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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-06 > 0833714688
From: Anders Berg < >
Subject: Re: Erik the Victorious' wives
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 13:24:48 +0200
Stewart Baldwin < > wrote:
>Thus, Thietmar's contamporary statements confirm that both Erik and
>Svein were married to a sister of Boleslav, and Adam's statement
>confirms that it was in fact the same sister. So we have a sister of
>Boleslav who md. 1st Erik and had Olaf, and then md. 2nd Svein and had
>Harald and Knut, all confirmed by good contemporary or near
>contemporary evidence, and not contradicted by any eleventh contury
>source.
A couple of comments:
Adam's account that the sister of Boleslaw was the mother of Olaf is
discarded by most historians today. It is chronologically impossible.
Olaf Sko:tkonung must have been at least 15 years old when his father
Erik died in ~995, and Erik married the polish princess no more than
a couple of years prior to his death. We can say this because Boleslaw
Chobry became king in 992, and it was he who gave his sister to
Erik (see Adam's skolium 24).
The obvious conclusion is that Olaf was born in an earlier marriage
between Erik and a woman not known/mentioned in the contemporary or near-
contemporary sources (that is, Thietmar/Adam).
>So, what about Heimskringla? The Thietmar/Adam version clearly has
>priority over this very noncontemporary account. I see three main
>possibilities:
>1. Sigrid never existed.
>2. Sigrid existed, but the sagas are wrong about her parentage.
>3. Sigrid existed, but was married only to Svein, and was not the
>mother of Harald and Knut. This is the version I prefer. The
>Icelandic sources state that Svien was married twice, first to a
>daughter of Burislav, king of the Wends, and next to Sigrid, the widow
>of Erik and mother of Olaf. The sagas are a late source that could
>have easily confused things. I suggest that the saga account is the
>result of two bits of confusion, both of which could easily arise in a
>noncontemporary source.
I think we can all agree that both the sagas and Adam have confused things.
Hovwever, today I think most historians favor the following confusion!
4. Sigrid existed, but was married only to Erik, and was the mother
of Olaf.
Another point:
The sagas knew about Svein's wendish/polish marriage, but says that
he married Burislaw's daughter Gunnhild. They must be refering to
Boleslaw's sister mentioned by Theitmar. The name (or a matching
Slavic name) may however very well be correct. Svein's son Cnut
had a daughter by this name, probably named after her grandmother.
This gives the following:
Erik segersa:ll, + ~995, king of Sweden, married
1. ? Sigrid Storra*da,
2. Gunhild, + after 1014, dau. of Mieszko I of Poland
(married 2. Svein "forkbeard" of Denmark).
References: /all in Swedish :-)
Gottfrid Carlsson: _Sigrid Storra*da och Sigridlev_ (Personhistorisk
Tidskrift 1957, p. 37)
Bjarne Beckman: _Erik Segersa:lls polska a:ktenskap (Personhistorisk
Tidskrift 1975, p. 82)
Hans Gillingstam: _Utomnordiskt och nordiskt i de a:ldsta svenska
dynastiska fo:rbindelserna_ (Personhistorisk Tidskrift 1981, p. 17)
(I've sent private copies to Stewart and Jared, since I'm not sure
my messages are posted correctly to the newsgroup. Please excuse
duplicate messages)
/Anders Berg
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