Olaf the White was a viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

 sea-king

Sea-King

A Sea King was the Viking name for a powerful pirate chieftain.They could be actual kings of Sweden , Denmark or a Norwegian kingdom, and sons of kings, such as Refil, but they could also be men "without roof" like Hjörvard the Ylfing.In the Norse sagas, such men without roof could be so powerful...

 who lived in the latter half of the 9th century.

Olaf was born around 840, possibly in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. His father was the Hiberno-Norse warlord Ingjald Helgasson

Ingjald Helgasson

Ingjald Helgasson was a Hiberno-Norse chieftain of the ninth century AD. According to the Landnamabok he was the son of Helgi, the son of Olaf, the son of Gudrod, the son of Halfdan Hvitbeinn; he was thus distantly related to the Yngling kings of Vestfold and later Norway...

. Olaf is described in some sources as a descendent of Ragnar Lodbrok

Ragnar Lodbrok

Ragnar Lodbrok was a Norse legendary hero from the Viking Age who was thoroughly reshaped in Old Norse poetry and legendary sagas.-Life as recorded in the sagas:...

 (according to the Eyrbyggja Saga

Eyrbyggja saga

Eyrbyggja saga is one of the Icelanders' sagas. The name means the saga of the inhabitants of Eyrr, which is a farm on Snæfellsnes on Iceland. The name is slightly misleading as it deals also with the clans of Þórsnes and Alptafjörðr. The most central character is Snorri Þorgrímsson or Snorri goði...

, his father's mother Thora was the daughter of Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, one of Ragnar's sons). This is problematic given that Ragnar likely lived until the 860s.

Olaf was named King of Dublin around 853; during part of his reign he may have ruled together with his kinsman Ivar the Boneless

Ivar the Boneless

Ivar Ragnarsson nicknamed the Boneless , was a Viking leader and by reputation also a berserker. By the late 11th century he was known as a son of the powerful Ragnar Lodbrok, ruler of an area probably comprising parts of modern-day Denmark and Sweden.-Invader:In the autumn of AD 865, with his...

(according to Irish sources only). Olaf married Aud the Deep-minded

Aud the Deep-Minded

Aud the Deep-Minded was an earlier settler in Iceland.-Biography:...

 (Auðr) , daughter of Ketil Flatnose

Ketil Flatnose

Ketill Bjǫrnsson, nicknamed Flatnose , was a Norwegian hersir of the 9th century.-Biography:Ketill Bjǫrnsson was the son of Bjorn Grimmson. He was from Romsdal , a valley in the county of Møre og Romsdal, between Nordmøre and Sunnmøre...

, the ruler of the Hebrides

Hebrides

The Hebrides comprise a widespread and diverse archipelago off the west coast of Scotland. There are two main groups: the Inner and Outer Hebrides. These islands have a long history of occupation dating back to the Mesolithic and the culture of the residents has been affected by the successive...

, according to Icelandic traditions only (Landnámabók

Landnámabók

Landnámabók , often shortened to Landnáma, is a medieval Icelandic written work describing in considerable detail the settlement of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries AD.-Landnáma:...

, Laxdæla Saga). Irish fragments provide a different genealogy (Godfred, Ragnall, Godfred, Godfred, Fragm. 127, 195), and his wife was the daughter of King Aedh.

Auðr & Olaf had a son, Thorstein the Red

Thorstein the Red

Thorstein the Red or Thorstein Olafsson was a viking chieftain who flourished in late ninth-century Scotland. He was born around 850 AD and was the son of Olaf the White, King of Dublin, and Aud the Deep-minded, who was the daughter of Ketil Flatnose...

 (Þorsteinn rauðr), who attempted to conquer Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 in the 870s. At some point Olaf had a falling-out with the clan of Ketil and sent Auðr and their son back to her father's house. According to Landnámabók, Olaf and Þorsteinn rauðr were both killed in the British Isles.

Thorstein the Red was married to Þuriðr Eyvindardóttir austmann, and they had several children: Gróa, Álof, Þorgerðr, Þórhildr, Vigdís, Ósk, Ólafr feilan, ancestor of Ari Fróði, author of Landnámabók. The family was related to the Vinland

Vinland

Vinland was the name given to an area of North America by the Norsemen, about the year 1000 CE.There is a consensus among scholars that the Vikings reached North America approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus...

 explorers and the Sturlung family.

Olaf may be identical with the Viking warlord Amlaíb Conung

Amlaíb Conung

Amlaíb Conung was a Norse or Norse-Gael leader in Ireland and Scotland in the years after 850. Together with his brothers Ímar and Auisle he appears frequently in the Irish annals....

, who according to Irish sources was killed in 871/2 by Causantín mac Cináeda, king of Alba

Alba

Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is cognate to Alba in Irish and Nalbin in Manx, the two other Goidelic Insular Celtic languages, as well as similar words in the Brythonic Insular Celtic languages of Cornish and Welsh also meaning Scotland.- Etymology :The term first appears in...

. However, both Gwyn Jones

Gwyn Jones (author)

Gwyn Jones was a Welsh novelist and story writer, and a scholar and translator of Nordic literature and history.Jones was a native of New Tredegar, Monmouthshire...

and Peter Hunter Blair dispute this identification.