Customer Reviews

Royal Families of Medieval Scandinavia, Flanders, and Kiev

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Not enough attention has been paid by lineage compilers to the kingdoms of northern Europe, though the Scandinavian countries have some of the most ancient monarchies still in existence - even when the putative descents from Odin are discounted. The early monarchs of Denmark, for instance, appear in 9th century Frankish records, and Rurik, traditional founder of Kiev, was almost certainly Swedish. The counts of Flanders descend from a daughter of Charles the Bald. Flanders, in fact, is the link between the Carolingian dynasty and the ruling houses of Denmark and Sweden. Alen and Dahlquist (who are married) are amateur genealogists, and there's a certain amount of "fluff" in this volume, but the level of the research and writing is generally quite high and there are numerous lineage charts throughout.

This book provides the reader with a usefull overview of the medieval royal families of Scandinavia, Flanders and Kiev. The biographies of the major rulers are interesting. Although the book contains a bibliography, the author's research on the subject would have been more valuable if he added endnotes or footnotes for each chapter. The genealogical tables would be improved with two changes: 1. the addition of all children (specifically, the female lines that are often ignored in books dealing with lines of sucession); 2. a better effort could have been made to identify the mothers of the various offspring and their ancestry. Overall, this is a decent buy for the money.

Almost NO attention is paid to scadinavian royal families! It was nice to find good info. on them and other obscere royal families. I recommend this book for people with scandinavian heritage

I appreciated finding so many of my ancestors lives described in a little more detail in this book!! Not every day that you can find description about how the people of one area interacted with those of another close-by area with the detail described herein. Also helps you understand why these were some of the families involved in the crusades and Templars of subsequent years. Authors Michael Baigent in Messianic legacy is an excellent example of where some of these families went onto in history!! Thanks also for the explanations of links with celtic and norse backgrounds. Again, great source for more detail on lots of old genealogy lines.