Vikings: The sagas of Ragnar Lothbrock and his sons
score:7
As far as modern fame goes, in the English-speaking world it would be tough to surpass Beowulf.
As far as conquest goes, Ragnar appears to have been known mostly for raiding. Cnut the Great however, made himself king of a not inconsiderable empire covering Denmark, England, Norway, and southern Sweden.
The Rus leaders who fought for and won control of the Russian river system from the Baltic down to the Black sea may well have scoffed at Cnut's paltry empire though.
Upvote:4
Considering that Ragnar and his sons are figures as much out of legend as of history, I will answer with another legendary figure:
Ivar Vidfamne. According to Snorri, he began in Scania (today the southernmost part of Sweden), and began by conquering the (then much smaller) Swedish kingdom. He then went on conquer "all Denmark, a big part of Saxonia, the whole Eastern kingdom and a fifth of England." Snorri based most of his account on the older poem Ynglingatal, which he also quotes from, but nothing that supports this story.
Ivar is also known from Hervarar saga, which says that after Sweden, "[h]e also subdued Denmark and Courland and the land of the Saxons and Esthonia, and all the eastern realms as far as Russia. He also ruled the land of the Saxons in the West and conquered the part of England which was called Northumbria."
He is further mentioned in a lot of other Norse sources. They all seem to agree on him conquering at least both Sweden and Denmark.
Sources
Snorri I have in translation to Swedish by Karl G. Johansson. Hervarar saga I found here. Other primary sources are mentioned by Wikipedia, I checked on Sögubrot (Swedish translation) and Af Upplendinga Konungum.
More post
- 📝 Why do Wikipedia's and Guinness World Records's measurements of the Achaemenid Empire's percentage of world population differ?
- 📝 What is the best book to learn about medicine in medieval times? (research for a novel)
- 📝 What is a "Schwedenschanze" on an 1830's map of Eastern Bavaria?
- 📝 Was either side legally in the right in the Hundred Years War?
- 📝 Treatment of h*m*sexuals in Nazi Germany
- 📝 What is the actual Polish street name of the street in Martinau, now Rokitnica, of Strasse der SA?
- 📝 How common among Abolitionists was the goal of complete civil equality for Blacks?
- 📝 Where and when did Nietzsche's sister meet Hitler?
- 📝 What is the origin of the rampant lion herald?
- 📝 Questions historians ask that non-historian enthusiasts don't?
- 📝 How were documents written in Plato's time?
- 📝 What was Libya's form of direct democracy (Jamahiria) like in practice?
- 📝 When did the U.S. Postal Service completely transition from horse-drawn to motorized transport?
- 📝 To what extent was China unified?
- 📝 What were Helfrich's orders for Doorman in 1942 prior to the Battle of the Java Sea, and did he comment on these in later life?
- 📝 Why is there a gap of information in Russia for human migration?
- 📝 Why did Roosevelt and Truman change the usual switch date of presidency? (4th of March to 20th of January)
- 📝 What are some Chinese sources testifying the extreme weather events of 535-536 CE?
- 📝 Who was "The famous American Roberts" in 1920's Europe?
- 📝 Why is Nazi Germany called a "fascist" regime?
- 📝 How was Alexander the Great able to rule so much territory?
- 📝 Where can I find high-resolution images of these Sumerian tablets
- 📝 Under European feudalism, were the distribution of armies (vassals and fiefdoms) based on a coherent idea?
- 📝 What happened in Kazakhstan that its population dropped from 16m to 14m between 1992 - 2001?
- 📝 Alexander Nevsky's helmet
- 📝 Under feudal primogeniture, did second+ sons ever eye the land holdings of their father's vassals?
- 📝 Was the use of imperial nicknames in ancient Rome meant as an insult?
- 📝 Rulers' titles in Middle Age Italy
- 📝 How was early Indian history re-constructed?
- 📝 Why didn't invaders of India ever cross into Myanmar and beyond (east)?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Vikings: The sagas of Ragnar Lothbrock and his sons
- 📝 Why were the Prague Spring leaders treated more leniently than Nagy and his colleagues?
- 📝 Was the king of England able to execute a high rank noble and his family between 1216 and 1688?
- 📝 How did Maximilien de Robespierre lose control of his Reign of Terror and die by the guillotine?
- 📝 When and where did Louis Blanc say the famous "from each according to his abilities..."?
- 📝 Who gave Charles the Bold his nickname and why?
- 📝 How was Enguerrand VII de Coucy able to keep his allegiance to both king of England and France during the Hundred Years War?
- 📝 What is the term for a person who surveys the land and relays messages from a noble to his governed village?
- 📝 Why did Napoleon change his mind and continue the attack into Russia?
- 📝 When and where did it first became usual that the ID Card holder signed his card?
- 📝 Was there any Egyptian Pharaoh that was considered the one and only god that ancient Egyptians worshiped during his life?
- 📝 Was there a time when George Washington discovered some of his soldiers absolutely refused to swear loyalty and obedience to the Continental Congress?
- 📝 What tone of voice and demeanor did Winston Churchill use in the House of Commons during his "We will never surrender" comment on June ,1940?
- 📝 What was the relationship between Ottoman emperor Murat IV and his mother Kosem Sultan?
- 📝 In Tolstoy's War and Peace, one character is captured after the Battle of Austerlitz and is taken as a POW. Was his experience historically accurate?
- 📝 Had there been a significant physiological difference between the Vikings and the Europeans (around the 11th century)?
- 📝 What were the last words of Charles the First, and Oliver Cromwell's response after his execution?
- 📝 Is there evidence in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel that supports his "due not to innate differences in the peoples" conclusion?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 Why does the United States keep using "old" date representations and imperial system, while being in the minority?
- 📝 Why is the consensus that WW2 started on September 1, 1939 and not July 7, 1937?
- 📝 Why didn't France and the UK invade Germany in September 1939?
- 📝 Is there any evidence to support the claim that the United States was "suckered into WW1" by Zionists, made by Benjamin Freedman in his 1961 speech?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 Why are the German and French languages so different?
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 Why did LBJ, a staunch segregationist, champion and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill?
- 📝 Why didn't the US and USSR jam each other's early-warning radar?