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Return to Roszel Family Memories
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The Family Ice Age
Long ago and far away in a land of ice and snow, in a time before our family used the written word, legend, myth and fact were pasted down from generation to generation in the oral tradition of story telling. This chapter in the story of our family history starts with a legendary giant who reigned over the great white north and was proclaimed king over the elements.
Countries and borders as we know them today did not exist, feudal kingdoms were controlled by those who could lay claim and had the ability to defend their territory. Borders and boundaries where drawn and redrawn and shifted or changed through the centuries.
In this chapter of our family history we have traced our heritage to around the year 160 a.d. to the ice giant Fornjot. We refer to this 6 generation block of ancestors as The Family Ice Age due to the numerous variations of the names of our ancestors that are translations of ice, snow etc.
In ancient times a person was commonly given a single name and the son of that person would be referred to as that persons son. This is evident in Scandinavian traditional names that today end in son. One of Fornjots sons was Kari and is referred to as Kari Fornjotsson, Kari had a son named Frosti and he was referred to as Frosti Karrasson and so on down through the generations. So what we think of today as a last name would change with each generation.
Since we are dealing with a time before our family used the written word and we did not tote books around, translations into different languages in much latter dates when history was recorded result in different spellings of a persons name or resulted in the same person referred to under different names.
The bloodline of our family seems to have been research by historians and genealogists due to the affiliation with the royal families in England and France several generations down in the dependency tree. Many families in Scandinavia and Europe seem to stem from these roots and in latter years have spread to North America and assorted locations around the world.
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