Kong Sverre - King of Norway from 1177 to 1202, a discussion of the sources trustworthiness and do we know who his parents are?

Im beginning to slowly getting more positive to a cut.
But Im not convinced that he wasn't son of Sigurd Munn.
He was believed in his time to be the kings son of his followers but a false one by his opposers, both could be propaganda, nothing else. There is arguments for both cutting and keeping the line, but I dont think we really know.

Im really thrilled about these:
*http://www.nrk.no/vitenskap-og-teknologi/1.10900296
*http://www.katolsk.no/nyheter/2013/03/pa-sporet-av-hellig-olav

Hoping that investigations could solve something...

None of those links, David, has much to do with King Sverre. Unfortunately the investigations you are linking to would not help in solving the Sverre mystery.

The links shows that it could be possible to map the Y-DNA of Olav den Hellige, Sigurd Jorsalfare, Harald Hardråde, Håkon V and others of the old Norwegian Kings.

*Håkon V Magnusson was Sverres great-great-grandson, so if his Y-DNA matches any of the others why shouldn't that solve this mystery?

Well, we'll have to wait for a possible Y-DNA result then. If it at all is possible to get. Y-DNA degrades a lot faster than MT-DNA does, so there may not be any answer to get.

The Hellig Olav article indicated that recovery of Y-DNA had failed for that particular bone. Doesn't mean that it will remain failed forever, but don't hold your breath.

A few days ago I changed Sverres father to Unas Kambar and made a curator note. His mother is the same as before: Gunhild N

These are what the historians think are the most probable parents of Sverre today. So I'm sticking to what the historians think is the most correct ancestry of Sverre.

Just a matter of grammar (I think): can you make the curator note say "as this is more probably true" rather than "as this is more true"?
Only one of the men is his father (the truth), but we're assigning probabilities to the likelyhood of us being right.
Apart from that - thanks for biting the bullet on this one!

I agree ;) Most probably is more accurate for this..
Im not completely convinced by the "evidences" yet, but in this case I think it was right to make a decision to cut. (As long as different arguments and sources are mentioned in the profile)

Thanks, Remi. I think that's a very good solution. It's speculation, but it reflects a reasoned conclusion from the sources, as well as basic common sense.

How is the note now. Had to change the wording to get "probably" in.

The about me needs cleanup and should include a link to the Sigurd profile.

Hello you all!
Thank's for the discussion and all the info's you have posted. After having read all your posts I still have doubts about Sverre and Unás being his father.

About Sigurd Munn and his "manhood" - I am pondering on this thought : "... how old is a boy when he can produce a child or prove his manhood".. - To my knowledge - he could have been from the age 12 or younger when he had his first encounters with women..

The reason for Sverre was sent to the Faroe Islands could be because his mother wanted to hide him from probable assassins.

And why did my ancestor Cecilia Sigurdsdotter greet Sverre as her brother http://nbl.snl.no/Cecilia_Sigurdsdatter/utdypning

Enough for now - but I'm going to read your comments over again :)

I'm going

Anna Kristin, in paragraph 4 of that snl article it is written (translated to English): "When Sverre Sigurdsson came to Värmland in the new year 1177, says Sverre's saga that Cecilia recognized him as his brother."

You have to remember who said these words to the scribe: That was Sverre himself.

You have to remember when he said the: After he became king.

You have to try to understand why he said it this way: To add to the foundation of his claim to be of royal ancestry.

Assassins from who, when publicly he was known to be Unas son, a combmaker. Sigurd didn't come into the Picture before Sverre was considered an adult.

So it all fits nicely into the picture Sverre is trying to draw of himself.

@Remi Petersen - What proof do you have other than speculations over your statements - we can all claim that what other say is a lie.

It's widely known that servant girls or women in general got pregnant by someone who didn't want to marry the same girl and the women where married to someone who wanted to marry the same female.

In Gunnhild's case - how are you going to prove that Sverre was Unás son or not - or otherwise?

Until proven otherwise with concrete evidence - I shall be honoring the older version of Sverre's origin. I am in Folklore and we Folklorists tend to see Historians as storytellers upon "receipt"...

That question can also be turned around, so the question to you is how are you going to prove that Sigurd is Sverre's father? You're statement about "we can all claim that what other say is a lie" is also valid when it comes to Sverres statements in his saga.

I think you should read this book: http://bibsys-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/a...

A brief summary (in Norwegian): http://content.bibsys.no/content/?type=descr_publ_brief&isbn=82...

Until someone invents a timemachine, we will never have concrete evidence of who is Sverres father, or much of anything else written in all the sagas combined, so maybe we then should just throw all that saga infomation overboard and use only primary sources for our information, then all of us will never get much further back than the 15th Century in our genealogy.

When you have read this book, please tell me what you think of what is written over the 289 pages.

@Remi Pedersen - You haven't convinced me and your arguments are purely speculative. The links you refer to do not mention the topic on the question "Who is the father of Sverre". - So my conclusion is that that precise topic "Who is the father of Sverre" isn't the main argument throughout the 289 pages of the book you are referring to.

