Since I couldn't get back to sleep this morning, I decided to do a bout of wild speculation instead.
There's ongoing work to check the DNA of Ganger-Rolf's heirs in Rouen to ascertain their ancestry. I started wondering about the other side of the question: Do we have someone to compare them against?
The result is an analysis of whether we have male-line descendants of Ragnvald Mørejarl in the Geni database that could be tested. It turns out that there are - but they're all descended from a single ancestor around 1500, and this ancestor does not have documentation on Geni.
Analysis here: https://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Descent_from_Ragnvald_M%C3%B8rejarl
Take it as entertainment! (unless you have a friend in this family group that could be convinced to test!)
Fun trace, with good old 29th ggf Ragnvald Eysteinsson...and Uncle Nils Havardsson...again all my lines go back through multiple layers of daughters as there are 7 consecutive generations of daughters between Hakun Jallur and Sigurd Gautesson Gaite..so my Y is out of the game LOL....and even though Eiliv Torsteinsson is listed in Geni as 26th GGF, it is a vastly different route that goes through that problematic Klevar/Lindhein corridor (for me due to Tone Torbjornsdatter Sodheim & Reine).
Managed to sort out a parent conflict (I think) on the path, so the group I found now has two more levels of ancestors, and there are more branches to pursue - the new ones all go through Gaute på Ornes, Ænes, who is someone most genealogists have encountered before.
The nice thing about Geni "facts" is that they change all the time :-)
Sandy Burnfield Somerled, “King of the Isles” is currently listed with an Irish-looking father-line ancestry. Is there an alternative theory that has him as a son of Ragnvald, and where does it diverge from the listed line and connect to Ragnvald's line?
Sandy Burnfield as in y-dna haplogroup? The profile mentions R1a1 (=R-M459), but that is a group that is old enough to have had individuals travelling around a *lot* (14.000 years according to https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-M459/).
So there's no *specific* story of Somerled's ancestors that connects him to Ragnvald?
The Y DNA hapkogroup linked to Somerled's line is quite specific and is shared by all the Clan Donald Chiefs now living and many others in Clans Finald, Dougal, McAllister, McInnis and others. These Chiefs and there families are related to other Norse in Scotland and Ureland and Scandavia. Somerled is a Norse name and is of Norse "aristocratuc" origin and is likely to have had ancestire especially in Orkney and Shetland eg Ragnvald's relative the Jarl of Orkney. Direct genetic links not yet oroved that far back
This may be of interest as well as the historical and other stuff on this site http://www.clan-donald-usa.org/index.php/dna-layout/13-dna-project/...
And this as well as other historical stuff http://www.clan-donald-usa.org/index.php/dna-before-somerled
Thanks - this page indicates that his likely haplogroup was FGC11892 YP326 / 6777158 - I've noted that in the profile page of Somerled, “King of the Isles” .