Driva Snaersdotter Snødatter - Mythological?

Started by Private User on Wednesday, January 25, 2023
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Could someone please explain why a mythological figure has a genealogical entry? This is a sincere question, since these figures show up as literal ancestors on Geni, and I am not clear on the purpose of this. To my knowledge, this is not a verified historical human person with a known date of birth, date of death, and lineage. Is there really someone out there who is claiming Driva Snødatter lived at the given date, or are people just pulling characters from the sagas and giving loose dates to them?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

These profiles is reflecting the lineages in Sagas, i.e. "documented", so you are asking the wrong question: Why are they connected to us? Those undocumented connections are probably much closer to us than the profiles itself, but you probably have to check thousands of profiles.

Hi, the issue is that the sagas are not precise historical records, nor for that matter are the historical records for that period (where they exist) very precise.

People read sagas and correctly recognise historical persons then use the sagas to interpolate other relatives who lack "evidence" per se, and when a saga is vague or silent or contradicts another saga or some other record people tend to choose a side (so to speak). This process is carried on over and over again with best of intentions building an enormous interconnected web of proven, speculative, dubious, probably and plain silly links.

Cutting them requires patience and skill and knowledge, stopping them is impossible. Even when a cut or correction can be backed up with a strong argument (because it's not like there's a way to prove much if any of this) the push back can be huge from "interested parties"/true believers.

You might find this Project interesting/informative https://www.geni.com/projects/Scandinavian-sagas/18

If nothing else it (and the linked Discussions) give an insight into the attempts to improve this portion of Geni's tree and are evidence of how difficult, complex and thankless a chore that is.

Driva Snaersdotter Snødatter is your 54th great grandmother.

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