Late last night I was adding a couple of documents to my mom's record in Family Search as I prepared to head off to her interment service today. I thought I'd see how far back the 'Dean' family name went. About a thousand years. To a family living in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. That's 26 generations back. Curious, I went back a bit farther to see if these forest dwellers came from anywhere interesting.
Clicking a few more family links brings you to Thorir Rognvaldsson Earl Of More; thirty generations ago in my family tree. Reading into his history across a few (somewhat apocryphal) sources, you land in a world of burning halls, sea raids, and kings who fought their own relatives for land. His life connects to some of the biggest names in Viking Age history, including the man who founded Normandy and the woman who became Queen of Norway. After reading, parsing and rereading this source document on Norway Nobility, I think I've unearthed an interesting story on Thorir Rognvaldsson Earl Of More - or as listed in the source, "THORE Ragnvaldsson"
A quick warning before we start. This story comes from sagas written two or three hundred years after the events happened. Names shift between different sagas, dates are best guesses, and even the writers who first collected these stories admitted some of the family connections might be more legend than fact. Read this as a great story with real people at its core; I make no assertions to its factual integrity.
Thore's Father, and how Thore Came to Power
Thore's father was Ragnvald, sometimes called "the Wise" and sometimes "the Powerful." Ragnvald ruled Möre and Romsdal, a stretch of western Norway, and he owed his position to King Harald Fairhair. Around the year 869, Harald won a battle against two local rulers and handed their territory to Ragnvald as a reward.
Ragnvald and Harald stayed close allies for years. When Ragnvald's son Ivar died fighting beside the king in Scotland, Harald gave Ragnvald control of Shetland and Orkney to make up for the loss.
Ragnvald's story ended badly. Two of King Harald's other sons, born to a different mother, ambushed him in his own hall and burned it down with him inside. They then grabbed his lands for themselves. This left his surviving son Thore with a problem: someone had stolen his inheritance, and he needed to take it back.
Thore fought to reclaim Möre from Gudrod, one of the king's sons who had seized it after Ragnvald's death. Thore won, and King Harald backed him as the new jarl.
Not long after, Harald gave Thore something even more valuable than land: his own daughter. Around 890, Thore married Alof, also called "Aarbod," daughter of King Harald and his wife Gyda. A royal marriage like this confirmed Thore's position and tied his family directly to the royal line. Dates aren't quite exact. He may have married before the battle, or as a reward for winning the battle.
More on Thore (or Thorir)'s Family
Thore had two full brothers and three half brothers, and between them they touched nearly every corner of the Viking world.
His brother Ivar died young, fighting in Scotland.
His brother Rollo became a famous Viking; Rollo sailed south, eventually captured Rouen in France, and founded the territory that became Normandy. His descendants eventually conquered England in 1066. An older and possibly more trustworthy source describes Rollo as one of Ragnvald's followers instead of his son, so the father-son connection might be a detail that later saga writers added to make the family tree look tidier. As I mentioned, I make no assertions to its factual integrity.
Thore also had three older half brothers, born to women who were not his father's wife. All three were already grown men while Thore was still a child. One of them, Hallad, briefly ruled Orkney but gave it up and went home, which apparently made him a laughingstock. Another, Hrollaug, settled in Iceland and left behind a long line of descendants there. The third, Einar, became known as "Torf-Einar" and ruled Orkney for years, founding a dynasty that controlled the islands for generations. The sagas describe him as tall, one-eyed, and not particularly handsome.
Thore's Daughter (my 29th generation grandmother)
Thore and Alof had one recorded child: a daughter named Bergljot.
Bergljot married Sigurd, a jarl based at Lade near Trondheim. Sigurd's family, the Lade jarls, would go on to shape Norwegian politics for the next hundred years. Sadly, Sigurd met the same fate as Thore's father decades earlier. His own brother betrayed him, and he was burned to death in his hall in 962.
Bergljot and Sigurd had a son named Haakon, later called "the Mighty," "the Powerful," and by some accounts, "the Bad". Born around 955, Haakon became one of the most powerful men in Norway during his lifetime, even though he never called himself king.
Håkon Sigurdson (my 28th generation grandfather)
King Harald Greycloak of Norway forced Haakon out of the country at one point. Haakon fled to Denmark, found support from the Danish King Harald Bluetooth (yes, that Bluetooth of Nokia and wireless fame), and helped him invade Norway. In return, Haakon got control over most of western and southern Norway. From around 970 onward, he effectively ran the country as its real ruler, using the title of jarl instead of king.
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| Battle between Haakon Jarl and brothers of Harald Greycloak |
Haakon's career included a forced conversion to Christianity, which he abandoned as soon as he got home, and a major naval victory against a group of raiders called the Jomsborg Vikings. His rule grew harsher over time, and eventually his own subjects turned on him. He was murdered by one of his own slaves during an uprising, and his severed head was delivered to the man who would soon become king, Olav Tryggvason. A much more indepth account is at his Wikipedia entry.
Haakon's children carried the family even further across the map of northern Europe.
His son Erik married a Danish princess, Gyda, daughter of King Svend Forkbeard. Their son Haakon Eriksson eventually became Earl of Northumbria in England, appointed by King Canute, before drowning on his way back to Norway in 1030.
Another son, Sven Haakonsson, became a jarl himself and had daughters who married into Swedish and Danish royalty. One of them, Gunhild, married a king of Sweden and later a king of Denmark.
What started as one jarl's fight to reclaim his father's land in Norway turned, over a few generations, into a family network stretching across Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and England. Thore himself might not have done anything more dramatic than marry well and hold onto his territory, but his descendants ended up at the center of Viking Age politics for the better part of a century.
At least as far as I found.
It's a good story anyway.
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