Could someone please explain why a mythological figure has a genealogical entry? This is a sincere question, since these figures show up as literal ancestors on Geni, and I am not clear on the purpose of this. To my knowledge, this is not a verified historical human person with a known date of birth, date of death, and lineage. Is there really someone out there who is claiming Driva Snødatter lived at the given date, or are people just pulling characters from the sagas and giving loose dates to them?
Thanks in advance for any insight.
Hi, the issue is that the sagas are not precise historical records, nor for that matter are the historical records for that period (where they exist) very precise.
People read sagas and correctly recognise historical persons then use the sagas to interpolate other relatives who lack "evidence" per se, and when a saga is vague or silent or contradicts another saga or some other record people tend to choose a side (so to speak). This process is carried on over and over again with best of intentions building an enormous interconnected web of proven, speculative, dubious, probably and plain silly links.
Cutting them requires patience and skill and knowledge, stopping them is impossible. Even when a cut or correction can be backed up with a strong argument (because it's not like there's a way to prove much if any of this) the push back can be huge from "interested parties"/true believers.
You might find this Project interesting/informative https://www.geni.com/projects/Scandinavian-sagas/18