Wulfstan Hrafnsson

Wulfstan Hrafnsson is an itinerant skald, born in Dyflin (Dublin) in AD 877.  He is a younger son, born roughly in the middle of his sibling birth-order, and largely had to make his own way in the world.  His father, called Hrafn, was a Norwegian merchant who settled in Dublin in the first decades after its founding as a Norse colony in 841.  Trading meant travel, and the merchant developed a partnership with an English merchant in Jorvik (York).  The Englishman had a daughter of suitable age, and Hrafn married her to cement their business contract; thus the odd combination of Wulfstan's English given name and Norse patronymic.  Being of mixed parentage and the son of a merchant house in a major centre of both trade and learning exposed the young Wulfstan to a wide array of literatures in several languages and offered opportunities for travel, in particular between Ireland and Yorkshire, but also to other trading centres in the northeastern Atlantic.  

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Throughout his career, Wulfstan has served a number of lords in different parts of his world and travelled extensively, collecting the poems, songs and stories of places he visits and people he meets, and adding them to his repertoire along with the established literature of his parent cultures and his own compositions.