He is reported to have had legs as soft as cartilage (lacking bones), so that he was unable to walk and had to be carried about on a shield. Of historical personages the author knows of only one of whom we have a vague suspicion that he (Ivar) suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta.
The disease is a dominant congenital disorder that causes the bones to become extremely fragile and is most frequently caused by a defect in the gene that produces collagen, an important building block of bone. Knud Seedorf wrote of his theory: The Danish historian Knud Seedorf enlivened this debate with the convincing theory that the signs and symptoms of Ivar’s condition, as described in the Scandinavian sagas, are consistent with ‘brittle bone disease’. The origin of the nickname ‘boneless’ is uncertain and historians have long been arguing over what it actually means.
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