Estrid Svendsdatter

Medieval sources variously call her Estrid/Estrith, Astrid/Astrith but also Margareta/Margaret. Adam of Bremen uses Margareta as her Christian name, stating that Estrid was her pagan name. Most Danish sources and later Latin works use Estrid/Estrith. == Family, parentage and early life ==

Estrid was born in the late 10th century, with estimates ranging from c. 990 to c. 997. She was a daughter of King Sweyn Forkbeard, though her maternal lineage is disputed. According to the Knýtlinga saga and other saga traditions, including the Morkinskinna, the Saga of Magnus the Good and the Saga of Haraldr harðráði in the Heimskringla, her mother was Sigrid Storråda, widow of King Eric the Victorious of Sweden, which would make Estrid a half-sister of King Olof Skötkonung. This version of her parentage was widely accepted in later Scandinavian historiography, and is also supported by the fact that her son Sweyn II's marriage to Gunnhildr Sveinsdóttir was contested by Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen, and ultimately annulled by Pope Leo IX on grounds of consanguinity, as Gunnhildr was the maternal granddaughter of Olof Skötkonung, Estrid's half-brother. Earlier Danish scholarship sometimes advanced a different identification, claiming that her mother was Sweyn’s first consort, the Polish princess Gunhild (Świętosława), daughter of Mieszko I of Poland. This view, advanced by historian P. F. Suhm and likely prompted by the fact that Estrid is invariably described as Cnut’s sister, has since been rejected for lack of support in primary sources. Paternally, her half-siblings were Canute the Great, Harald II, and Świętosława. Her father, Sweyn Forkbeard died in 1014 in Lincoln, England, after which she was placed under the guardianship of her half-brother, king Cnut. == Reported betrothals and marriages ==

Modern scholarship generally agrees that Estrid contracted three marriages, a Rus' prince, a Norman duke, and Ulf Jarl, but their sequence is uncertain. Some accounts place the Rus' marriage first, followed by a short-lived Norman match and then her marriage to Ulf, while others treat the Norman connection as either preceding Ulf (c. 1017–1018) or following his death (c. 1027–1033). The evidence is late and contradictory, and the precise order of her early marriages cannot be established with certainty. Russian prince According to a scholion added in the 1080s to Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, King Cnut "gave his sister Estrid in marriage to the son of the king of Russia." Indeed, it is known that Danish Varangians were present in Kiev in 1018. Prince Il'ya died in 1020, and they had no known children. Earlier scholarship proposed a marriage in 1014–1015, and that Estrid's Rus' husband was one of the four sons of Grand Prince Vladimir the Great who were killed in the civil wars following Vladimir’s death in 1015. This interpretation would make the Rus' marriage her first, preceding a short-lived or repudiated marriage to a Norman duke (see below). An alternative proposal, advanced by P. A. Munch on the basis of a notice by Florence of Worcester, equated Adam's "son of the king of Rus'" with Bryachislav of Polotsk (a nephew of Yaroslav the Wise); this chain of identification has been largely rejected in modern scholarship. Norman match In 1017, Estrid's brother Cnut became King of England, and in July, he wed Queen Emma, the widow of Æthelred and daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy. Cnut further contracted a brief marital alliance with the Norman ducal house for Estrid, but sources disagree whether Estrid’s marriage was to Richard II or his son Robert I, and whether it occurred before or after her marriage to Ulf. Ralph Glaber, in his Historiarum libri quinque, reported that an unnamed sister of Cnut married Robert, but Adam of Bremen reported a marriage of Estrid (calling her Margaret) to Richard II. Adam further remarks that after the duke "went to Jerusalem”" she married Ulf, an element that fits Robert I (who undertook a Jerusalem pilgrimage in 1035) rather than Richard II, and is therefore commonly treated as a conflation of names and events in Adam's narrative. Norman sources, such as William of Jumieges and Orderic Vitalis, do not mention such a marriage for either duke, and historians disagree whether it was a short-lived marriage, a betrothal, or a result of confusion. An earlier apocryphal story states that Robert I discarded Estrid in favour of his mistress Herleva, sparking a conflict between Cnut and Normandy. According to this tale, she was supposedly ill-treated in various ways by Robert, who sent her back to England with "ignominy". On balance, modern works treat the episode with caution. Some Danish reference works identify the duke as Robert I, In all instances, Estrid returned to England, where she would marry for a third and final time. Marriage to Ulf Jarl and widowhood Her brother Cnut then arranged a marriage for her with Ulf Jarl. They became the parents of Sweyn II Estridsen, Asbjørn, and Beorn Estrithson, jarl of Huntingdon in England. She did not lose her brother's trust, and was granted large lands by him. The date of her death is unknown, but it can be no earlier than 1057 or later than 1073, as it is known that Bishop William of Roskilde officiated at her funeral, and he was in office between 1057 and 1073. ==Aftermath==

Estrid was widely believed to have been buried in the northeastern pier of the Roskilde Cathedral, but a DNA test in 2003 dispelled the myth as the remains belonged to a woman much too young to be Estrid. The new theory is that the sign on the pier refers to Margareta Hasbjörnsdatter, who was also known as Estrid and who married Harald III Hen, the son of Sweyn Estridsen. ==References==