You have done amazingly well to discover so much. My family were very pleased to get as far back as the 1600's in the UK.
What helped greatly was the luck that a number of ancestor's had been interested in genealogy, done research and made books or writings about it. As I had an interest in it, these books and notes etc. came my way. Some of the ancestors came to Denmark, because of being craftsmen and with useful skills, others came due to trade, yet others because of religious wars and prosecution elsewhere, where Denmark for some was seen as a safe heaven. One came from Sweden as a soldier and then stayed in Denmark once Denmark and Sweden had made peace again. At least that is the outward reasons, inferred later but some adventurous spirit and romance likely also played a role.
As for getting so far back as the 6th century, a question arises of how reliable are the sources as much of it was only written later and with a political purpose in mind. For the Caroligian and Ottonian dynasties, there was a wish to have their genealogies written so as to make the rulers appear to come from a long line of good rulers. For the most part they were written by monks and far from objective. For instance the monk
Widukind of Corvey:
Widukind of Corvey (c. 920–925 – after 973;
Latin Witichindi Saxonis) was a medieval
Saxon chronicler and a monk of monastery of
Corvey in Germany during the middle third of the 10th century. His three-volume
Res gestae Saxonicae sive annalium libri tres is an important chronicle of 10th-century
Germany during the rule of the
Ottonian dynasty.
He started his writing career writing
hagiography, that is to say about the lives of saints:
A
hagiography (
/ˌhæɡiˈɒɡrəfi/; from
Ancient Greek ἅγιος (hágios) 'holy' and
-γραφία (-graphía) 'writing')<a href="
Hagiography - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a> is a
biography of a
saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension,
an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions.
In
Western Europe, hagiography was one of the more important vehicles for the study of inspirational history during the
Middle Ages.
Back to Corvey:
The
Res gestae Saxonicae are significant historical accounts of the times of Otto the Great and Henry the Fowler,
modelled on the works of the Roman historian Sallust and the deuterocanonical Books of the Maccabees.
Widukind wrote as a Saxon, proud of his people and history, beginning his narration not with the
Roman Empire but with a brief synopsis derived from the orally-transmitted history of the Saxons and their struggles with the
Franks, with a terseness that makes his work difficult to interpret.
So not only was Otto, called Otto the Great and his called Henry the Fowler, but the grandfather was called "
Otto, the Illustrious". One wonders why he was called "the Illustrious", but there is no explanation and he appears to have been a pretty ordinary ruler of Saxony if he wasn't a fiction altogether or at least not as he is portrayed. He was also just called Otto I, just like his grandson, Otto the Great, was called Otto I. One would have thought that Otto the Great would have been called Otto II, not to confuse him with his grandfather.
Here is an example of which puts Otto in a positive light:
According to Widukind of Corvey, the "Saxon and Franconian people" offered Otto the
kingship of East Francia after the death of the last Carolingian monarch,
Louis the Child, in 911. Otto did not accept the offer, possibly because he felt the burden of ruling was too heavy for him at his advanced age. Instead, suggesting Duke
Conrad of Franconia. The truthfulness of this report is considered doubtful.
The problem arises as many of the later sources to a large extent views Corvey fairly uncritically because it has been cited so many times and because there were no other sources. Again one is reminded that the victors and those with the power to do so, write history.
Anyway the above is just one example of the problems with going back before year 1000. When I encountered Corvey above, it reminded me of the same problem I encountered while doing genealogy with the Viking/Norse rulers as much was told by
Snorri Sturluson (writing hundreds of years after the events):
Snorri Sturluson (1179 – 23 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, knight, and politician. He was elected twice as
lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the
Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of the
Prose Edda, which is a major source for what is today known about
Norse mythology and
alliterative verse, and
Heimskringla, a history of the
Norse kings that begins with legendary material in
Ynglinga saga and moves through to early medieval
Scandinavian history.
It made me wonder whether his story telling was more objective than the monastic stories relatively speaking, knowing that both are heavily biased. It could be that while Snorri's stories were greatly exaggerated in terms of deeds, it might have been sligthly less politically biased than the monastic histories written in the Middle ages.
