Note on the Reliability of this Genealogical Lineage
Is it possible that this genealogical link of the Kings of Denmark/Sweden with the Vandals, and so with Roman Imperial families contains a germ of fact? That is the question a genealogist has when he comes across a lineage like this, that purports to trace ten generations from Harald Bluetooth to Hilderich, King of the Vandals into classical antiquity. Genealogies like these abound on the Internet, but are they at all verifiable?
After considerable effort trying to vindicate this genealogical link, here are my conclusions. Responses will be most welcome.
The question cannot be answered easily. On the one hand, ancient historians do indeed mention the Vandal king Hilderich, son of Huneric, and his marriage to Amalfleda. That much is clear. It is not hard to trace the lineage from Godigiselus to Hiderich in ancient historians. But I have found no reference to a daughter of Hilderich and Amalfleda named Hildis, and certainly not to her marriage to a Danish/Swedish king named Valdar Hroarson, nor do I expect to.
First of all, the last named king of Denmark/Sweden generally acknowledged to have been a historic person was Harald Bluetooth, King of Denmark, 940-985. It is fully four hundred fifty years from Harald Bluetooth to the purported marriage of Hildis, the Vandal Princess, and Valdar Hroarson, the Scandinavian king. Where, then, did this genealogical lineage come from, and how reliable might it be?
It comes from Norse Sagas, tales of various age, which purport to recount the history of the Nordic peoples. These derive from ancient bards who sought to preserve their people’s history through the long centuries of the Dark Ages. The sagas were eventually written down, beginning in the 10th century or so, often by monks with a sense of history. But through the long centuries in which this process played out,, the sagas were continuously susceptible to change and alteration, especially at the hands of bards, monks, courtiers and others trying to glorify their king and provide him a more illustrious lineage.
At some point in history, an unknown hand examined the sagas seeking to trace a genealogical lineage. Hopping from one saga to another as guided by the matches he thought he saw, he and others like him laboriously put together the various genealogical lineages which we find on the internet and other places. Some go all the way back to Adam and Eve! Others to Odin! But who were these compilers, and what were their motives? What sagas did they use, and how might students evaluate these sagas? Such questions cannot be answered! So the lineages presented in these genealogies must be considered legendary at best, and, often as pure myth. [1]
In the Modern Library edition of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,[2] ch. xxxix (Vol. II, p 99, n. 1) appears the following: "Peringsciold (the Swedish commentator of Chochloeus, Vit. Theodoric. p. 271, etc., Stockholm, 1699) labors to connect this genealogy with the legends or traditions of his native country. If [the argument presented by Gibbons] is correct, then the difficulties which surround the connection of Visigothic kings descending from Thiudimir to Scandinavia are a sign that the line of descent has been forced and is untrustworthy.” That is Gibbons’ evaluation of genealogies like this one.
So two scholars, writing centuries apart and in different languages, agree in warning us to place no confidence in the reliability of this genealogy as a blood line.
But does that mean the lineage has no value whatever? I do not think so, for it may help us better understand developments between cultures and peoples in the past.
This lineage covers a period known as the “Volkerwanderung,” which is often called “The Dark Ages.” Across these centuries vast migrations of populations were taking place, occasioned in part by the very nature of cultures, many of which had not yet become thoroughly sedentary, but were to one extent or another nomadic. Also, the invasion of eastern Europe by Asian peoples who moved from western China and Manchuria into the steppe lands of Russia during Roman times, forced nations which had previously occupied those lands to move on. Germanic populations especially were on the move, and constituted a perennial threat to the northern borders of the Roman Empire from the early third century on. While it has proved impossible for both ancient historians and modern commentators to unravel the complex relationships between all these peoples, and there is much disagreement between scholars on such issures, it is certain that among these roving peoples were the Goths (Ostrogoths and Visigoths), the Vandals, and the Heruleans (or Eruleans)
The Free Online Encylclopedia (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Ostrogothi) says of the Ostrogoths: "According to their own unproven tradition, the ancestors of the Goths were the Gotar of southern Sweden." [Note--one of the original kingdoms which later coalesced to form Sweden was Gothia, which still exists as two provinces of Sweden, Ostrogothia and Visigothia] "By the 3d cent. A.D., the Goths settled in the region north of the Black Sea. There they split into two groups, the names of which reflect the areas in which they settled; the Ostrogoths" [or East Goths] "settled in Ukraine, while the Visigoths, or West Goths, settled further to the west. By c.375 the Huns conquered the Ostrogothic kingdom ruled by Ermanaric,, which extended from the Dniester River, north and east to the headwaters of the Volga River. The Ostrogoths were subject to the Huns until the death (453) of Attila, when they settled in Pannonia (roughly modern Hungary) as allies of the Byzantine (East Roman) empire. The Ostrogoths, who had long elected their rulers, chose (471) Theodoric the Great as king. A turbulent ally, the Byzantine emperor Zeno, commissioned Theodoric to reconquer Italy from Odoacer. The Ostrogoths entered Italy in 488, defeated and slew (493) Odoacer, and set up the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, with Ravenna as their capital. After Theodoric's death (526) his daughter Amalasuntha was regent for her son Athalric. She placed herself under the protection of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Her murder (535) served as pretext for Justinian to send Belisarius to reconquer Italy. He crushed the Ostrogothic kingdom, but on his recall (541) the Ostrogoths rebelled under the leadership of Totila. In 552 the Byzantine general Narses defeated Totila, who fell in battle. As a result, the Ostrogoths lost their national identity...." From this, it does not seem illogical for a group of the now defunct Ostrogothic peoples to have returned to the homeland in Scandinavia, especially, as we shall see, since they had maintained demonstrable ties with the homeland.
