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72 II. CONVERSION OF SWEDEN (A.D. 8301130).
and holy water are then supposed to have given the ships
a calm and peaceful entrance in the midst of high waves
on each side. The name Sigfrid is English or German,
not Norse, but the substitution of the name Sigurd in the
north for that of Sigfrid or Sifrid in the south is well
known in the case of the hero of the Volsunga Saga and
the
"
Nibelungen Lied."
Some recent historians have doubted the identity of St.
Sigfrid with the Sigurd of Olaf Tryggvason, but, as I
think, on insufficient grounds. It has been said that
Sigfrid is not an English name, but this is a pure mistake.
Bede has much to tell us of an Abbot of Wearmouth, who
bore it in the seventh century (1688), and it was borne
by Bishops of Selsey and Lindsey. It is, indeed,
very common in our annals, and as many as thirty-
six-persons of the name (Sigefrith, etc.), are enumer
ated in Searle s Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum. There
is, therefore, no reason to look to Germany for traces of such
a missionary, or to quote the letter of Archbishop Bruno, of
Querfurt, the apostle of Prussia (997 A.D. 1009 A.D.) to the
Emperor Henry II., which describes the conversion of the
chief (senior) of the Suigii by a bishop whom he does not
name, whom he had sent, together with a monk, Rodbert,
"
beyond the sea." Dean Lundstrom supposes that these
Suigii or Svigii are to be sought in Circassia, near the
Black Sea.17
17
This letter, which exists in a Donatus MS. from Fulda, of the
eleventh century, now in the Landesbibliothek at Cassel, maybe
found in Fr. Miklosich and Fiedler : Slavische Bibliothek, Vol.
ii., p. 307 foil., Wien, 1858. The- passage in question is as
follows (p. 311):
"
Inter hec non lateat regem quod episcopus
noster cum egregio monacho, quem nostis, Rodberto ultra mare
in evangelium Suigis transmiserat. Quomodo venientes nuncii
verissime dixerunt ipsum seniorem Suigiorum, cuius dudum
uxor Christiana erat, gracias deo, baptizavit. Cum quo mille
homines et septem plebes eandem graciam mox ut receperunt.
Quos [quod ed.] ceteri indignati interficere querebant,
"
etc.
See H. G. Voight : Bruno von Querfurt, pp. 289 and 436 n,
Stuttgart, 1907, who supposes this to refer to the conversion of
the King of Sweden. Emil Hildebrand, S. H. 2
,
Vol. ii., p. 75,
1905, also adopted this opinion.
Dean Lundstrom identifies the
"
Suigii" or
"
Svigii" with
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