page_title: List of legendary kings of Sweden
section_title: Historicity
hierarchical_section_title: List of legendary kings of Sweden / Yngling dynasty / Historicity
caption_attribution_description: English: Kringlublaðið [the Kringla leaf] is a vellum manuscript leaf, dated c. 1260, the only one to survive from a manuscript called Kringla that was destroyed in the 1728 great fire of Copenhagen. Kringla was well known as the best manuscript of the great set of historical sagas known as Heimskringla, written by the thirteenth-century writer and statesman Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241). The leaf was found in the Royal Library in Stockholm, and is likely to have been in Stockholm from the late seventeenth century. During his state visit in Iceland in 1975 King Carl Gustav XVI presented the manuscript leaf to the Icelandic people for preservation in the National Library. The text to be found on the leaf is from Óláfs saga helga [the saga of King Ólafur the Saint], the longest of Heimskringla's 16 sagas about the kings of Scandinavia.
context_page_description: The legendary kings of Sweden are the legendary rulers of Sweden and the Swedes who preceded Eric the Victorious and Olof Skötkonung, the earliest reliably attested Swedish kings. Though the stories of some of the supposed kings may be embellished tales of local rulers of chiefs that actually existed, modern scholarship overwhelmingly does not consider the legendary kings of Sweden to have been real historical figures. The modern Swedish monarchy considers Eric the Victorious to have been the first King of Sweden.
  In medieval Swedish lists of kings, the figure generally represented as the first king of Sweden is Olof Skötkonung, the first Christian king of Sweden and the first Swedish king to mint coins. Supposed earlier kings are for the most part only attested in Icelandic sagas, sometimes contradictory mixtures of myths and poetry, written in the 11th–13th centuries, several centuries after the events described in them. What is genuine history and what is myth and legend in the sagas is impossible to determine today, and everything contained in them must as such be regarded as legendary, if not fictional.
context_section_description: Sturluson's Ynglinga saga was created far too late to serve as a reliable source in regards to the events and kings it describes, being separated from the supposedly earliest ones by several centuries. Ynglinga saga appears to have been based on an earlier scaldic poem, Ynglingatal, which is quoted at length by Snorri. Ynglingatal is not a reliable source either, though traditionally believed to have been composed at the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century, it might be from as late as the 12th century. Sturluson would have had access to older (now lost) manuscripts when writing the Ynglinga saga, but this does not necessarily corroborate anything that appears in the Ynglinga saga as true. What is genuine history and what is myth and legend is today impossible to determine, and everything contained in the saga must as such be regarded as legendary, if not fictional. Modern scholarship does not see sagas such as the Ynglinga saga as good sources for genuine historical information. As a historical source, the Ynglinga saga is much better used as a source on historiography and society during Sturluson's own time than as a source on Sweden's early history.
  It is possible that the Yngling line of kings is entirely fictional, invented by later Norwegian rulers to assert their right to rule Norway. In the Viking Age and later, Danish rulers repeatedly attempted to conquer Norway and through inventing a lineage that stretched back centuries, the Norwegian rulers may have attempted to demonstrate their inherent right to their lands and to put themselves on the same level as the Danes, who had historical accounts of their ancestors. The Swedish Ynglings might have been invented to glorify the Norwegian kings further, giving them a glorious and mythical past associated with Uppsala. Most of the sagas known today, the Ynglinga saga included, were composed during a relatively brief period, from the 12th to 13th century, a time when royal power was being consolidated in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Their creation might thus stem from political and social needs (i. e. justifying the rule of a dynasty), rather than a desire to tell genuine history.
  In addition to having been written centuries after the events they describe, the sagas have numerous other problems which make them unsuitable to use as sources. Many of the elements of the Ynglinga saga appear to be based on later, documented, events and people in Scandinavia. For instance, the figure of Aun, described as being driven from Uppsala and taking up court in Västergötland instead, is similar to the historical Swedish king Inge the Elder (r. c. 1079–1084, 1087–1105), who was driven from Uppsala into Västergötland in the 11th century. The Ynglinga saga might also be an example of anti-royal social commentary rather than an attempt to tell history. Many of the kings in the saga are overshadowed by their contemporary vassals and wives, and they are rarely shown in a positive light. The inglorious deaths of many of the Swedish Ynglings; with examples such as murder, burning to death, drowning in mead and being "hag-ridden" to death, might be an attempt by Sturluson to say that the kings who ruled Norway in his time and claimed Yngling descent were not to be taken seriously. Though descent from figures such as Odin and Njord, gods in Norse mythology, might seem a prestigious origin, it would be problematic in early medieval Norway since the kings were Christian and their supposed ancestors were worshipped as Pagan gods. Their addition to the saga might thus have been another attempt by Sturluson to undermine royal ideology.
  If some of the Ynglings were real historical figures, they would have ruled during the Migration Period (c. 375–550) and the subsequent Vendel Period (c. 550–790), predating the Viking Age. Historical evidence of early geopolitics in Scandinavia suggests that larger political structures, kingdoms such as medieval Sweden, Norway and Denmark, did not form until the late Viking Age. The centralization of power under one monarch is believed to have resulted fr
caption: A surviving page of the Heimskringla
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