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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2001-05 > 0989088455


From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <>
Subject: Re: Rollo (was: Where is, or was, Moeri?)
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 12:47:35 -0600
References: <f8.9d34b8d.2825802b@aol.com>


wrote:
>
> Thank you Stewart for these important details! Now that I know the facts
> concerning Rollo, I am perplexed by the Norman Theorists ready acceptance of
> the Norwegian ancestry for Rollo. Stewart, have you any thoughts as to why
> most scholars follow the Norwegian line and not the Danish?

The accepted value of Dudo has fluctuated with time. By the
middle of the last century, he had fallen into disfavor, with
impossible details found in the work being seen as tainting the
remainder. Likewise, the saga sources were vieved as containing
ruth, even if the details with which this truth was elaborated
may be badly supported. (Why they would give the benefit of the
doubt to the sagas in the same circumstances in which they
condemned Dudo is harder to answered. Perhaps it is a view of
intent - an inacurate historian can't be trusted, but a
romanticist might be drawing from reality.) In recent years,
there has been a growing acceptance that the sagas are deeply
flawed, while Dudo, in spite of his errors, is largely accurate,
but the genealogical community has been slow to adopt this
growing trend among historians.

taf

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