I added that my grandmother, Pitronella Fredrika Peterson, was born in Västergötland in the reign of King Oskar II and that I'm touchy about Swedish history. He said I 'should be! The Swedes are a history-making group and often overlooked, oddly enough.'
Which got me thinking. It's not just the Swedes, it's all Scandinavians, the Peoples of Norden.
How many people outside special fields of study have ever heard of the Swedish or Danish Empires? Except for that brief mention of Leif Erikson in a history class, what do most people know of the explorations of the Scandinavians? Does anyone remember that it was the Swedes who began the Reconquista, driving the Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula?
How many know that Southern Italy was conquered by the descendants of the Dane or Norwegian, Gaange Rolf and his men and that those same descendants of Scandinavians were the backbone of the Crusading Armies?
Who is aware that the founder of what eventually became Kyivan 'Rus was a ninth-century Swede named Rurik the Rus ('Rus' from an archaic Swedish word meaning 'men who row'), and that his descendants ruled the Russian lands until 1598? Or that the very name 'Russia' comes from the 'Rus', who were Swedes?
Even amongst Catholics, who has heard of St Ansgar, Bishop of Hamburg, the 'Apostle of the North', the Frank who began the Christianisation of Scandinavia? Or of St Erik IX Jedvardsson. Lawgiver of Sweden, St Olaf II Haraldsson, Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae, St Knud IV Svendssen, Patron Saint of Denmark, or Jón Arasson, Bishop of Hólar, in Iceland, who was executed for resisting the imposition of the Lutheran heresy during the Deformation?
Outside Scandinavia or communities of the Scandinavian Diaspora, it is true that the history of Scandinavia is totally ignored and neglected.
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