The Wooing of Olaf Tryggvason
An aristocratic widow advertises for a husband, and among the line-up of natty and noble suitors is a rough-and-ready Olaf Tryggvason.
988
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
An aristocratic widow advertises for a husband, and among the line-up of natty and noble suitors is a rough-and-ready Olaf Tryggvason.
988
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
This post is number 2 in the series The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason
In 984, exiled Norwegian prince Olaf Tryggvason lost his wife Geira, and went on a four-year grief-stricken rampage through Britain, before suddenly becoming a Christian in the Isles of Scilly. Hearing that Gyda, the King of Dublin’s sister, had summoned a Thing (a Viking council) to choose a husband, Olaf returned to England.
tr. Samuel Laing (abridged)
GYDA had been married to a great earl in England, and after his death she was at the head of his dominions.* In her territory there was a man called Alfin, who was a great champion and single-combat man. He had paid his addresses to her; but she gave for answer, that she herself would choose whom of the men in her dominions she would take in marriage; and on that account the Thing was assembled,* that she might choose a husband. Alfin came there dressed out in his best clothes, and there were many well-dressed men at the meeting. Olaf had come there also; but had on his bad-weather clothes, and a coarse over-garment, and stood with his people apart from the rest of the crowd.
Gyda went round and looked at each, to see if any appeared to her a suitable man. Now when she came to where Olaf stood she looked at him straight in the face, and asked “what sort of man he was?”
Snorro tells us that Gyda (or Gytha) was the daughter of Amlaíb Cuarán, sometime King of Dublin and Northumbria, who was known to the Norse as Óláfr Sigtryggsson. At the time of the events in this story, the crown was held by her brother Glúniairn (Járnkné).
A Thing or Ting (Old English þing) is a meeting, a word still visible in English ‘hustings’ and in the Tynwald, the Parliament of the Isle of Man.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Gyda call a ‘Thing’ after the death of her husband?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Gyda’s husband was an English earl. He died. She inherited his lands.