[5] Although in good enough health to have travelled from the far side of the kingdom where he had been on business with the king, he was considered already 'old and feeble' in the story of the legend of Waltham Holy Cross in the first half of the 1030s.
The account relates that Tovi loaded the life-sized cross onto a cart, but the oxen refused to move until he mentioned another of his estates at Waltham in Essex where he already had a hunting lodge.
'Thurkill the Sacristan', an eyewitness to the episode, told of the cross giving a sign foretelling the death of Harold at the Battle at Hastings in 1066, as recounted by the Canon of Waltham who was the author of De Inventione Sancte Crucus Nostre in the 12th century.
It is possible that Tovi died, simply left court to return to his estates, or was exiled following the dynastic pendulum swing back in favour of the native born Edward the Confessor in the early 1040s.
[3] Tovi's contemporary and new father-in-law Osgod Clapa, who appears to have been in opposition to Edward the Confessor's succession and led an unsuccessful revolt, was outlawed around 1046, later apparently to die in exile.
The root and meaning of the Tovi name is very ancient, with the clearest link for an older origin being found in the dedication on the Sønder Vissing Runestone.
Later associations with Thor seen throughout the internet, in heraldry and publications, appear to have arisen not from evidence but from more modern speculations and probable confusion from the simplifications of multiple Norse deities.
The dominance of Odin and Thor in the Norse pantheon coincides with the time that monotheistic religions such as Christianity were influencing and challenging the polytheism of the older cultures in Northern European regions.
The letter V, often used as evidence that Tovi derives from a diminutive of a longer name was a Latinisation of the Rune ᚠ and Medieval additions to the Younger Futharc duplicated the use of some of the 16 Runic characters used in the 9th to 11th centuries.
1066 in the Domesday records as land holder in parts of Gloucestershire[19] However an Earl Tovi's presence in Denmark during 1047 adds a personal dimension to the conflict in the region at that time.
Magnus the Good is attributed to have been responsible for the destruction of parts of Wendland; most notable in this instance as the heartland of the legendary Jomsvikings and ancestral homeland of Tove of the Obotrites.