Swedish Island. *Iron Age burial ground at Gettlinge -through the Viking Age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_ship Stone Ship or Stone setting was an early burial custom in Scandinavia, Northern Germany and the Baltic states. The grave or cremation burial was surrounded by slabs or stones in the shape of a ship. The ships vary in size and were erected from c. 1000 BC to 1000 AD. Illustration, left, Stone ships at Anund's barrow in Sweden. Summary of House of Denmark as Kings of England *covered in the Blog Post: House of Wessex usurped by House of Denmark. -House of Wessex, Denmark, Godwin - http://gray-adamsfamily. *covers the end of the House of Wessex and introduces the House of Denmark. Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, 1st sacked Norwich ca. 1004. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing Ethelred the Unready into exile in Normandy. After his death in 1014 the leading English noblemen recalled Ethelred to the throne. Cnut returned with an army in 1015 and over the next few months conquered most of England. He defeated Edmund Ironside at the Battle of Ashingdon in 1016. When Edmund died in 1016 Cnut became the king of all England, together with Denmark, Norway and part of Sweden. Cnut died in 1035 and was succeeded by his son Harold Harefoot he reigned until 1042. After his death, the inheritance of England was briefly returned to its Anglo-Saxon lineage with Edward the Confessor…
After the death of Cnut the Great’s heirs within the decade of his own death and the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the legacy of the House of Knýtlinga (English: “House of Cnut’s Descendants”) was largely lost to history.
*Marriage Alliances. The political strategy of marrying the widow of a King. Ca 996, Sweyn Forkbeard “put away” his 1st wife (mother of Cnut) in order to marry Sigrid the Haughty, the Swedish queen mother -widow of Eric the Victorious, King of Sweden. The marriage formed a strong alliance between the successor to the throne of Sweden, Olof Skötkonung, now Sweyn’s stepson; and, half-brother of Cnut the Great. Note: After the death of his father in 1014, Cnut and his brother Harald went amongst the Wends to fetch their mother back to the Danish court.
Ca 1013, after he conquered England, Sweyn arranged the marriage of his son Cnut (age 18) to Elfgifu of Northampton (age 23) to seal the loyalty of the English people. After Ethelred the Unready, King of England, died in 1016, Cnut became King of England. Cnut (age 22) “put aside” his 1st wife and married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy (age 32) in 1017. Emma, daughter of Richard I the Fearless, Duke of Normandy; her son with Ethelred, Edward the Confessor was an heir to the English throne. When Cnut died in 1035 he was succeeded by his eldest son, Harold Harefoot (by his 1st wife Elfgifu); when he died in 1040, he was succeeded by half-brother Harthacnut (son of Cnut and Emma). Note: Harold was originally buried in Westminster, but Harthacnut had his half-brother’s body dragged up and thrown into a sewer, then thrown into the river Thames, later picked up by a fisherman, taken to the Danes and honorably buried at London. Harthacnut died in 1042, he was succeeded by his half-brother, Edward the Confessor (son of Emma and Ethelred) -thus restoring the throne to the House of Wessex…
*House of Denmark -legendary beginnings. Sweyn Forkbeard was the son and heir to King Harald Bluetooth from a line of Scandinavian rulers central to the unification of Denmark. Harthacnut was the semi-legendary founder of the Danish royal house at the beginning of the 10th century, and his son, Gorm the Old, was the first in the official line. Harald was the Danish king at the time of the Christianization of Denmark, the first Scandinavian king to accept Christianity…
https://en.wikipedia. Harthacnut I of Denmark, was a legendary King of Denmark. Adam of Bremen (see, reference, here) claims that Harthacnut was the son of an otherwise unknown king Sweyn, while the saga Ragnarssona pattr makes him son of the semi-mythic viking Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, himself one of the sons of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok. According to Adam, in the 809s, king Helghe was deposed and Denmark was conquered by Swedes led by Olof the Brash. Along with two of his sons, Gyrd and Gnupa, Harthacnut took the realm “by force of arms,” and they ruled it together, thus founding the House of Olaf in Denmark; they were followed by Sigtrygg, son of Gnupa by a Danish noblewoman named Asfrid (shown on two runestones near Schleswig, erected by his mother after his death). Sigtrygg was deposed by Harthacnut and ruled unopposed for approximately thirty years (varying accounts are given)... The only primary source about Harthacnut of Denmark are two clauses from Adam of Bremen -he names king Sweyn Estridsson as his source -Adam’s history contains other statements that are rejected or deemed unlikely by historians.
