Halsten Stenkilsson

Halsten Stenkilsson, English exonym: Alstan^[1][2] (Old Icelandic: Hallstein^[3]) was a king of Sweden, son of King Stenkil and a Swedish princess. He became king after his father Stenkil's death (1066), and he may have ruled together with his brother Inge the Elder.^[4][5][6] The date of his death is not known.^[5]

Little is known of his time as king.^[5] In a scholia in the work of Adam of Bremen, he is reported to have been elected king after the death of two pretenders,^[5] but deposed after a short while.^[5][6] That he ruled together with his brother Inge has some support from a papal letter from 1081, by Pope Gregory VII, which refers to two kings with the initials A and I, and where they are called kings of Västergötland^[5] (rege wisigothorum^[7]). However, the king "A" could also be Håkan the Red.^[8] His co-rulership with his brother Inge is also mentioned in the Hervarar saga.^[4] In the regnal list of the Westrogothic law, he is said to have been courteous and cheerful, and whenever a case was submitted to him, he judged fairly,^[5][6] and this was why Sweden mourned his death.^[5] He was the father of the co-rulers Philip and Inge the Younger.^[4][5][6]

The Hervarar saga, which is one of the few sources about the kings of this time, has the following to tell:

Notes and references

1. ↑ Adam (von Bremen); Adam of Bremen; Francis Joseph Tschan; Timothy Reuter (2002-04-01). History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. Columbia University Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-231-12575-8. 
2. ↑ William Russell; Charles Coote (1822). The history of modern Europe: with an account of the decline & fall of the Roman Empire; and a view of the progress of society, from the rise of the modern kingdoms to the peace of Paris in 1763; in a series of letters from a nobleman to his son. A. Small. p. 140. 
3. 1 2 Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, Guðni Jónsson's og Bjarni Vilhjálmsson's edition at «Norrøne Tekster og Kvad».
4. 1 2 3 4 The Saga of Hervör and Heithrek, in Stories and Ballads of the Far Past, translated from the Norse (Icelandic and Faroese), by N. Kershaw. Cambridge at the University Press, 1921.
5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The article Halsten in Nordisk familjebok (1909).
6. 1 2 3 4 "Halsten", Nationalencyklopedin 
7. ↑ Kaliff, A. (2001) Gothic Connections, Contacts between eastern Scandinavia and the southern Baltic coast 1000BC-500AD. Occasional Papers in Archaeology 26. Uppsala. p. 16.
8. ↑ Inge in Nationalencyklopedin