Folke Filbyter
Encyclopedia
House of Bjelbo
The House of Bjelbo , also known as the House of Folkung , was an Ostrogothian Swedish family that provided for several medieval Swedish bishops, jarls and kings.- Name and origin :...
clan
Norse clans
The Scandinavian clan or ætt was a social group based on common descent or on the formal acceptance into the group at a þing.-History:...
. Since Folke is said to have been the great-great-grandfather of Birger Brosa
Birger Brosa
Birger Brosa , jarl of Sweden 1174-1202, d. 9 January 1202 on Visingsö, was a son of Bengt Snivil and a member of the powerful House of Bjälbo...
, he would have lived in the 11th century.
His cognomen Filbyter is believed to mean "foal biter" and refers to a man who castrates colts with his teeth.
Folke Filbyter in Fiction
- Folke Filbyter appears as a tragic scorned father in Folkungaträdet (1905), by the Swedish writer Verner von HeidenstamVerner von HeidenstamCarl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam was a Swedish poet and novelist, a laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1912...
. In Heidenstam's work, Folke has returned home to Sweden from many questionable acts during his Viking expeditions and settling down he founds the estate Folketuna. There he has three children with a dwarfish woman and although they are wealthy they live in the same dirty poverty as their thrallThrallThrall was the term for a serf or unfree servant in Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age.Thralls were the lowest in the social order and usually provided unskilled labor during the Viking era.-Etymology:...
s. Two of the sons depart for adventures in Russia while the third son kidnaps a girl who bears him a son before dying in childbirth. Folke is an atheist who does not hesitate to destroy both the idols of the old faith and those of the new faith. When his remaining son converts to Christianity, he gives his little child to an itinerant preacher. Folke cannot accept that his grandson and heir has disappeared, and so he departs searching for his grandson. Eventually, Folke finds both his grandson and the two sons who had gone abroad. The reunion is tragic and the self-sacrificing, humiliated and scorned Folke exclaims "the love of your hearts, my children, you cannot give me, and that was all that I ever asked for.
- Folke Filbyter also appears in Frans G. BengtssonFrans Gunnar BengtssonFrans Gunnar Bengtsson was a Swedish novelist, essayist, poet and biographer. He was born in Tossjö in Skåne and died at Ribbingsfors Manor in northern Västergötland.-Literary career:...
's The Long ShipsThe Long ShipsThe Long Ships or Red Orm is a best-selling Swedish novel written by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson . The novel is divided into two parts, published in 1941 and 1945, with two books each....
, published in the 1940s.