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Ættfræði (family history, genealogy) from Old Norse ætt (extended family, lineage) and fræði (wisdom, knowledge, science), is an integral part of in the saga literature, across the Kings' sagas, sagas of Icelanders and Bishop's sagas. The style of writing in these old Norse manuscripts is unique in its emphasis on recording such details, and much of it is indeed pretty heavy going, with names and associations being described to some extent for most characters throughout the story. Take the first sentence in Egils Saga Skalla-Grímssonar as an example: Hon var systir Hallbjarnar hálftrölls í Hrafnistu, föður Ketils hængs..." (There was a man named Úlfr, son of Bjálfi and Hallbera, daughter of Úlfr the fearless. She was the sister of Hallbjörn half-troll in Hrafnista, who was the father of Ketil hæng...) By old Norse name tradition, people do not change last names upon marriage. Both men and women are named after their father's (or on some occasions their mother's) first name, followed son or dóttir (daughter). Some would also gain an epithet, often based on personal characteristics (more or less favorable at that). As I was born to an Icelandic mother, I am so lucky as to be part of Íslendingabók, a database containing genealogical information about the inhabitants of Iceland, dating over 1200 years back. It is a collaboration between the research company deCODE genetics and the anti-virus software entrepreneur Friðrik Skúlason. As the database states, its goal is to trace all known family connections between Icelanders from the time of the settlement of Iceland and up to today (and beyond). Numerous published and unpublished sources have been used to collect and connect pieces of information, including inhabitant registers, public documents, church records, population censuses and chronicles, books of convictions and people within specific occupations, memorial articles, lists of descendants, ancestral records and earlier publications of genealogy. It is a mind-gobbling piece of work, and one can only imagine the amount of work and dedication that has been put into it. Not only by the creators of the database, but in fact by Icelanders throughout time, who have noted, scribbled and meticulously recorded the existence and family relations of a large amount of the population and their doings. The database is named after the medieval manuscript Íslendingabók, which some of you may remember seeing in a previous post. 
I recently requested my password to the database, and was assisted by my cousin in Iceland who sent it to me. I logged on a few weeks ago, and oh, the fun I have been having! I often times feel like there are so many fields I would like to really dive into if I only had the time, and genealogy is one of them. I will honestly admit that I do not have any competence at all in this field, and the little I know is from a few research articles I have tried to digest, without grasping more than half of the terminology used. But what I do realize is that these sources can impossibly be comprehensively accurate. I even had to submit corrections with regards to a previous domestic relationship in my immediate family that was wrongfully listed as a marriage (which to my surprise was checked and updated the following day, which I guess shows flexibility and active work on deCODE's part but still causes some mistrust in their accuracy). And undoubtedly, the further back you go, the larger the risk of inconsistencies (as well as people reporting wrongful information along the way). Then we have the fact that there are only about 330'000 Icelandic citizens living in Iceland and abroad, and that many of them can trace their ancestry back to the same few families in some way. If every person has four grandparents, that makes eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents and so on. Going back many generations does not only mean that there must be repetitions of ancestors within each family tree for the number to be feasible, but it makes so many people that your ancestors are also shared by the people around you, merely depending on how far back you are able to look. But that being said, back to the fun! I must say there was much excitement when I was able to trace a straight line of lineal descendants back to some of the people I've read about and previosuly written about here as well. I felt my heart skip a beat as I got past a thousand years, and kept going further than I had hoped would be possible. Let me show you a couple of the longest direct lines I've been able to find! The first one is to Álof Sigurðardóttir. Her father Sigurðr, was the son of Ragnar "Loðbrók" Sigurðarson and Áslaug "Kráka" Sigurðardóttir. He was called ormr-í-auga (snake-in-the-eye) due to a mark in his left eye, as foretold by his mother before his birth. Both Ragnar and Áslaugs stories are legendary (see a previous post about their saga), with Ragnar who was claimed to have descended from Oðinn himself, and Áslaug from the Valkyrie Brynhildr and the dragon-slayer Sigurðr Fáfnisbani. Íslendingabók does however not go into these more legendary associations, stopping at Álöf who has a known year of birth in 780 A.D. Click on "expand" to see the whole lineage as listed in Íslendingabók.
The next one goes back to the daughter of Kjarvalr Írakonungr (king of Ireland), with the magnificent name of "Rafarta" or "Rafertach". And I was most surprised to see who was hiding in the midst of this line, namely Snorri Sturlusson, the author of the younger Edda as well as Heimskringla, providing us with much of the knowledge we have about Norse mythology which would otherwise have been lost.
An the search continues... ^^ I recently discovered a lineal descendance to Egill Skallagrímsson (the protagonist of Egils saga, a dubious pleasure perhaps), and several non-lineal lines (such as to Eiríkr rauði and his son Leifr heppni who discovered North-America). Reading the details recorded for many of the individuals is amazing, and sometimes sad. There are many children who died before being named, only being listed as "boy" or "girl" followed by what would have been their last name. I also came across accounts of drownings, and even murders. How will I ever manage to log off this seemingly endless source of information! I would wrap up this blog post here, but I feel there is something that needs to be said when writing about this topic. Like anything else concerning Norse history, the interest in genealogy and knowledge of ancestry is threatened by individuals who wish to drag our cultural heritage through the mud. The mere sound of the words ancestry or forefathers is sufficient to give nauseating associations to narcissistic racists who sit behind their computers in some privileged country, going on about "pure blood", living examples of what can be interpreted as failures in the school system, at the very least when it comes to biology (as well as history). These peoples interest in genealogy will mostly be concentrated on looking at photos of tall and blonde women online, feeling the need to draw lines to Norse cultural history and how everything used to be better "back then" (in a time when genders actually looked more similar, people were shorter and were likely to have grey hair before thirty, that is if they even lived beyond infancy). But in the same way as the rest of the Viking reenactment fights to "take back" Norse symbols and traditions and not let them be associated with nazism, my interest in "ættfræði" is something I will talk and write about while at the same time make it explicit that I do not suffer from the illusion that ancestry makes someone better than anyone else. It is however immensely interesting and I am learning a lot in the process! 
Photography and editing: Valkyrja.com Music: Wardruna - Rotlaust tre fell # Comments |
 
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