To follow the men's fashion of the time, Sweyn I of Denmark went down in history as a "Beard"
Sweyn I of Denmark (C. 969 - 1014), Viking leader, son of Harald Blue Tooth and father of Canute the Great, king of Denmark, England and parts of Norway, he went down in history as the Beard.
Do you know the reason for this nickname?
Because of a men's fashion that raged in the Middle Ages in that area of the world and which the monarch followed to the letter with great commitment, it seems.
We have scant and controversial news about Sweyn I's life.
Numerous historians even believe that the sources at our disposal are in many places entirely fictitious, almost certainly for reasons of political expediency.
It seems that after 1000 Sweyn was the protagonist of various raids in English territory , officially as revenge for the killing of Danish inhabitants in a sort of ethnic cleansing which, among others, was also his sister Grunilde.
According to some, however, this very serious episode would have been only a pretext.
Sweyn needed money and therefore if he would have taken it by collecting the ransoms paid by the inhabitants of those localities to avoid other similar raids.
The fashion of making a line in the middle of the beard to divide it exactly in two, the king probably saw it in England and copied it.
Hence the epithet of Barbaforcuta ( Photo from :wikipedia.org).