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Ragnar Lodbrok, according to legends, was a Viking hero and a Swedish and Danish king. He is known from Old Norse poetry of the Viking Age, Icelandic sagas, and near-contemporary chronicles. According to traditional literature, Ragnar distinguished himself by conducting many raids against the British Isles and the Holy Roman Empire during the 9th century. He also appears in Norse legends, and according to the legendary sagas Tale of Ragnar's Sons and a Saga about Certain Ancient Kings, Ragnar Lodbrok's father has been given as the legendary king of the Swedes, Sigurd Ring.
Hygelac was a king of the Geats according to the poem Beowulf. It is Hygelac's presence in the poem which has allowed scholars to tentatively date the setting of the poem as well as to infer that it contains at least some points of historical fact. Beowulf gives Hygelac's genealogy: according to the poem, he was the son of Hrethel and had two brothers Herebeald and Hæþcyn, as well as an unnamed sister who was married to Ecgtheow and was the mother of the hero Beowulf. Hygelac was married to Hygd, and they had a son Heardred and an unnamed daughter who married Eofor. When Hygelac's brother Hæþcyn was fighting with the Swedes, Hygelac arrived at Hrefnesholt one day too late to save his brother Hæþcyn, but he managed to rescue the surviving Geatish warriors, who were besieged by the Swedish king Ongentheow and his three sons. The Swedes found refuge at a hill fort but were assaulted by the Geats. In the battle, the Swedish king was slain by Eofor. After the death of his brother Herebeald, Hygelac ascended the Geatish throne. After he was killed during a raid on Frisia, Hygelac was succeeded by Heardred, according to Beowulf.
The Geats, sometimes called Goths, were a large North Germanic tribe who inhabited Götaland in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until the late Middle Ages. They are one of the progenitor groups of modern Swedes, along with Swedes and Gutes. The name of the Geats also lives on in the Swedish provinces of Västergötland and Östergötland, the Western and Eastern lands of the Geats, and in many other toponyms.
Ongentheow was the name of a semi-legendary Swedish king of the house of Scylfings, who appears in Old English sources.
The Wulfings, Wylfings or Ylfings was a powerful clan in Beowulf, Widsith and in the Norse sagas. While the poet of Beowulf does not locate the Wulfings geographically, Scandinavian sources define the Ylfings as the ruling clan of the Eastern Geats.
Wealhtheow is a queen of the Danes in the Old English poem, Beowulf, first introduced in line 612.
Beowulf is a legendary Geatish hero in the eponymous epic poem, one of the oldest surviving pieces of English literature.
In Swedish prehistory, the Vendel Period appears between the Migration Period and the Viking Age. The name is taken from the rich boat inhumation cemetery at Vendel parish church, Uppland. This is a period with very little precious metal and few runic inscriptions, crammed between periods with abundant precious metal and inscriptions. Instead, the Vendel Period is extremely rich in animal art on copper-alloy objects. It is also known for guldgubbar, tiny embossed gold foil images, and elaborate helmets with embossed decoration similar to the one found at Sutton Hoo in England.
The Wuffingas, Uffingas or Wiffings were the ruling dynasty of East Anglia, the long-lived Anglo-Saxon kingdom which today includes the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Wuffingas took their name from Wuffa, an early East Anglian king. Nothing is known of the members of the dynasty before Rædwald, who ruled from about 599 to c.624. The Viking invasions of the 9th century and Dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century both led to the destruction of documents relating to the rule of the Wuffingas.
The Swedish-Geatish wars refer to semi-legendary 6th century battles between Swedes and Geats that are described in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Little has survived of such battles in the Norse sagas, and later 11th century-13th century wars between Swedes and Geats, notably involving the Geatish clans House of Stenkil and House of Sverker, are referred to as Swedish civil wars.
The Rus' were a people in early medieval eastern Europe. The scholarly consensus holds that they were originally Norsemen, mainly originating from present-day Sweden, who settled and ruled along the river-routes between the Baltic and the Black Seas from around the 8th to 11th centuries AD. In the 9th century, they formed the state of Kievan Rusʹ, where the ruling Norsemen along with local Finnic tribes gradually assimilated into the East Slavic population, with Old East Slavic becoming the common spoken language. Old Norse remained familiar to the elite until their complete assimilation by the second half of the 11th century, and in rural areas, vestiges of Norse culture persisted as late as the 14th and early 15th centuries, particularly in the north.
North Germanic peoples, commonly called Scandinavians, Nordic peoples and in a medieval context Norsemen, were a Germanic linguistic group originating from the Scandinavian Peninsula. They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North Germanic languages of today.
Germanic heroic legend is the heroic literary tradition of the Germanic-speaking peoples, most of which originates or is set in the Migration Period. Stories from this time period, to which others were added later, were transmitted orally, traveled widely among the Germanic speaking peoples, and were known in many variants. These legends typically reworked historical events or personages in the manner of oral poetry, forming a heroic age. Heroes in these legends often display a heroic ethos emphasizing honor, glory, and loyalty above other concerns. Like Germanic mythology, heroic legend is a genre of Germanic folklore.
Germanic boar helmets are attested in archaeological finds from England and Sweden, dating to Vendel and Anglo-Saxon periods, and Old English and Old Norse written sources. They consist of helmets decorated with either a boar crest or other boar imagery that was believed to offer protection in battle to the wearer. They have also been proposed to be a costume for the ritual transformation into a boar, similar to berserkers, and to be associated with Freyr.
References
- ↑ "Tielt, Belgium". Discover World. Retrieved 2017-12-10.
- ↑ Timothy Reuter (1992). The Annals of Fulda: Ninth-century Histories. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-3458-9.
- ↑ Sam Newton (April 2004). The Origins of Beowulf: And the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia. DS Brewer. ISBN 978-0-85991-472-7.
- ↑ Nerman, Birger (1925). Det svenska rikets uppkomst. Stockholm: Generalstabens litografiska anstalt.
- ↑ Hattie Wilson Shinn (1898). Tribute to Our Ancestors: Biographical & Genealogical. Fort Scott: Monitor Book & Printing Co. ISBN 978-1-333-46386-1.