Helena (wife of Inge the Elder)

[1] However, an older source, a Danish royal genealogy from c. 1194, gives another name: "The abovementioned Christina, the grandmother of Valdemar [I], was the daughter of the Swedish King Inge and Queen Helena".

Alternatively, however, they have been assumed to be one and the same person;[3] the maiden Elin, to Christian foreigners spelled as Helena in Latin, sister to Sweyn.

Inge is well known as the king who defeated the Swedish pagans in the final stages of a religious strife that took place in Sweden between about 1020 and the 1080s.

To a large extent his faction abolished freedom of religion by suppressing old ritual practices and requiring the population to profess the Christian faith.

In that case she would have been convinced, willingly or by force, to submit to the Christian faith and convert, receiving the name Helena by her christening.

After the defeat of the pagans, she founded Sweden's first known nunnery, the Benedictine Vreta Abbey in Östergötland, jointly with her spouse, some time between c. 1090[7] and c. 1100.

[8] All these East Geatic donations to the convent form a landmark in Swedish medieval history, since no monastery existed in the kingdom before.

This person was the son of Prince Ingvar Vittfarne, great-grandson of King Erik Segersäll of Sweden, which would make Maer a third cousin of her spouse.