Talk:Gunnhild, Mother of Kings

Biography assessment rating comment

WikiProject Biography Summer 2007 Assessment Drive

Clearly at least a B. I will support this article for GA.

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 09:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Deprecated comment replaced with:

Want to help write or improve biographies? Check out WikiProject Biography Tips for writing better articles. -- Yamara 10:55, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Weakness

The weakness of this article is that it doesn't discuss the reliability of its sources. Both Snorri (in Heimskringla) and the anonymous Egils saga is, in norwegian historical writings (e.g. Claus Krag in the second edition of Norsk biografisk leksikon) widely known as non-sympathetic against Eirik Bloodaxe and his wife Gunnhild. Accusations of her skills as a witch must be read in that context, and not be read as plain proof. --Orland 09:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Did you actually read the article? From the intro paragraph: What details of her life are known come largely from Icelandic sources; because the Icelanders were generally hostile to her and her husband, scholars regard some of the more negative episodes reported in them as suspect.[2] --Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 13:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

In-universe tag

I do not agree with the use of the "in-universe"-tag in this article. In general, I think it is to easy to just slam a tag on an article rather than trying to improve it. In this case, I also find the tag inappropriate. The description of the tag clearly shows that it's intended for use in articles about purely fictional subjects. While it may be Pieter Kuiper's opinion that Gunnhild is a purely fictional person, this is not the general consensus, and should be debated first. Finally, the description page for the tag clearly instructs anyone using it to explain the reasons for it on the discussion page. This was not done. I therefore took the liberty to remove the tag.--Barend 15:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Persondata

The persondata I recently tagged this article with was removed, with the given rationale that Gunnhild is a legendary character. I am not sure that this is entirely correct - the article seems to make it clear that Gunnhild was real (and was married to a real person), in addition to any roles in fiction she might have. Furthermore, the article is tagged as being within the scope of WikiProject Biography - whose scope only applies to real people. It therefore would seem to follow that the general consensus is that she was real, and therefore, as a real person, her article should be tagged with persondata. I understand though that it is possible I have misunderstood something, and I would welcome discussion about the issue. Mouchoir le Souris (talk) 13:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

As I stated above, about the "in-universe" tag (which was slapped on the article by the same user who has now removed the infobox), I agree that Gunnhild can not be considered a fictional character, although the details that are known about her are very few. The years that were included in the infobox, for instance, are basically guesswork. But the existence of an infobox is appropriate.--Barend (talk) 14:18, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, that helps make things clearer. Mouchoir le Souris (talk) 14:59, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Barend, is there anything here that is "known"? Was this a queen of York? Of Orkney? Of Norway? /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 15:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I forgot I was going to reply to this, but I've finally remembered. I've checked Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian Biographical Encyclopedia, 2001) which gives a fairly good picture of scholarly consensus as of now. The article on Gunnhild is written by Claus Krag, who is well respected among Norwegian medieval historians. Krag treats Gunnhild without reservation as an historical person, who is mentioned in contemporary sources, and described as King Eirik Bloodaxe's queen. However, of course, he points out that there is not a lot of details that we can know for certain about her. His summary of what is known is:

• Nearly all contemporary historians believe she was the daughter of the Danish king Gorm.
• She was probably born early in the 10th century
• She followed Eirik abroad when he was driven out of Norway in the 930s, and returned to Norway during the reign of their sons in the 960s.
• Her place of death is unknown, but might have been Orkney.
• Her daughter was married to the son of the Earl of Orkney.

Where I do agree with Pieter Kuiper is that much of the content of the article is based on the material about her from Heimskringla, which is mainly fiction, and this should be specified more clearly. In particular, the theory that she was the daughter of Ozur Toti is generally disbelieved, and should not be mentioned first, the way it is at present.--129.177.169.89 --Barend (talk) 10:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for looking that up. After this, what does one do with the regnal years in the infobox? ("Reign 931-934 (Norway); c. 937–54 (Orkney); 948–49 and 952–54 (Jorvik)") /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:32, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Appearances in Popular Culture

Would it be relevant to mention that the queen of King Charles III (a.k.a. Charles, Prince of Wales) in S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series took the name of Gunnhild? --Elmyr (talk) 03:32, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Example to follow!

I'm really, really impressed with the lit-list. With the possible exception of the graphic histories (I know of two covering the era), you must've gotten just about everything mentioning her...

Is Harald Haarfager really called Fairhair in english? Misleading "translation".
Smolk (talk) 04:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

RE:An FA?

There is no section on historicity. This article the way it is is clearly more of a literary character than a historical figure. The article tells a good tale admittedly but it is bad history and shouldn't be anywhere near an FA unless it distinguishes more clearly and has more material establishing and elaborating historicity. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 05:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

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