The Vandals [3] are also said to have originated in Sweden, whence they moved across the Baltic to the area of the Vistula river-East and West Prussia, Pomerania, etc. [4] Here they remained briefly before moving into Poland and down the corridor that leads to the Ukraine (Pannonia), near the Sea of Azov. Pressured by the Huns, they also made their way westward, settling briefly along the Danube before driving east into Germany, where in 406 they joined other Germanic tribes in crossing the Rhine into Roman Gaul. After ravaging Gaul for two years or so, they crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, dividing to settle briefly in Galicia and Andalusia (to which they gave its name) before reuniting in Andalusia. The Romans, however, enlisted the Visigoths to drive them from Spain, so they next crossed the Mediterranean and established a kingdom in North Africa. From this they ravaged the entire western Mediterranean by sea, eventually conquering and despoiling Rome itself. In a round-about way, this led to Emperor Justinian’s campaign against them, commanded by the great Roman general Belisarius, who finally defeated them.
Exactly what next became of the Vandals is not fully known. Gibbons opines that many made their way to the Atlantic coast, where their descendants, says he, were still to be found in his own day.
Here we enter into murky waters. About 550 A.D. the Greek historian Procopius, in his Vandalic Wars, spoke of a people he calls the Herulians, The Herulians, like the Vandals and Ostrogoths,, had Nordic roots. They are met for the first time in 267 plundering in Greek waters and living near the Vandals and Ostrogoths along the Black Sea. After the invasion of the Huns, like the Vandals and Goths, they wandered. In 456 and 460 “Herulic Vikings” were plundering all the way down to Aquitania and Galicia. All of this, of course, is very reminiscent of the Vandals, and indeed, Procopius says [5]
There were many Gothic nations in earlier times, just as also at the present, but the greatest
and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths and Gepaedes. In ancient times,
however, they were named Sauromatae and Melanchlaeni (Black-cloaks); and there were
some too who called these nations Getic. All these, while they are distinguished from one
another by their names, as has been said, do not differ in anything else at all. For they all
have white bodies and fair hair, and are tall and handsome to look upon, and they use the
same laws and practice a common religion. For they are all of the Arian faith, and have one
language called Gothic; and, as it seems to me, they all came originally from one tribe ....
The Eruleans were described by the Roman poet Sidonius Apollinaris, writing in Bordeaux, who says that in that area in his day the “Eruleans are walking around with their steel-blue cheeks [i.e., wearing helmets], they who live on the edge of the ocean, near the ice-cold deep.” Like the Goths and Vandals, the Herulians had come from the Baltic [Procopius says they came from the Isle of Thule, i.e., Scandinavia, {6}] but at a much later date, and had become intertwined with the Vandals. Perhaps coming from the same racial stock, the two groups simply merged at some point. Any rate, Procopius makes it clear they were living together in North Africa in 536 A.D. [7]
In a remarkable passage, Procopius tells how the Herulians assassinated their own king, a certain Ochus, desiring “to live without a king thereafter.” [8] Soon, however, they repented and sent back to their homeland, Thule/Sweden, to obtain someone from the royal family there to come and rule them. [9] Having second thoughts, they later asked Justinian to provide for them a king, which he did. But when the party returned from Thule with the king from the north, Justinian’s candidate was put to flight, resulting in renewed war between Rome and the Herulians.
