IN THE AUTUMN of 1029, a five-year-old boy, the future Norwegian (1035– 1047) and Danish (1042– 1047) king Magnús inn goði (the Good), was brought by his father Óláfr Haraldsson to Rus’, where he spent at least five years. Magnús was born in the spring of 1024. His mother was Álfhildr, the king's concubine, a beautiful woman of a noble family. She gave birth to a baby boy one night, and none of his men dared to wake up King Óláfr. The baby was so weak that they decided to baptize him immediately, and the name was given to him by the skald Sigvatr: he “hét hann eptir Karla-Magnúsi konungi” (“called him after King Karla-Magnús”), that is, in honour of the Emperor Charlemagne (Latin Carolus Magnus), since he thought “that he was the best man in the world”: “Þann vissa ek mann beztan í heimi,” says the skald (Hkr 1945, 209– 11; Hkr 2014, 139– 40). The saga of king Magnús the Good has been preserved in several interdependent redactions. Separate chapters are dedicated to Magnús in Ágrip af Noregskonunga sǫgum. In Morkinskinna there is Magnúss saga góða ok Haralds harðráða. Many chapters of Fagrskinna tell about Magnús the Good. In Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla Magnúss saga ins góða is a separate saga. The story of Magnús is also recounted in the Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium by Theodoricus monachus, in the Legendary Saga of St. Óláfr, in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, and in Orkneyinga saga.

We shall begin with a story of Magnús coming to Rus’. We shall consider in detail not the traditional version, according to which Óláfr Haraldsson took his young son with him to Rus’, and then left him at the court of Yaroslav the Wise and his wife Ingigerðr, but the version in Morkinskinna, according to which Yaroslav invites him to be brought up with him at the insistence of Ingigerðr. We shall also consider the embassy of the most noble Norwegians to Rus’ in order to take young Magnús back to Norway and bring him to power, as also described in Morkinskinna. We shall analyze those few data that are available in the sagas about the life of Magnús in Rus’. Finally, we shall discuss Magnús's return to his homeland and the date of this event.