Godfrid, duke of Frisia - Medlands VS Wiki

Thanks for all the cleanups, and for starting the discussion!

The thing that strikes me as strange in Medlands' description is that this was someone who was powerful enough to try to conquer the throne of Denmark in 855, yet marries in 882, 27 years later.

It seems to stretch credulity less to have two Godfrids than to have one that accomplished both things and yet has no sources for the intervening years.

BTW, Hedeby and Haithabu are (as far as we know) the same place.

I have put the "fictional" marker on the "new" Harald Klak tree so that it's not accidentally merged into the MP tree. If we find that it is better off merged, it's easy to flip the marker back.

good, Remi Trygve Pedersen Is it your area of specialization too? :)

I work soe in the timeperiod 800 to 1066 (Viking age), but mainly on the Norwegian kings and nobles. Main foucus is to check if they historical persons or just mentioned in a saga or two.

Justin Durand do you have anything for us here?

The idea the two men are the same is a conclusion based on a reading of the sources. It's not directly stated anywhere.

Back in the 1990s there was a file making the rounds about the kings of Haithabu. It was one of dozens by the same compliler that had very clear summaries of medieval dynasties. They were widely copied, as you can imagine.

The file for Haithabu purported to connect many of the early Danish kings. if i remember correctly, it also speculated that Kievan Rurik was a member of the Haithabu family.

Then later, say late 1990s or early 2000s, there was a lot of sharp criticism about the idea there was any such family as kings of Haithabu. And even if these kings were all connected, it is wrong to think of a kingdom centered on Haithabu. I imagine you can find that criticism and debate at soc.genealogy.medieval.

The basic idea comes here: The Annals of Saint-Vaast (882) says, "The Emperor Charles [II the Fat] raised a huge army against [the Norse] and besieged them at Elslo [in the Netherlands]. King Godefrid came over to [Charles] and the emperor gave him the kingdom of the Frisians which Rorik the Dane once held. He gave Gisela, the daughter of King Lothar [II by Waldrada] to him in marriage and he made the Northmen depart from his kingdom." The same source (884) calls him a nephew of Hroerekr, mentioning "Sigfried, the Danish Christian, who was loyal to the king [Carloman] and the nephew of Rorik [Godefrid]." In 885 he was suspected of conspiring with the Norse invasion of France, and murdered on the order of Emperor Charles. His wife's brother Hugues, suspected of complicity in the plot, was blinded.

So the margrave Godefrid was nephew of Hroerekr and that Hroerekr [I] is held to have been a brother of Harald klak. Another brother was Anulo, who was father of Hroerekr {II} who succeeded Hroerekr I in Frisia.

Justin, does this reading assume that "Sigfried, the Danish Christian" (884) is the same person as "King Godefrid" (882) who married Gisela?

Is this a reasonable assumption, given that those two names are distinct in other cases?
Trying to make sure we have a full view of all the assumptions that we need to claim that the two Godfrids are the same person.

No. Good lord no.

Sigfried is Sigfried. He is a "Danish Christian" mentioned in the same sentence as an unnamed nephew of Rorik who in this 884 entry is thought to be the same as Godefrid in the 882 entry.

This is why I was careful to say this idea is based on a reading of the sources. I'm an agnostic here. It's an interesting question but I'm not interested in playing some elaborate game of gotcha. You asked if I could add anything. I don't want to do this kind of work for Geni anymore, but I gave you some of what I have. I have a lot more, but it's nothing you can't find for yourself easily enough.

If you're going to puzzle through the different sources my advice would be to bear in mind that the "usual" genealogy assumes the different Danes in Frisia must be relatives of one another. So, in reading the annals you just pick out the people who are the same as in this other source, and fill in the blanks by what seems obvious.

From my notes -- "The rather condensed account given here of Roric's past history is difficult to verify, as the references to Roric and Harald / Heriald in the different sets of Frankish annals do not match up. It is not certain whether Roric was Harald's brother or his nephew, perhaps meaning simply 'relative'. It is also not clear whether this Heriald was the same person who was baptised at Louis the Pious's court in 826 and given land in Frisia; probably not. Nor is it certain whether they were related to the Harald mentioned in the annal for 852. The uncertainty is not difficult to explain: it was useful for the Franks to support exiled members of the royal or ducal families of the Danes and Slavs, but they did not need to concern themselves closely with the genealogies of these families: royalty was sufficient."

Aha - thanks for helping me parse the sentence you quoted correctly!

It seems to me that we have plenty of reason to keep the two Godfrids apart in the Geni tree, and just have notes in the profiles that "XX has proposed that this Godfrid is the same as that Godfrid". A pity that Medlands doesn't seem to be that careful in this case.

From wikipedia....

Godfrid, Godafrid, Gudfrid, or Gottfrid (Old Norse: Guðfrið; murdered June 885) was a Danish Viking leader of the late ninth century. He had probably been with the Great Heathen Army, descended on the continent, and became a vassal of the emperor Charles the Fat, controlling most of Frisia between 882 and 885.
In 880, Godfrid ravaged Flanders using Ghent as his base. In 882, Godfrid ravaged Lotharingia and the cities of Maastricht, Liège, Stavelot, Prüm, Cologne, and Koblenz were devastated. After the Siege of Asselt forced him to come to terms, Godfrid was granted the Kennemerland, which had formerly been ruled by Rorik of Dorestad, as a vassal of Charles, according to the Annales Fuldenses. Godfrid swore oaths to Charles promising never to again lay waste his kingdom and accepted Christianity and baptism, at which Charles stood as his godfather. In return, Charles appointed him Duke of Frisia and gave him Gisela, daughter of Lothair II, as his wife.
However, Godfrid did nothing against a Danish raid which pillaged large parts of the Low Countries in 884. In 885, he was summoned to Lobith for a meeting after being accused of complicity with Hugh, Duke of Alsace and brother of Godfrid's wife Gisela, in an insurrection. In an act of treachery he was killed by a group of Frisian and Saxon nobles at the connivance of Henry of Franconia, who had been at odds with Hugh and was against the initial appointment of Godfrid as Duke. The local count Gerulf took over the West Frisian coastline from the Danish after the murder.
This Godfrid has sometimes been confused with Godfrid Haraldsson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrid,_Duke_of_Frisia

Harald, I see the same problem you do. The Medlands description of Godefrid seems to describe the career of two different men, whose careers fall into two distinct periods.

i don't necessarily agree there is a problem with his seemingly late marriage -- there's no reason Gisela has to be his first wife or even the mother of his children. In fact, it's fairly common to see Godefrid reported with a first wife Matilda by whom he is (sometimes) father of of the Frisian heiress Ragnhildr Ludmilla.

The debate often comes down to Annales Bertiniani (852), which says "Godefridus, Herioldi Dani filius" was baptized, That is, Godefrid, son of Harald of Denmark". It's easy to argue that Harald of Denmark must have been Harald klak.

So, a common solution is to make 850s Godefrid the son of Harald, and 880s Godefrid a separate entry. There is a thrifty logic there because the later Godefrid can be interpreted (as above, Annals of Saint-Vaast) as nepos (nephew or grandson) of Harald, although not necessarily Harald klak.