Talk:Ragnvald Ulfsson

Legend and history

The contemporaneous source is Sigvatr Þorðarson, who connects this guy with Svitjod. The rest is elaborations by Icelanders. /Pieter Kuiper 09:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I am fine with improving this article, as long as the decision as to what is "elaboration" and what is "history" is based on reliable sources. This article is in line with the encyclopedia Nordisk familjebok which suggests that a great deal of information is not "fiction" as you call it in your edit summary.--Berig 15:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Nordisk Familjebok is a century old, and definitely not to be relied on nowadays. /Pieter Kuiper 15:51, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I have seen you use it yourself as a source, so why should it suddenly not be relied on now?--Berig 16:05, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I have found Nordisk Familjebok useful to show that some things were oldfashioned already a hundred years ago. Nowadays, all knowledge pre-1100 seems to be lost. Nationalencyklopedin has only two sentences about Ragnvald Ulfsson. Regrettably, Wikipedia is the major factor preserving the old "knowledge" (lore would be a more appropriate term) in the digital age. /Pieter Kuiper 17:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Please go ahead and make the article up to date, preferably by adding sources and discussing them. I look forward to seeing your progress.--Berig 17:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I reverted you because you continue your old habits of deleting information. Please add sources and discuss and do not remove based on WP:IDON'TLIKEIT.--Berig 17:34, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Pieter Kuiper's allegations of OR

Pieter Kuiper accused me of WP:OR[1] without any basis whatsoever in the edit history[2]. I strongly, suggest that Pieter Kuiper reconsiders his behaviour. Moreover, the information he refers to is quite common and should be easy for anyone to find in history books.--Berig 17:57, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No, this is not in any modern history book. Berig reintroduced information without a source. If it is not OR, please give a reference. /Pieter Kuiper 18:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Larsson's book Götarnas riken (2002) is a great source. As for Pieter Kuiper's recent removal of content, Larsson says:

Och lika lite kan jag få veta ifall Stenkils far Ragnvald var identisk med västgötajarlen med samma namn, som det ofta påstås i den historiska literaturen - en hypotes som i och för sig också skulle leda till släktskap med den gamla kungaätten genom att Ragnvald enligt sagorna var kusin till Olof Skötkonung. (pp. 156-157)

My translation:

And just as little can I be informed whether Stenkil's father Ragnvald [the Old] was identical to the Västergötland Jarl by the same name [i.e. Ragnvald Ulfsson], as it is often stated in history books - a hypothesis which, as it were, would lead to kinship with the old dynasty through the fact that Ragnvald according to the sagas was the cousin of Olof Skötkonung.

Now, I strongly resent the fact that Pieter Kuiper is accusing me for OR, in his edit summaries, for something that I do not appear to have written and because of what is such a common piece of information that it should not need references (often stated in history books).--Berig 20:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Sources, reliable and otherwise

Clearly, if a 1990s encyclopedia disagrees with an 1890s one, there's no question that we follow the modern one. However, the issue is that the 1890s version has a lot of (IMO doubtless misleading) detail that the modern version drops. When there is doubt, and when it comes to sagas there is always doubt, I'm a fan of the formulas "X says" and "according to X". If our readers want to believe X, that's up to them. Where subjects appear in multiple sorts of sources like that, things get a bit more complicated, but the same general rule can be followed. We use "was" for historical material that modern (not 19th century) historians think is reliable, and "is" for the rest, or we are sure to say what the source is wherever relevant. The appropriate manual of style is usually going to be this one.

The Sawyers' Medieval Scandinavia (chapter 1: Sources) says this about the sagas:

Sagas about Icelandic families before the conversion and about early Norwegian kings cannot be dismissed as fiction. Their reliability as sources for the details of political or military events, individual careers, and even family history, is doubtful, but the generally consistent picture they give of social structure, conduct, beliefs and values must have some basis in reality.

