Sven Estridsson

Coin with the image of Sven Estridsson, around 1050

Sven Estridsson in 1074 (engraving, 17th century)

Sven Estridsson , Danish Svend Estridsen ( metronym ), Norwegian Sven Ulfsson (patronymic), also Sweyn II (* around 1020; †  April 28, 1076 ) was King of Denmark from 1047 .

Life

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Svend's campaigns against England in 1069 (York) and 1074/75 are missing

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Sven Estridsson - son of the Danish Jarl Ulf Thorgilsson from Skåne and Estrid Svendsdatter , daughter of Sven Gabelbart  - grew up with King Anund Jakob of Sweden. Sven was in the service of King Hardeknut in England and was appointed Jarl over Denmark by King Magnus the Good and followed him in the war against the Wends , where he destroyed the Jomsburg , where the Obodrite king Ratibor , a Nakonide , fell.

Sven later gave up his loyalty to King Magnus and had himself elected king on a thing in Viborg . Thereupon King Harald the Harte of Norway (King from 1047 to 1066) moved to Denmark, destroyed Haithabu in 1050 and drove Sven to Sweden, where he was accepted again by King An and Jacob. From there he made repeated attempts at recapture. He suffered a heavy defeat at sea.

Harald had hired on the coast of Halland, and Sven placed him at the mouth of the Niså River in 1062 with a Danish fleet of 300 ships, while Harald had at most half of them. But this superiority did not lead to a victory. According to Snorri's report, Harald won the day. Harald believed that Sven had fallen, but he had saved himself on land and found shelter with a farmer. According to Snorri, Sven, who was not recognized by the peasant people, is said to have reported the defeat of the Danes, to which the peasant woman replied that the king was not only limping, but also a coward. He was not a coward, Sven replied, just not victorious.

Sven Estridsson was a contemporary of Adam von Bremen and met with him. He told him about his wars and experiences and his ancestors. Adam reports in his story Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum by Sven Estridsson and shows him in a positive light, especially because he was very hospitable and was very committed to the spread of Christianity in Sweden and Denmark. Under his rule, Christianity was firmly established in Denmark and especially in Skåne . Church and king still had common interests in the development phase of the organization of church and state. The contrast only emerged when Denmark came into the northern European sphere of interest of the Roman-German emperor. Sven therefore tried to detach Denmark from the Archdiocese of Hamburg , which Archbishop Adalbert von Bremen opposed. The endeavor to achieve independence from Norway, too, led him to try to counterbalance the Norwegian national saint, Olav, by making his great-grandfather Harald Blauzahn the Danish national saint. As a further measure, his close rapprochement with the German emperor can be seen, which Archbishop Adalbert mediated in 1053 and in English sources justified the suspicion that he had even become the emperor's liege. In order to arrange his successor, he probably sent his illegitimate son Magnus to Rome to be ordained a king around 1072 . But he died on the way. Here, too, the effort to establish a stronger bond with the Church can be seen as an element of his independence policy. The relationship between Denmark and Sweden seems to have been good. In the dispute with Norway, Sven always found Swedish support. It is also said to have come to a border settlement between the two countries by King Sven and the Swedish King Emund the Elder .

Sven Estridsson is described as a learned man and a friend of the church, but not as particularly pious and his way of life does not seem to have corresponded to what Adam of Bremen proclaimed as a Christian ideal. The Roskilde Chronicle from the 1230s states that he had many sons and daughters from different wives. He had married, but his wife Gunhild Svendsdatter was too closely related to him as the daughter of the Norwegian Jarl Svend Håkonsson and widow of the Swedish king Anund Jakob , so that the marriage of Adalbert von Bremen was ecclesiastically annulled. Sigrid the proud , Sven Estridsson's grandmother, had a daughter, Holmfried Eriksdatter , from his first marriage to King Erik Sägersäll . She had the daughter Gunhild, who had married Sven, with the archer Svend Håkonsson.

progeny

The following persons were counted as illegitimate children:

• Thorgils
• Harald Hen (1041-1080), King of Denmark from 1076
• Canute the Saint (1043-1086), King of Denmark from 1080
• Benedict (1048-1086), slain together with Canute the Saint in 1086 in Odense
• Olaf Hunger (1050-1095), King of Denmark from 1086
• Sven (the crusader) (* around 1050, † 1097 on the First Crusade ) ∞ Florine of Burgundy
• Erik Ejegod (around 1070–1103), King of Denmark from 1095
• Bjørn (1062 – approx. 1100), Jarl in Schleswig
• Niels (1064–1134), King of Denmark from 1104
• Knud Magnus
• Thorgils
• Sigurd
• Guttorm
• Ømund
• Ulf
• Svend
• Ingrid (1068–?) ∞ Olav Kyrre of Norway.
• Gunhild
• Sigrid ∞ Gottschalk , velvet ruler of the Abodrites
• Ragnhild

Family connections

Misico v. Poland, Duke                   Erik Segersäll       Gunnhild         Sven Gabelbart                                                                           Olof Skötkonung   Knut Estrid   Ulf Jarl                                                                                                           Ingegerd   Yaroslav the Wise Astrid Olavsdatter   Olav d. Saints An and Jakob       Sven Estridsson                                         Gunnhild                                           Elizabeth of Kiev   Harald Hardråde Olav Kyrre   Ingerid Olav hungry                             Ingegerd   Filipp Halsteinsson

After Halvdan Koht : Norske Dronninger. Oslo 1926.

Grave in Roskilde

Investigations on Sven's skeleton, which was walled up in a pillar in the high choir of Roskilde Cathedral , showed that Sven was handsome and tall, but his left hip was not as developed as his right, so that he waddled an irregular gait must have had, which increases the saga's credibility. For a long time it was believed that the grave next to it was the grave of his mother Estrid. However, according to the DNA analysis in 2003, this could be ruled out. You don't know who the woman is. There are suspicions that it is Margarethe Estrid , the wife of Sven's son Harald Hen .

See also

• Family table of the Danish kings

literature

• Lars O. Lagerqvist: Sverige och des regenter under 1000 år . Norrtälje 1976, ISBN 91-0-041538-3 .
• N. Lund: Sven Estridsen . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . Volume 30. de Gruyter 2005, pp. 178-180.
• T. Nyberg: S. Estridsen . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , Volume 8. Munich 1997, Columns 342–343.
• Johannes CHR Stenstrup: Svend Estridsen . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 17 : Svend Tveskjæg – Tøxen . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1903, p. 3–5 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
• Horst Windmann: Schleswig as territory . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1954, family tree of the Danish royal families; Dept. I (1050-1200).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johannes CHR Stenstrup: Svend Estridsen . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 17 : Svend Tveskjæg – Tøxen . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1903, p. 4 (Danish, runeberg.org ). The year of death is also given in earlier chronicles as 1074, which, according to Stenstrup, is "definitely incorrect".
2. ^ Wolfgang Seegrün: The Archdiocese of Hamburg in its older papal documents . Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna, 1976, p. 66 f.
3. ↑ Linqvist p. 27. Bolin in "Emund Gamle" in the Svensk Biografisk Lexikon refers to the Äldre Västgötalagens kungakrönika (royal chronicle of the older Västgöta law) and the details of a decree.
4. ↑ uncertain source for Bjœrn Svendsen

predecessor	Office	successor
Magnus I the Good	King of Denmark 1047-1076	Harald III. Hen