Talk:Harald the Old

Norse history and culture Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Norse history and culture, a WikiProject related to all activities of the North Germanic peoples, both in Scandinavia and abroad, prior to the formation of the Kalmar Union in 1397. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.Norse history and cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Norse history and cultureTemplate:WikiProject Norse history and cultureNorse history and culture articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Most of the article is fluff

This is just a name in one obscure geneology. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 09:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Pieter. I don't think the article is meant as a historical account. The intention is to inform about what the old sagas tells us. The geneologies are the geneologies of the sagas. Whether they are true, no one but God knows.

It is not necessary to censure every article that can't be scientifically proved. This is not physics. This is literature, legend, poetry, perhaps history. These stories have survived from generation to generation, because people appreciate them, they are fascinating, funny, inspiring. They are our common heritage.

Without a history, a nation will become disoriented, and may fall prey to their enemies. It is people who are proud of themselves that are strong and healthy, who survives, who has something to preserve, to fight for, to pray for.

Every detail doesn't have to be true. You don't know if every detail you heard from or about your father is true. You don't need to know that. He's your father.

We shouldn't speak ill of our fathers. We shouldn't call them liers. They may have been wrong sometimes, but we must not assume they just lied all the time. If so, we are children of liers and cheaters, and what does that make us?

Only if we can prove that some detail in their stories was wrong, we should expose it. For all the rest, we should trust our fathers and believe what they told us. /Leos Friend (talk) 06:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Our fathers"? The sagas were written by the Icelanders. They had the name Harald somewhere in a genealogical table, and some wikipedian constructs a whole article about him. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 10:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Icelanders and all the other nordic peoples had a common history, including the Frisians. This is what those stories tells us. I see what you mean about the article, but is it really a problem? I think it should remain. /Leos Friend (talk) 14:04, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]