Jacob Holdt - my family roots 

My brothers and I bury our father in his religios gown
My brothers and I bury our father -
and with him a long genealogical line of clergymen


Most interesting on my genealogy pages :

New: Completely interactive family tree
with all our 10,463 ancestors and a few of their famous siblings. You can make searches for e.g. bishops, popes, Muslims, pharaohs, Biblical or murdered ancestors or how our forefathers themselves claimed to descend from their Gods!

 

Distinguished World figures
Isaiah - prophet of the Bible - our 1st cousin 89 times removedHow we descend from famous Biblical persons, our relationship to influential people such as Muhammad, people who spoke with Jesus and St. Paul as well as people who spoke with Plato, Aristotle and Socrates who helped shape modern thinking.

 

Saints and the popes who canonized them
The Holy Bridget - our 18th great-grandmother
So far I have found 30 saints and popes as direct ancestors and hundreds as cousins of my children. But their lives were not all very "saintly" as you will see and reveal more about the power struggles of the Vatican.

 

Distinguished Scandinavian figures
Grundtvig - influential Danish hymn writer and philosopher
This is mostly of interest to Scandinavians : - how my children are related to 35 of our greatest writers, scientists, politicians and heroes such as Grundtvig, Blicher, Niels Bohr, "Tordenskjold" etc.

 

Four distinguished Americans
Walt Disney
To amuse my many American friends I include my family's relationship to 4 famous Americans: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and .......well..... Walt Disney!

 

Our 423 castles and manor houses

Vibeke and Lalou in front of the old castle Glimmingehus in Sweden - once owned by Vibeke's 10th great-grandfatherSince almost all European castles have been in "our" possession at one time I am trying to list them all with the idea of using them as overnight accommodations on my lecturing tours! For of what practical use is genealogy if not to have a little fun with?  Here my wife Vibeke and our daughter Lalou are seen at the old castle Glimmingehus in Sweden - once owned by Vibeke's 10th great-grandfather.


Daniel and Lalou's great Internet Family Tree

In this handmade family tree you can click your way almost 4,000 years back in history to the Second Intermediate Period among Egypt's pharaohs and high priests.

Descendants from the Holdt family from Løgumkloster

Photo album of our family members
Hundreds of family pictures from the last 100 generations.
 



Royal lines
 
For genealogists these are the easiest to research. Yet they can be quite interesting - enabling you to get way back in time and forcing you to take a closer look at what you learned - or more often - didn't learn in school. 
Daniel and Lalou have so far 987 kings, 98 pharaohs, 115 emperors and 11 Grand Dukes as direct great-grand fathers. Here are how they are related to some of them. (Most I found after I made these web pages in 1997 just as many minor faults have since been corrected on my computer, but not yet on the web pages). By clicking on their blue names you jump right to their blue blood lines in our family tree where you can see how exactly they are related to our family today - and perhaps to your own family...... 
 

Emperors of the Roman, Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires 
11 emperors and 9 empresses and princesses 

Pharaohs and High Priests of Ancient Egypt
40 pharaohs, 4 high priests and 18 queens and princesses

Royalty of Judea, Israel, Mitanni and the Hittites
12 kings and 3 queens and princesses

Royalty in Ancient Greater Persia
34 kings and 11 queens and princesses

Grand Dukes and Czars of Russia and Novgorod 
11 grand dukes and 8 princes and princesses 

Danish Royalty 
11 kings, 4 queens and 6 princes and princesses 

Early Swedish Royalty 
18 kings, 7 queens and 11 princes and princesses 

Early Norwegian Royalty 
7 kings, 3 queens and 2 princes and princesses 

Early English and Irish Royalty 
15 kings, 6 queens and 3 princesses 

Royalty of Burgundy, Brittany and the Franks 
33 kings, 7 queens and 3 princes and princesses 

Hungarian, Polish and other Royalty 
28 kings, 3 queens and 19 princes and princesses 

Armenian and Iberian (Georgian) Royalty
37 kings and 5 queens and princesses

Distinguished citizens of Ancient Rome 
37 ancestors - among them  Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony 

Royalty and Gods in Greek and Roman Mythology - such as our really live forefathers claimed to descend from them:
3 Gods, 7 kings and several heroes from Homer's "The Illiad"

Noble lines 
Behind the many royal lines there is naturally even more nobility. When researching Swedish ancestors around year 1500 I found to my astonishment that 11 of them had died on the same day. When I realized they were executed by Danish King Christian II in the Stockholm blood bath I discovered their nobility and traced their lines back to early Swedish kings. Almost half of the members of our family tree are now Swedish nobility from 1000-1500. You can find them in the
ancestor index or in Daniel and Lalou's Ancestor Report.
A complete listing of all our 10, 463 family members - with dates and locations of their birth and death.under capitalized names such as STURE, TROLLE, GYLDENSTIERNA, OXENSTIERNA etc. 

Peasant lines 
These were the most challenging since I had to dig up everything myself in church books, land records etc. with many trips to Danish and Norwegian State Archives. On the Norwegian side I have traced two branches back almost to year 1500 and actually found my children's live 12th grand cousins - still working with their cows on a mountain slope near Voss - 500 years after we "lost" close touch with each other. It was a wonderful family reunion! 

The oldest peasant I have been able to find in Denmark is Grumme from 1390. He lived 10 miles from where I grew up and was like me quite a rebel. He was severely punished for rebelling against Queen Margrethe I. 
We hope our present Queen Margrethe II doesn't hold that against our family. She is my children's 24th grand cousin, but unfortunately she doesn't know it! 

Presently I have only written about Grumme and other interesting family members in Danish. So this genealogy home page is still under construction! 

To exchange genealogical information, please contact me: Jacob Holdt 

 

 



Other pages under  this menu:

2. A political interpretation of who I am
3. My nuclear family
4. My work in the Third World
5. My writings - with samples
7.
My live friends
8. My dead friends - a virtual cemetery
9. My joke collection


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