Ragnarssona pattr relates the acts of the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok, and proceeds to link them genealogically to the later rulers of Scandinavian kingdoms. It makes Harthacnut son of Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye. Scholarly opinion is divided as to the degree to which the material found in such heroic sources is to be taken as authentic history and genealogy.
Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, Hardakanute appears as Knut; described as a son of Erik, a descendant of Ragnar Lodbrok, by Gudorm, the granddaughter of Harald Klak.
https://en.wikipedia. Gorm the Old, b. bef 900, King of Denmark ca. 936-ca. 958; was the first historically recognized ruler of Denmark. He ruled from Jelling (a village in Denmark). Gorm is the reported son of semi-legendary Danish king Harthacnut, who Adam of Bremen says came from Nortmannia to Denmark and seized power in the early 10th century. He deposed the young king Sigtrygg Gnupasson, reigning over Western Denmark. When he died Gorm ascended the throne. Parentage of his wife Thyra is unverified. Gorm raised on of the great burial mounds at Jelling as well as the oldest of the Jelling Stones for her, calling her tanmarkar but (“Denmark’s Salvation” or Denmark’s Adornment”). Gorm died in the winter of 958/9 and dendrochronology shows that his burial chamber was made from wood of timbers felled in 958. He was the father of three sons, Toke, Knut and Harald, later King Harald Bluetooth. The three sons were Vikings in the truest sense, departing Denmark each summer to raid and pillage. Harald came back to the royal enclosure at Jelling with the news that his son Canute had been killed in an attempt to capture Dublin, Ireland. Canute was shot with a coward’s arrow while watching some games at night. No one would tell the king in view of the oath the king had made. Queen Thyra ordered the royal hall hung with black cloth and that no one was to say a single word. When Gorm entered the hall, he was astonished and asked what the mourning colors meant. Queen Thyra spoke up: “Lord King, you had two falcons, one white and the other gray. The white one flew far afield and was set upon by other birds which tore off its beautiful feathers and is now useless to you. Meanwhile the gray falcon continues to catch fowl for the kings table.”... According to the story Gorm was so grieved by Canute’s death that he died the following day. This account would contradict information on the Jelling Stones which point to Queen Thyra dying before Gorm. Some archaeologists and historians have suggested that Gorm was buried first in Queen Thyra’s grave mound at Jelly, and later moved by his son, Harald Bluetooth, into the original wooden church in Jelling. According to this theory it is believed, that the skeleton found at the site of the first Christian church of Jelling is in fact Gorm the Old, though this theory is still much debated. During the reign of Gorm, most Danes still worshipped the Norse gods, but during the reign of his son, Harald Bluetooth, Denmark officially converted to Christianity. Harald, accordingly, left the hill where Gorm had originally been interred as a memorial.
Legacy. Gorm was “old” in the sense that he has always been considered the traditional ancestral “head” of the Danish monarchy. The custom at the time was to give nicknames to individuals, long before the use of surnames. Nicknames fell into several categories: names based on an event, names based on a physical characteristic, names based on a pun, and names listing a characteristic that was the opposite of the character of the person given that name, in essence, a joke nickname. For example, Gorm the Languid was not at all languid; he was watchful. Gorm’s name appears on the Jelling Stones and that was the definitive proof historians of the past needed. (Illustration, left) Thyra's Runic Stone.
https://en.wikipedia. Harald Bluetooth b. ca. 935, was king of Denmark and Norway. He was the son of King Gorm the Old and of Thyra Dannebod. He died in 985/6. King of Denmark 958-986. King of Norway 970-986 -some sources say his son Sweyn Forkbeard forcibly deposed him.
Harald had the Jelling stones erected to honour his parents; the biography of Harald Bluetooth is summed up by this runic inscription: “King Harald bade these memorials to be made after Gorm, his father, and Thyra, his mother. The Harald who won the whole of Denmark and Norway and turned the Danes to Christianity.” One writer, Widukind of Corvey (see, reference, here), claims that Harald was converted by a “cleric Poppa” who, when asked by Harald to prove his faith in Christ, carried a “great weight” of iron heated by a fire without being burned. Adam of Bremen, writing 100 years after King Harald’s death (see, reference, here), describes Harald being forcibly converted by Otto I, after a defeat in battle -which appears to have been inspired by an attempt to manufacture a historical reason for the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen to claim jurisdiction over Denmark (and thus the rest of Scandinavia) -followed by the unambiguous claim that “At that time Denmark on this side of the sea, which is called Jutland by the inhabitants, was divided into three dioceses and subjected to the bishopric of Hamburg.”