That seems quite clear cut: sagas are of doubtful reliability as a source of historical events. Their comments specifically include Snorri. Angus McLellan (Talk) 18:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course they are doubtful, but we hardly achieve a good article by removing information because they are saga based as Pieter Kuiper wants to do. There are at least two featured articles with plenty of saga references: User:Haukurth has written the article Battle of Svolder and User:Briangotts has written Gunnhild Mother of Kings. The way these two articles treat saga material should be a guideline for this article.--Berig 20:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No, oh no! That is old school historiography. Wikipedia should reflect the current, academic way of writing history. Wikipedia should follow modern historians. Articles here should not contain own syntheses WP:OR out of a mix of primary sources, sagas, and older historical works. /Pieter Kuiper 20:45, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Believe me, if I had found more recent scholarly discussion of the battle of Svolder I would certainly have made use of it. It just doesn't seem to have been a popular subject among historians for the past 50 years. Take the brief treatment in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia (2003): "A determining factor was a battle in 1000 (or 999) when Sven fought together with the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung, probably already his man, against Olaf Tryggvason who had now become king of Norway. The location of this sea battle has been much discussed among modern historians. According to Adam it took place in Öresund 'where kings used to fight' whereas the Icelandic sources place it at the isle of 'Svoldr' near the Slavonic coast. At any rate, King Olaf was killed and two Norwegian earls were installed by Sven to rule Norway." Then there is a citation to an article written in the 1950s. The fact that they would cite such an old article suggests to me that not much has been written on the subject since then. If you know of articles about the battle of Svolder written recently then I would be delighted to read them and update the article accordingly. Haukur 21:42, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, lest I be misunderstood, I would also be happy to see a recent article on the accounts of the battle in a literary context. As I keep saying the battle is as much a literary subject as it is an historical one. Haukur 21:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't entirely agree. The articles should of course follow modern historians (so no 10th century kings of "Sweden" please). However, there is no reason why saga materials should not be included, so long as the same sort of qualifications as in Battle of Svolder are used. Our readers may well have read some sagas - they are much more accessible in English than academic histories - and might be surprised if such material is not included. Indeed, they might add it themselves. So we should include it. But if we do, we should, if possible, say that it is unreliable, late, invented, and the other terms that historians use to describe it. What space we give to the sagas, and how much material we quote, is an editorial decision. The more modern commentary we can find on those kinds of sources, the more of them we can easily include. If we can't find commentary, we should probably limit ourselves to saying that X appears in A-, B-, and C-saga with a brief description. I have written these kinds of articles, although on Scots/Irish/Anglo-Saxon topics rather than Scandinavian ones (although I did write the resolutely saga-free Amlaíb Conung - the saga version is Olaf the White). Áedán mac Gabráin includes a lot of completely unreliable material such as the historically worthless Gein Brandub. My rewrite of Giric includes little else but late and unreliable material. Why not, so long as we are clear on what it is. The only reason to exclude information would be an absence of reliable (==modern) sources which discuss it. Adding our own commentary to the sagas would be original research. Including them without commentary would be of little value to readers, but it wouldn't be original research. It might, however, be one of the things that Wikipedia is not: an indiscriminate collection of information. Without commentary, our readers might as well go straight to the original sagas. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:09, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The original sagas do not have all these dates on them. The original sagas are stories, told in Iceland on long winter evenings about a land far away, with feuds between evil or good kings, ambitious queens, outlandish or heathen customs, etcera. Here, this is transformed and harmonized, with totally fictional dates, remarriages, co-regencies, and all that. It is a mess, misleading readers with all its "scholarly" footnotes to antiquated works. I think it is terrible. /Pieter Kuiper 21:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

As the Sawyer quote shows ("cannot be dismissed as fiction"), historians believe the sagas are of more historical value that you are suggesting, although much less reliable than nationalist Scandinavian historians in the past allowed. McTurk's work, for example, is based on the sagas. Now I find McTurk to be rather too credulous where these are concerned, there's an example here, but that's of no importance. The fact is sagas that are used, and quoted, in historical work.

I agree that creating ones very own synthetic account is a bad thing, but that's easily fixed. The answer is not to throw everything out, but to fix it by using historians' syntheses. And historians do quote dates for Ragnvald. The Cambridge History places his floruit in the early 11th century, the gullible Władysław Duczko thinks he was born in about 980 and married Ingeborg around 999. How he can possibly know this, I have no idea. Still, he put it in writing, and he's an associate professor at Uppsala. I imagine similarly mistaken examples of precision could be found elsewhere if one looked. Berig found a quote from Larsson mentioning - and apparently disbelieving - the identification of Ragnvald Ulfsson with Ragnvald den Gamle. Well, that too can be included. It is as useful to add what is not known, and what is rejected, as what is accepted. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Larsson, "Göternas riken"? He is an archeologist, and Historisk tidskrift had a crushing review of the book.

Ragnvald is mentioned by a contemporary source (Austrfararvisur), there is no problem with his floruit. The problem is all the rest, all the stuff not found in the skaldic poem. (And of course, the scald should also be treated critically.) /Pieter Kuiper 22:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

PK greatly exaggerates the severity of an ideologized review by a historian named Hermansson[3], and which was published in 2004, two years after the publication of Larsson's book (2002). Hermansson's problem is that Larsson writes about Migration Age and Viking Age warfare in what is today Sweden, something which Hermansson finds passé. For those who are unfamiliar with Larsson, he is a prolific writer of books both for the general public and for professional archaeologists.--Berig 16:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hermanson's review is criticizing Larsson for his old-fashioned, semi-fascist or social-Darwinist ideological outlook, which would fit better in the 1930. That is severe criticism. See also Talk:Consolidation of Sweden#Debate on sources. Larsson is prolific, but professional historians regard his popular stuff as hopelessly passé.

Berig has not come up with a source for Ragnvald's second marriage (only sweeping claims that this is in history books), so I will delete the stuff at the end of the article. /Pieter Kuiper 16:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)