Here we take leave of the Herulians, for we have made the connection which we seek. This people from Thule (Sweden), who had invaded the Roman empire, associated with the Vandals, and then sent back to Sweden for a new king to rule over them. Of course, there is no mention of a Hildis, princess of the Vandals, or of a Valdar Hroarson by Procopius. Still the time period is correct. And it is not inconceivable that the Herulians traveling to Thule to obtain a new king would have taken along a princess to bind by a royal marriage these two branches of the same people, and so cement the relationship between two branches of the one people whom time and distance were separating.
Archaeological excavations of settlements in Sweden from at about this time show signs of a significant Roman presence. Troels Brand notes on a website devoted to the Herulians, [10]
In spite of the reservations above, the arrival of the Heruls as referred by Procopius was quite
contemporary with a significant change marked by the three archaeological chronologies of
Scandinavia defined independently of each other - namely the beginning of Younger [i.e. Later]
German Iron Age in Denmark (from 530 AD), the Vendel Period in Sweden (from 550-570 AD
with a period of transition from 520 AD) and the Merovingian Period in Norway (from 550 AD).
To be sure, however, Brandt does not imply that a connection between the Vandals and the Danes
should be read into the archaeological remains. [11]
Gibbons also speaks of connections between the ancient Ostrogoths and their Swedish homeland, saying in [12]: "With the country from whence the Gothic nation derived their origin he (i.e., Theodoric] maintained a frequent and friendly correspondence: the Italians were clothed in the rich sables [44] of Sweden; and one of its sovereigns, after a voluntary or reluctant abdication, found an hospitable retreat in the palace of Ravenna. [This Swedish sovereign] had reigned over one of the thirteen populous tribes who cultivated a small portion of the great island or penninsula of Scandinavia, to which the vague appellation of Thule has been sometimes applied."
These references should not be taken as proving this lineage. Serious problems with the lineage remain. 1) There remains no indication that Hilderic had a daughter named Hildis who married a Valdar Hroarson; 2) Links between the Ostrogothic royals and their distant Swedish cousins does not explain Hildis marriage to a Danish king; and 3) Valdar descent from the Danish king Hroar cannot be demonstrated today from the sagas.
Still, the records left by ancient historians, as well as the remains left in the earth by past ages, make it easy to project that about this time there were connections between the North African Vandals and/or Herulians and the area in Swden/North Germany from which they had originated. We certainly cannot say that a daughter of the Vandal king Hilderic in this way became the wife of a Danish king; but we can see this lineage as demonstrating links between the two peoples that may very well have existed. And even if links between Vandals and Swedes did not exist, there were certainly links between the Romans and the Danes/Swedes.
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Endnotes
1. Troels Brandt, for example, who has studied these matters extensively says of this particular lineage: “Hroar is not a historical king, but in the legends (i.e. Beowulf) he is regarded to be a Dane - and he is the only king of that name unless you want to mix him up with a Hunnic king. In Beowulf the sons of Hroar were called Hrodmund and Hredric. An Icelandic historian of the 17th century, Arngrimur Jonsson, called Valdar a son of Roar when he referred the Skjoldunge Saga, but that is not a part of the fragment we know today. A part of the mess may be caused by the Swedish Hervarar Saga, where a daughter of Ivar Vidfadme (somewhere called Alfhilde) was married to a Valdar (in the 7th century). Their son should be Harald Hildetand who should have lived centuries after Hroar. Valdar could also be the Lombardian king, Waldarius (daughterson of the Herulian Hrodolphus), but he died young. These are the hints I can give you, but I would not pay any attention to a marriage between a Danish prince and a Vandalic princess - or to the genealogies presented on the web.”
2. Written in the 1700s, this work has long since been superceded by later research. Still, it remains the most accessible history of these times and is heavily relied upon.
3. I base this sketch of the movements of the Vandals, Goths and Herulians largely on Gibbons, chapters IX and X, which quotes heavily from the ancient historians.
4. The people named Wends who still inhabit this area, are believed by some to be a remnant of the Vandals.
5. Vandalic Wars, III, ii. (http://www.gedevasen.dk/procopheruls.html)
6. Ibid, VI, xv.
7. Ibid, III, xiv
8. Ibid, VI, xiv.
9. Ibid, Vi, xv.
10. http://www.gedevasen.dk/heruleng.html#C3
11. His exact words to me in an email on 1/5/07 were, “I do not see any connection between the Vandals and the Heruls - except that a group of Herulian mercenaries headed by the Herulian prince, Phara, were in front, when the Vandals were defeated by Justinian. The Danes were definitely not Heruls (Jordanes/Procopius). Therefore you cannot find much about Vandals and Danish kings at my website.”
12. op. cit., Ch. 39, p 110-111.
