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The earliest recorded ruler of Flanders and ancestor of its later rulers was Baudouin Bras de Fer (840-879). Later legend provided him with a string of ancestors who were "Foresters of Flanders." The earliest form of this legend was recorded in the Genealogia Comitum Flandriæ Bertiniana, dated to the second decade of the 12th century,
There is no contemporary record of these men bit Baudouin could have been son of a man named Odacer, about whom nothing further is known. Modern research shows most of the stories about the ancestors of Baudouin are mythical, written by monks searching for heroic origins. Such fictitious early generations were a common feature of genealogies compiled from the 12th century forward.
The ancestry of the early counts of Flanders was elaborated in later legend, with the intervening generations between Baudouin and the first Lydéric being titled counts of Harlebecque or Harlebeke (modern Harelbeke) and foresters of Flanders:
Lineage variations are a common feature of medieval genealogy. There are several standard variations of this line.