Yaroslav I of Kiev

   Other names for Yaroslav were Jarisleif "the Lame" and Yaroslav I "the Wise" of Kiev.

  Research Notes:

Possibly not the father of Agatha, the wife of Edward the Exile.

From Wikipedia - Yaroslav I the Wise :

Yaroslav I the Wise (c. 978 , Kiev -20 February 1054 , Kiev ) (East Slavic: ; Christian name: George; Old Norse : Jarizleifr) was thrice Grand Prince of Novgorod and Kiev , uniting the two principalities for a time under his rule. During his lengthy reign, Kievan Rus' reached a zenith of its cultural flowering and military power.

Early years of Yaroslav's life are enshrouded in mystery. He was one of the numerous sons of Vladimir the Great , presumably his second by Rogneda of Polotsk , although his actual age (as stated in the Primary Chronicle and corroborated by the examination of his skeleton in the 1930s) would place him among the youngest children of Vladimir. It has been suggested that he was a child begotten out of wedlock after Vladimir's divorce with Rogneda and his marriage to Anna Porphyrogeneta , or even that he was a child of Anna Porphyrogeneta herself. Yaroslav figures prominently in the Norse Sagas under the name of Jarisleif the Lame; his legendary lameness (probably resulting from an arrow wound) was corroborated by the scientists who examined his relics...

<<b>>Family life and posterity<</B>>
In 1019, Yaroslav married Ingegerd Olofsdotter , daughter of the king of Sweden , and gave Ladoga to her as a marriage gift. There are good reasons to believe that before that time he had been married to a woman named Anna, of disputed extraction.[citation needed ]

In the Saint Sophia Cathedral , one may see a fresco representing the whole family: Yaroslav, Irene (as Ingigerd was known in Rus), their five daughters and five sons. Yaroslav married three of his daughters to foreign princes who lived in exile at his court: Elizabeth to Harald III of Norway (who had attained her hand by his military exploits in the Byzantine Empire ); Anastasia to the future Andrew I of Hungary , and the youngest daughter Anne of Kiev married Henry I of France and was the regent of France during their son's minority. Another daughter may have been the Agatha who married Edward the Exile , heir to the throne of England and was the mother of Edgar Ætheling and St. Margaret of Scotland .


Yaroslav had one son from the first marriage (his Christian name being Ilya), and 6 sons from the second marriage. Apprehending the danger that could ensue from divisions between brothers, he exhorted them to live in peace with each other. The eldest of these, Vladimir of Novgorod , best remembered for building the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod , predeceased his father. Three other sons-Iziaslav , Sviatoslav , and Vsevolod -reigned in Kiev one after another. The youngest children of Yaroslav were Igor of Volynia and Vyacheslav of Smolensk .

Yaroslav married Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden, daughter of Olov II Skotkonung King of Sweden and Unknown, in 1019. (Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden was born about 1001 and died on 10 Feb 1050.)