Raum the Old
Raum the Old is a legendary king in Norway in the Hversu Noregr byggdist and in Thorsteins saga Víkingssonar. He was said to have been ugly, as was his daughter, Bryngerd, who was married to King Álf. Indeed, in Old Norse, raumr means a big and ugly person.
In ''Hversu Noregr byggdist''
Raum and his sons
In Heversu Noregr byggdist, Raum is one of the three sons of Nór, the legendary first king of Norway, and succeeds his father as a ruler and ancestor of rulers over southwestern Norway.Raum attended a Yule feast given by Bergfin son of Thrym the Giant of Vermland and bedded Bergfin's sister Bergdís. Bergdís subsequently bore three sons: Björn, Brand, and Álf. Álf was fostered by Bergfin himself and so became known as Finnálf. Björn was kept by his mother and his name was expanded to Jötunbjörn. Brand was sent to his father Raum who dedicated him to the gods, and so he was afterwards known as Gudbrand.
Later Raum married Hild the daughter of Gudröd the Old the son of King Sölvi who first ruled the land now called Sóleyjar.
However the Ynglinga saga says that Sölvi the Old who first cleared Sóleyar lived much later, making this Sölvi to be the father of a second Sölvi, the father of Halfdan Goldtooth, the father of Sólveig or Sölva who married Ólaf Woodcutter. But Af Upplendinga Konungum claims that Olaf's wife Sölva was the sister of King Sölvi the Old.
By his wife Hild, Raum became father of four legitimate sons: Gudröd, Hauk or Höd, Hadding, and Hring.
Descendants of Raum
Descendants of Gudbrand
Gudbrand inherited the valley Gudbrandsdal from his father Raum. King Gudbrand was father of King Audleif, father of King Gudmund, father of Gudbrand who rejected the title of king but called himself Jarl instead, and yet was the most powerful Jarl in the northern lands. Jarl Gudbrand's son was Jarl Geirmund, father of Jarl Hródgeir, father of Gudbrand who rejected the title of Jarl and called himself hersir 'lord' as did his descendants.Descendants of Jötunbjörn
Jötunbjörn the Old inherited Raumaranes Dale from his father King Raum., father of Orm Broken-shell, father of Knatti who had two sons: Thórolf and Ketil Raum. A variant of this genealogy appears at the beginning of the Vatnsdæla saga in which Ketil the Large is the direct son of Orm Broken-shell with no mention of either Knatti or of Ketil's brother Thórolf. Also nothing is said of Jötunbjörn's ancestry, only that he was from the north of Norway.The Hversu then relates that Thórolf was father of Helgi, the father of Bersi, the father of Thormód, the father of Thórlaug who was the mother of Tungu-Odd. In the Landnámabók it is said that two brothers whose ancestry is not given settled the Akraness in Iceland between Kalman's river and Char river. One was Thormod who settled the land to the south of Reymir, and dwelt at Holm; he was the father of Bersi and Geirlaug, the mother of Tungu-Odd. The other was named Ketil. Further information appears in the Landnámabók. Tungu-Odd is a major character in Hænsna-Thóris saga. Geirlaug rather than Thorlaug is the name of Tungu-Odd's mother in all accounts except for that of the Hversu.
Descendants of Finnálf the Old
According to the Hversu, Finnalf inherited the land of East Dale and all the land north of Lake Vænir from the Gaut Elf river north to the Raum Elf river, and that the land was then called Álfheim.Finnálf married Svanhild who was called Gold-feather and was the daughter of Day son of Dayspring by Sun daughter of Mundilfari. Dag as a personification of day and the sun-goddess Sól are mentioned elsewhere, but only the Hversu mentions their daughter. Svanhild bore Finnálf a son named Svan the Red who was father of Sæfari, father of Úlf, father of Álf, father of Ingimund and Eystein.
According to the eddic poem Hyndluljód, Óttar, whose genealogy is the subject of this poem, was son of Innstein, son of Álf the Old, son of Úlf, son of Sæfari, son of Svan the Red. So the Innstein of the Hyndluljód and Eystein of the Hversu are presumably identical.
Descendants of Gudröd
Gudröd, Raum's eldest legitimate son, inherited the largest portion of his father's lands. Gudröd's son was Eystein the Wicked who conquered part of Trondheim and set his son Önund over it. When Önund was killed in a revolt, Eystein made his dog, Saur, king of the territory. The tale is also told more fully as a deed of long ago in the Saga of Hakon the Good in the Heimskringla where Eystein is said to be King of the Uplands in Norway, part of the modern county of Oppland. See Snær for another use of the dog king motif.Descendants of Höd
Höd ruled over Hadeland. Höd was father of Höddbrodd.The Hversu relates that Höddbrodd son of Höd was the father of Hrólf, father of Hrómund Beserk, father of three children: Hámund, Haki, and Gunnlöd.
Hámund was Earl of Hordaland and father of Hrók the Black and Hrók the White. Haki was father of Hródgeir, father of Haki Beserk. Gunnlöd was the mother of Ústein and Innstein. In Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka, the two brothers named Hrók and the brothers Útstein and Instein play prominent roles. This saga names the father of Útstein and Instein as a Jarl named Álf the Old of Hordaland, which is one of Hálf's kingdoms.
Hrók the Black was the father of Gunnlöd the mother of Hrómund Grip's son, the protagonist of Hrómundar saga Gripssonar. Two sons of Hrómund named Björnólf and Hróald appear among the first Norse settlers in Iceland in the Landnámabók and are mentioned in other sagas.
Descendants of Hadding
The Hversu tells that Hadding son of Raum ruled over Haddingjadal and Telemark. He was father of son also named Hadding, who himself was father of another Hadding, father of Högni the Red. The Hversu then comments cryptically that after him the three Haddings took power, that they ruled one after the other, and that Helgi Hadding-prince was one of them.The Haddingjar are otherwise known as two of the sons of Arngrim of which the fullest account is in Hervarar saga and are certainly not the Haddingjar spoken of by the Hversu. Helgi Haddingjaskati is mentioned in the prose epilogue to the eddic poem Helgavida Hundingsbana II which states that Helgi Hundingsbane and his Valkyrie and his lover Sigrún were afterwards reincarnated as Helgi Haddingjaskati and Kára as told in the Káraljód, a poem no longer extant. A version of this tale survives only in Hrómundar saga Gripssonar in which the Haldingjar are two concurrent kings of Sweden and Helgi is their champion. Helgi conquers in part through the magic of his lover, the sorceress Kára, who appears in the form of a swan. When Helgi accidentally kills her, he meets his own doom and the Halding kings flee. Haldingjar seems to a garblings of Haddingjar. The Hversu account probably indicates a version in which both Helgi and the two Haddingjar proper were all three called Haddingjar and ruled in rotation. Also, in the text the name of Helgi's lover actually appears as Cára, which should have been normalized as Kára. But Cára was instead misread and transcribed as Lára in Jónsson and Vilhjálmsson's Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda and so appears in most later discussion.