towards an introduction

Towards an introduction
Ethnic pride is stupid.  Especially for Scandinanvians. 
The point was driven home when I encountered a book purporting to rank the 100 most influential Jews in history.  The top 5, as I recall (I might be off on the order) were: Moses, Jesus, Einstein, Marx and Freud.  A similar book charts the greatest Italians.  Not quite as impressive as the Jews.  But between the Roman empire and the Renaissance, (and radio) the Italians seem to have produced their disproportionate number of geniuses.  (Galileo was the top wop.)
Despite my disdain for ethnic pride, when I saw these books, I thought "Why no such book about my own people? Who are the 100 greatest Scandinavians?"
I looked into it.  The depressing answer seems to be that there haven't been that many. "I'll be lucky," I thought, "if I can find 78."

This is a work in progress.  It represents my effort so far to list and rank history's 78 most important and influential Scandinavians.  I will attempt to write a short biography of each, assess their achievements, good or ill, on the model of the above-mentioned books on history's outstanding Jews and Italians.  I hope it will amount to a book itself, but for the moment, this project's home is my blog.  
So far what I have is a list.  For the moment, they're in roughly chronological order.  When I've determined the final 78, I'll rank them in order of their importance, to the best of my ability. 
If you can think of a worthy candidate not yet on the list, I will be most grateful if you let me know.  A couple of rules, however. 
(1)  The individual must be historically well attested.  It's possible, even probable, that Wotan, Thor, et cetera were kings or heroes of ancient Scandinavia euhemerized into gods--but we don't know, so they don't qualify. 
(2) Finns are not Scandinavians.