Sigrid the Haughty

Common card · No. 363740

Sigrid the Haughty (Old Norse: Sigríðr (hin) stórráða; Swedish: Sigrid Storråda) is a Scandinavian queen appearing in Norse sagas. Sigrid is named in several late and sometimes contradictory Icelandic sagas composed generations after the events the stories describe, but there is no reliable, historical evidence attesting to the veracity of her depiction in those tales. She is reported by Heimskringla to have been the wife of Eric the Victorious of Sweden, as being sought after by Olaf Tryggvasson, and then married to Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark. Snorri Sturluson, however, says that Sweyn was married not to Sigrid but to a different woman. It is unclear if the figure of Sigrid the Haughty was a real historical person. She appears primarily in late Icelandic sagas composed generations after the events. Scholars such as Birgitta Fritz consider her largely apocryphal, with saga accounts possibly drawing on folk motifs or conflating multiple women. Some recent revisionist modern historians have...

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