Harald’s father, Gorm the Old, died in 958, and had been buried in a mound with many goods, after the pagan practice. The mound itself was from c. 500 BCE, but Harald had it built higher over his father’s grave, and added a second mound to the south. Mound-building was a newly revised custom in the 10th century, perceivably as an “appeal to old traditions in the face of Christian customs spreading from Denmark’s southern neighbors, the Germans. After his conversion, around the 960s, Harald had his father’s body reburied in the church next to the now empty mound, and erected one of the Jelling stones described above. He undoubtedly professed Christianity at that time and contributed to its growth, but with limited success in Denmark and Norway.
Reign. Harald oversaw the reconstruction of the Jelling runic stones. He fortified the fortress of Aros (nowadays Aarhus, capital of Jutland)... ring forts were built in five strategic locations; “perfectly circular with gates opening to the four corners of the earth, and a courtyard divided into four areas which held large houses set in a square pattern.” (he came to the help of Richard the Fearless of Normandy in 945 and 963).
The Norse sagas present Harald in a rather negative light. He was forced twice to submit to the renegade Swedish prince Styrbjorn the Strong of the Jomsvikings -first by giving Styrbjorn a fleet and his daughter Thyra, the second time by giving himself as a hostage, along with yet another fleet. When Styrbjorn brought this fleet to Uppsala to claim the throne of Sweden, Harald broke his oath and fled with his Danes… As a consequence of Harald’s army having lost to the Germans at the Danevirke in 974, he no longer had control of Norway, and Germans settled back into the border area between Scandinavia and Germany… Harald was killed fighting off a rebellion led by his son Sweyn Forkbeard -the date of his death is uncertain. (some sagas say that Sweyn was an illegitimate son).House of Estridsen - Descendants of Sweyn Forkbeard: *https://en.wikipedia. *Sweyn’s descendants through his daughter Estrid continue to reign in Denmark to this day. One of his descendants, Margaret of Denmark, married James III of Scotland in 1469, introducing Sweyn’s bloodline into the Scottish royal house. After James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne in 1603, Sweyn’s descendants became monarchs of England again.
https://en.wikipedia. House of Estridsen. The dynasty that provided the Kings of Denmark from 1047 to 1412. Named after its ancestor Estrid Swensdatter. Estrid m (1015-16): https://en.wikipedia. Ulf a Danish earl (jarl) and regent of Denmark. Father of King Sweyn II of Denmark and thus progenitor of the House of Estidsen which would rule Denmark from 1047 to 1375… he was the brother-in-law of Cnut the Great, who had him killed on Christmas day 1026 -the night before, they had argued while playing chess -Ulf had fought with the Swedes against Cnut in a 1025 battle…
https://en.wikipedia. Estrid Swensdatter ca 990/997-1057/1073. Her brother Cnut arranged her marriage to Ulf, Jarl of Orkney. In 1026, Ulf was killed by the order of Cnut. In 1047, her son became king in Denmark due to his mother’s descent, and is hence known as Sven Estridssen (son of Estrid). She was granted the honorary title of Queen, despite the fact that she was not a monarch nor the spouse of one. The date of her death is unknown, but it can be no earlier than 1057, or later than 1073, as Bishop of Roskilde (in office 1057-73) officiated at her funeral.
https://en.wikipedia. Sweyn II of Denmark, son of Estridsen and Ulf Jarl ca. 1019 d. 4/28/1076 King of Denmark 1047-1076. He married three times and fathered 20 children or more out of wedlock, including five future kings: Harald III Hen, Canute IV the Saint, Oluf I Hunger, Eric I Evergood, and Niels I.
*other, Sources: *http://www.friesian. Legendary Kings of Scandinavia. Note from the researcher and author of this website, “These sources are not consistent; choices and compromises have been made…” (Jody Gray): There really is no such thing as a verifiable “Pedigree” bloodline birth chart for people of the Middle Ages…
*Royal Families of Medieval Scandinavia, Flanders, and Kiev by Rupert Alen and Anna Marie Dahlquist [Kings River Publications, Kingsburg, California, 1997]. (doesn’t begin very early in the chronology, thus avoids issues with the legendary kings)
*The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens by Mike Ashley [Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York, 1998, 1999]. (gives a bare genealogy (table for the Kings of Dublin) that goes from Halfdan to Helgi… skps over information such as that Yrsa was both the daughter and the wife of Halgi, conceiving him with the hero Hrolf Kraki, who is not listed in the genealogy at all)
*Kings & Queens of Europe (genealogical chart), compiled by Anne Tauté [University of North Carolina Press, 1989].
*Kingdoms of Europe, by Gene Gurney [Crown Publishers, New York, 1982].
*References: (historians) Widukind of Corvey. Adam of Bremen. Saxo Grammaticus. Snorri Sturluson.
xxx
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