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Thorstein The Red
Thorstein the Red or Thorstein Olafsson was a viking chieftain who flourished in late ninth-century Scotland. Biography He was born around 850 AD and was the son of Olaf the White, King of Dublin, and Aud the Deep-minded, who was the daughter of Ketil Flatnose.''Eirik the Red's Saga'' § 1 (Jones 126); Laxdaela Saga § 4 (Magnusson 51). After the death of Olaf, Aud and Thorstein went to live in the Hebrides, then under Ketil's rule. Thorstein eventually became a warlord and allied with the Jarl of Orkney, Sigurd Eysteinsson. Together Thorstein and Sigurd waged a series of campaigns in Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Moray, and a number of other regions, eventually receiving tribute from half of Scotland. However, the Scottish chieftains plotted against Thorstein, and he was killed; the exact nature of his death is unknown but it probably took place around 880 or 890. After Thorstein's death Aud left Caithness, sojourning for a while in Orkney before settling with other members of he ...
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Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, North Africa, Volga Bulgaria, the Middle East, and Greenland, North America. In some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a collective whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the Early Middle Ages, early medieval history of Scandinavia, the History of the British Isles, British Isles, France in the Middle Ages, France, Viking Age in Estonia, Estonia, and Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlem ...
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Olaf Feilan
Olaf ''Feilan'' Thorsteinsson (Old Norse: , Modern Icelandic: ; c. 890–940) was an Icelandic gothi of the Settlement period. He was the son of Thorstein the Red, jarl of Caithness, and his wife Thurid Eyvindsdottir.''Landnámabók'', (translations: ) The byname "'' feilan''" is derived from the Old Irish '' fáelán'', meaning ''wolfling'' or ''little wolf''. After the death of his father Olaf was reared by his grandmother Aud the Deep-minded, and emigrated with her to Iceland, where they settled at the estate called Hvamm in the Laxardal region. Olaf married a woman named Alfdis of Barra, around 920. According to the '' Laxdæla saga'' Aud (called "Unn" in the saga) held Olaf dearer than anyone else, and bequested the Hvamm estate to him after her death. She arranged Olaf's betrothal to Alfdis, and planned the wedding feast for the end of summer (or autumn), which she predicted "would be the last feast I would hold". She indeed died during the festivities that lasted 3-da ...
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Landnámabók
(, "Book of Settlements"), often shortened to , is a medieval Icelandic written work which describes in considerable detail the settlement () of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. is divided into five parts and over 100 chapters. The first part tells of how the island was found. The latter parts count settlers quarter by quarter, beginning with west and ending with south. It traces important events and family history into the 12th century. More than 3,000 people and 1,400 settlements are described. It tells where each settler settled and provides a brief genealogy. Sometimes short anecdote-like stories are also included. lists 435 men (' or ) as the initial settlers, the majority of them settling in the northern and southwestern parts of the island. It remains an invaluable source on both the history and genealogy of the Icelandic people. Some have suggested a single author, while others have believed it to have been put together when people met at ...
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Lord Of Biscay
The Lordship of Biscay ( es, Señorío de Vizcaya, Basque: ''Bizkaiko jaurerria'') was a region under feudal rule in the region of Biscay in the Iberian Peninsula between 1040 and 1876, ruled by a political figure known as the Lord of Biscay. One of the Basque ''señoríos'', it was a territory with its own political organization, with its own naval ensign, consulate in Bruges and customs offices in Balmaseda and Urduña, from the 11th Century until 1876, when the Juntas Generales were abolished. Since 1379, when John I of Castile became the Lord of Biscay, the lordship was integrated into the Crown of Castile, and eventually the Kingdom of Spain. Mythical foundation The first explicit reference to the foundation of the Biscayan lordship is in the ''Livro de Linhagens'', written between 1323 and 1344 by Pedro Afonso, Count of Barcelos. It is an entirely legendary account. The book narrates the arrival in Biscay of a man named Froom, a brother of the King of England, who h ...
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Jaun Zuria
Jaun Zuria (Basque for "the White Lord") is the mythical first Lord and founder of the Lordship of Biscay, who defeated the Leonese and Asturian troops in the also-mythical Battle of Padura, in which he chased off the invaders to the Malato Tree, establishing there the borders of Biscay. There are three accounts of its legend, one by the Portuguese count Pedro Barcelos and two by the chronicler Lope García de Salazar.Jaun Zuria entry
at the Auñamendi Entziklopedia (Spanish)
According to the legend, Jaun Zuria had been born from a Scottish or English princess who had been visited by the Basque deity in the village of



Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye
Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye ( non, Sigurðr ormr í auga) or Sigurd Áslaugsson was a semi-legendary Viking warrior and Danish king active from the mid to late 9th century. According to multiple saga sources and Scandinavian histories from the 12th century and later, he is one of the sons of the legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok and Áslaug. His historical prototype might have been the Danish King Sigfred who ruled briefly in the 870s. Norwegian kings' genealogies of the Middle Ages name him as an ancestor of Harald Fairhair and used his mother's supposed ancestry the Völsung to create an ancestry between Harald and his descendants and Odin. Early life "Snake-in-the-eye" as part of Sigurd's name denoted a physical characteristic. He was born with a mark in his eye, described as the image of the ouroboros (a snake biting its own tail). According to ''Ragnar Lothbrok’s saga'', while Sigurd was just a boy, his half-brothers Eric and Agnar were killed by Swedish king Eysteinn Beli (al ...
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Olaf Geirstad-Alf
Olaf Gudrødsson (c. 810 – c. 860), known after his death as Olaf Geirstad-Alf "Olaf, Elf of Geirstad" (Old Norse Ólafr Geirstaðaalfr), was a semi-legendary petty king in Norway. A member of the House of Yngling, he was the son of Gudrød the Hunter and according to the late ''Heimskringla'', a half-brother of Halfdan the Black. Gudrød and Olaf ruled a large part of Raumarike. The ''Þáttr Ólafs Geirstaða Alfs'' in Flateyjarbók records a fantastical story of how he was worshipped after his death and on his own instructions, his body was then decapitated so that he could be reborn as Olaf II of Norway (St. Olaf). Two not necessarily conflicting hypotheses identify Geirstad with Gjerstad, formerly ''Geirekstad'' in Agder, and with Gokstad (possibly also a contraction of ''Geirekstad'') in Vestfold, the location of the mound Gokstadhaugen, where the Gokstad Ship was excavated. The theory that Olaf thus had a connection with the ship burial is unproven. ''Ynglinga saga'' ...
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Ketill Flatnose
Ketill Björnsson, nicknamed Flatnose (Old Norse: ''Flatnefr''), was a Norsemen, Norse Rulers of the Kingdom of the Isles, King of the Isles of the 9th century. Primary sources The story of Ketill and his daughter Auðr (or Aud) was probably first recorded by the Icelander Ari Þorgilsson (1067 – 1148).Jennings and Kruse (2009) p. 127 Ari was born not long after the death of his great-grandmother Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir – a prominent character in the ''Laxdæla saga'' whose husband, Thorkell Eyjolfsson, was descended from Auðr. Ari was thus a direct descendant of Ketill and so, when he wrote his story of Ketill, he was drawing in part on oral traditions amongst his own relatives. Ketill was also depicted in such works as the ''Laxdæla saga'', ''Eyrbyggja saga'' and the ''Saga of Erik the Red'', while his genealogy was described in detail in the ''Landnámabók''. However, like many other medieval histories, all of these Old Norse works were written long after the events ...
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