Boy he got around

[gwynhefar]

As much of my ancestry seems to end up in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, it is not really that strange that somewhere along the line I can supposedly claim Odin/Woden as my ancestor. What I find intriguing is that I can apparently claim him through 7 of his sons, through 7 different pedigrees.

Through his son Geat/Gauti, he is my 62nd great-grandfather.
Through his son Skjoldr, he is my 59th great-grandfather.
Through his son Baldur/Baeldaeg, he is my 54th great-grandfather.
Through his son Casere he is my 52nd great-grandfather.
Through his son Sigrlami, he is also my 52nd great-grandfather.
Through his son Wecta, he is my 50th great-grandfather.
Through his son Sigi/Sigar, he is my 43rd great-grandfather.


I guess it's not that surprising if you think about it. I mean, if you're a Germanic or Norse warlord who wants to take over a kingdom, what do you do? You kill the current king, marry his daughter (by force if necessary), and immediately claim your blood is every bit as 'divine' as his was. And through the marriages with the daughters the conquerors and conquered ended up related to each other anyway, so if you're related to one, you're related to them all and they all have different routes to the same goal -- descent from a major divinity to lend legitimacy to their kingship.

It's just really rather cool to see *how* they did it, and how the pedigrees end up working out.

Comments

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I'm amazed that you can trace back your ancestry so many generations. Of course, if you look back 50 generations, you have 1.1 quadrillion (1.1 × 10¹⁵) great-to-the-48th-grandparents, so clearly there must be a huge amount of overlap. Each of those sons is undoubtedly your ancestor through several lineages.

I once calculated that I could be 1/3 Irish if I had the following pure Irish ancestors, all unrelated: one grandparent, one great-great-grandparent, one great-to-the-4th grandparent, one great-to-the-6th-grandparent, ....

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

If you can get a reliable line back to one of the European noble families that helps a lot -- all of this comes from my paternal grandmother's side, the (irony of ironies) Murphrey line. Several Murphreys married the daughters of second and third sons of noble British families who had gone over to the New World to make their fortune. And all the sudden I'm knee-deep in well-documented royal pedigrees.

The British gave me the Saxons and the Normans. The Saxons gave me some of the Norse. The Normans gave me the Franks and the Romans, both of which gave me the Goths, which led back to the Norse and the Swedes.

Odin/Woden is claimed to have fathered the royal lines of Norway, Saxony, Sweden, Denmark, and (of course) the Saxon Kings of England. Plus a couple others here and there. So I'm pretty much related to the whole kit and caboodle *g* Makes for interesting reading.

And yes, the lines do start converging as you get further away from the historical and into the mythological pedigrees

Re: AFAIK

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

Well, luckily I do still have some Irish -- and, irony of ironies, it's my grandmother's Murprhey line that married all the British nobles and got me the royal blood in the first place!

It's just that the Irish are harder to track down -- not as many records. Can't trace the Murphrey's past their landing in Virginia in 1650, for example.

[whitecrow0.livejournal.com]

That's so cool. I can see stories in there somewhere.
I'd love to know my lineage, but I haven't the patience for the research.