A while back I chanced upon a delightful site with a full genealogy for one of my family lines, which traced them right back to one of William the Conqueror's henchmen and beyond. The line found its way to Norse royalty and hence all the way back to ... you've guessed it ... WODEN!
Doesn't come much better than that, does it?
I regret to say, though, that I found some of the links in his chain more than a little flaky, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Alas, the site disappeared before I could take it all down for later investigation. I'm solid on that line into the 17th century, and you never know ... he might have had some useful leads to follow up which would have given me reliable evidence back into the 16th. But beyond that? NAH ...
(I did try the experiment of ordering the Internet, in the name of my mighty and illustrious ancestor Woden, to reinstate the site ... but nothing happened. So I'm guessing there was something wrong in his research somewhere; because if he was right, that surely should have worked, shouldn't it? I mean, what's the point in being descended from a deity if you can't even call a single rotten website back into existence?)
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