David
Name shared by David King of Scots and the Biblical David, attested across 2 Norse sources.
David appears in two Norse sources in distinct contexts. The Orkneyinga Saga records that "David, the King of Scots, died, and his son Malcolm was made king. He was quite a child when he succeeded his father" (The Orkneyinga Saga, Of King Eystein). The Gesta Danorum references David's wife in a comparative note on the folk-tale motif of dressing up a dummy to enable escape -- "the device, as old as David's wife, of dressing up a dummy (here a basket with a dog inside, covered outside with clothes), while the hero escapes" (Gesta Danorum, Folk-Tales).
The two sources use the name David in entirely different registers. The Orkneyinga Saga's David is a specific historical figure -- the King of Scots whose death created a succession crisis. The Gesta Danorum's David is the Biblical king, invoked as a literary comparison point for a narrative device found across Germanic legend. That both references survive under a single entity heading reflects the common Norse practice of recording figures by name without further disambiguation. The historical David of Scotland and the Biblical David of the Psalms occupy very different narrative worlds, but both entered the Norse literary record.
Appears in: Beings, Cross-Source Entities, Entities in Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx, Celtic Tradition
On trail: Cross-Source Bridges, Genealogies