In the hope that your understanding on the social climate and medieval traditions may increase, here is a link to recently published book based on a research that has uncovered that female slaves in the Spanish city of Valencia were using a way to escape their enslavement – they simply got pregnant with their master’s child (and has been a widespread solution for women around the world through out the ages).

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Slavery-Overcoming-Religious-Legacies/...

Well I think that Sverre should have both fathers connected or only his (proven) mother.... Im not convinced he was son of this Unas...
And I dont think we will ever know for sure without someone able to prove it through DNA.

@David Widerberg I absolutely agree with you. .

I'm still going with what the majority of Norwegian medieval hisorians are agreeing upon, and until they change their minds about Sverres ancestry I think it should stay with Unas as his father since that is what they think is true. Link to Sigurds profile is in Sverres About me section.

Private User you cannot reach any conclusion about what's written in the book before you have read it. Who is Sverres father is in fact the main thread throughout the whole book. You can comment it further after you have Infact read it.

You can think that my arguments are purely speculative, but I'm using information from professors in medieval history, while you are using folklore, ie. cultural tradition that uses stories told from person to person a long time ago. Sverres saga is infact not folkore at all, since Sverre himself told word for word what the Abbot Karl Jonsson should write and Sverre most certainly checked it for "correctness" afterwood.

Using what female slaves in Valencia were doing to escape their enslavement and saying that Nordic free women idid the same, is speculative at best. It would be far better for you to read the most recent books on the topic, King Sverre.

@Remi Pedersen - as you say - you solely trust the written word - so you can't doupt what Sverre told Abbot Karl Jonsson to write, can you?

@Remi Pedersen - My advice to you is to study medieval studies better than you seem to have done - Your comment on women's social status in medieval times ensures me that you haven't a clue what you are talking about - Enslavement on Nordic women is a FACT and don't you dare dispute that or speak down to the women who where enslaved because of their status in Scandinavian society.

And for sure - I'm not going to change my records that are much older and reliable than your's.

What you do with your private records is up to you.

Yes, I trust the written word when I trust the author and knows what he stands for. What Sverre told Abbot Karl Jonsson is the history of the winner and is pure political propaganda.

My advice to you is still to read the most recent books about Sverre, which in my view you haven't, since what you rely on is both unproven and untrustworthy. And my knowledge about medieval times in Norway you don't have a single clue about.

I'm not speaking down any women in medieval Norway, but to say the brother of Bishop Roe, Unas, had an enslaved woman as wife is farfetched, and if the research is correct she might come from a rich family in the western part of Norway. If that is the case, she was very much a free woman.

@Remi Pedersen - Unas made brushes didn't he? And did someone become rich from making domestic utenslis in the middle ages? - Harldly - even though someone had a brother that was a Bishop. Who by the way was probably donated to the church in his childhood and therefore couldn't have had very much contact with his family after entering the Monastry he belong to.

Did Gunhild (Gudmundsdatter ??) come from a "Rich family"? - NO she didn't according to my records. She was probably a plain commoner or at best of unknown identity. Her true ancestry isn't even known and so stated in my records. And according to my recors, she was not the mother of Cicilia Sigurdsdatter as stated here on Geni - and my records state that the mother of Cicilia is unknown.

And yes - women in medieval ages where enslaved, rich or poor.
And yes I shall rely on my records until scientifically proven otherwise such as DNA test results are able to give.

Private User I am not going to argue with you anymore since I see no point in it. Neither you nor I will ever get the answer of who was Sverres father scientifically proven, so we both have to rely on what we read and believe in. You can believe in whatever you want, as I will.

I agree with you about Cecilia, Gunhild is not her mother, and that link is wrong on Geni.

One thing you can try to analyze in your records though is: If Gunhild was a plain poor commoner and on top of that an enslaved woman, how could she do and afford the trip to Rome to visit the Pope. (By the way the Pope wasn't in Rome at the time Gunhild should have visited him, the Pope was in exile between 1167-1178.)

There is doubt about Sverre's father. This happens with many people, not just Sverre. Different people can reach different conclusions reasonably. Even scholars can disagree.

It is better if we adopt the most conservative interpretation on Geni. It is reasonable to believe that Sverre lied about his father, and most scholars agree that he did. That should be enough, unless there is new evidence.

That doesn't mean everyone has to agree. All it means is that Geni reflects the "majority opinion" of scholars. Some people will choose to show Sigurd Munn as Sverre's father in their own databases, but in our shared, Geni database users have the right to expect that we are following academic opinion.

@Justin Svanström. I agree that there is reasonable doubt about who was Kong Sverres father - and I also know that there where lots of other young men who claimed that they where also sons of Sigurd Munn.

But because I don't know the real truth and the old document's that I have seen state that Sverre was the son of Sigurd Munn - It is in my opinion that we today haven't the authority to change how the old records are written - we should keep the text as it is written and make a note of what we also know and is probably more likely to be the correct version - until proven otherwise.

And also - the manuscripts are written many times over and we have no means to verify that the precise record is telling the original story. That's why we scholars try to use the oldest texts available in hope that the oldest version is the correct one - until proven otherwise of course.

I agree -- up to a point. However, as scholars we have to bring all sources into the debate. Not just the ones we like best.

It is one thing when there is a single source, take it or leave it. If someone wants to debate the genealogy of Noah, for example, you look at Bible texts and either believe them or not.

But, with Sverre, we are blessed with a variety of sources. They all come down to this -- he claimed he was Sigurd's son, and his enemies claimed he wasn't. He won the throne through force of arms, not by an impartial adjudication of his claim. His claim became "fact" to his allies, but he never proved it.

In a modern court of law, or even a court of genealogy, a thing does not become a fact just because someone claims it. I cannot, for example, declare that I am the son of Olav V and expect everyone to believe me.

In the same way, Sverre made a claim. He never proved it, except with a dream and the testimony of his mother. The "old documents" that you and I have both seen are nothing more than the story he paid someone to write. Scant evidence, I think. Today, he would be laughed out of court.

From a scholarly standpoint, the more conservative approach is to do exactly what Remi has done -- show Sverre's birth father as Unås but with a note that he claimed Sigurd Munn as his father.

@Justin Swanström I also agree up to a point. Then there are so many factors that has to be taken into the discussion. And maybe someday a scientific research will reveal the "real" truth.

Please add an English language display name (only display name) to this profile.

Suggestion is:
Sverre, King of Norway

Citing:

- http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=morris&book=scandi... "SVERRE, THE COOK'S SON, AND THE BIRCHLEGS"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverre_of_Norway (their display name equivalent is currently "Sverre of Norway")
- http://www.britannica.com/biography/Sverrir-Sigurdsson Encyclopedia Brittanica
- http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/NORWAY.htm "NORWAY, KINGS at the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy" SVERRE King of Norway

I agree that the English form of Sverre's name is undoubtedly now Sverre, but it's just a little funny to see Britannica doing what they always do -- smugging the Norwegians by using a more authentic form of his name than they commonly do. Academic humor, I suppose ;)

Historians writing in English have been erratic about conventions for anglicizing unfamiliar foreign names. I've been collecting some examples for Sverre. For example, Sverus (1854), Sverri (1899), Sverrir (1920), and Sverre (1922). The modern fashion, of course, is to get as close to the familiar form in the relevant modern language as possible.

I thought it would be interesting to know what the English form of Sverre's name was in his own lifetime. There had to be an English form. Norway had strong commercial ties with both England and Scotland during Sverre's lifetime. Also, Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson, who opposed Sverre, was in exile in England for 3 years (1180-1183). And, King John of England sent mercenaries to help Sverre 1199/1200.

The problem is that this is a period before people were writing in the vernacular. Everything original is going to be in Latin. But even with just Latin, it's often possible to make a good guess about how someone pronounced the name they were Latinizing.

My first thought was to check Diplomatarium Norvegicum. There are many documents from Sverre's time there, but I didn't find much from England or Scotland. Most of what's there is about other people.

I did find a 1200 letter from Pope Innocent III to the English archbishop telling him not to accept any more gifts from Sverre (17:1223). Not really what I was looking for because it was written in Rome, not England or Scotland. It calls him Suerius.

http://www.dokpro.uio.no/perl/middelalder/diplom_vise_tekst.prl?b=1...=

The closest to what I was looking for was an entry in 1282 for a letter from Sverre to King William the Lion of Scotland (19:69). I couldn't find the text, but I wasn't as interested in that because it was written in Norway, not Scotland. But, the index entry seems to have been written in Scotland. It says, "[Carta] Sweri Regis Norwagie" (Letter of Swerus, king of Norway). Sweri is a possessive form, probably for Swerus

http://www.dokpro.uio.no/perl/middelalder/diplom_vise_tekst.prl?b=1...

My other thought was to look at William of Newburgh's Historia Rerum Anglicarum (12th century). He also calls him Swerus. And, for what it's worth, he says that Sverre's seal had the incription "Suerus Rex magnus, ferus ut leo, mitis ut agnis" (Suerus great king, fierce as a lion, gentle as a lamb).

https://books.google.com/books?id=k7VCAAAAYAAJ&dq=William%20of%...

So, we know that his name in his own language was Sverrir, which he himself Latinized Suerus. His name in Italian was something that could Latinized Suerius. And, his name in English was something that could be Latinized by someone in Scotland and someone else in England as Swerus. This isn't much evidence because there is a bit of variation in the way names are Latinized in different documents, even with the same scrivener, but the fact that two different English-speaking people Latinized his name Swerus is probably significant.

Finally, I asked a friend who knows much more about Scandinavian languages than I do about the English form of Sverre's name during his lifetime. He promised to look it up for me if he gets a chance, but he thinks it would have been analogous to the relationship between the names Sven and Sweyn.

His best guess was that the Middle English form of Sverre's name was probably Swerra or Swera. After I told him what I found in contemporary documents, he was even more confident because the obvious way to Latinize Swerra would be Swerus.

Just a fun digression from Erica's more serious point -- poor Sverre needs to have an English display name.