The Varangians

In God's Holy Fire

Sverrir Jakobsson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030537975
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

This book is the history of the Eastern Vikings, the Rus and the Varangians, fromtheir earliest mentions in the narrative sources to the late medieval period, whenthe Eastern Vikings had become stock figures in Old Norse Romances. Acomparison is made between sources emanating from different cultures, such asthe Roman Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate and its successor states, the earlykingdoms of the Rus and the high medieval Scandinavian kingdoms. A keyelement in the history of the Rus and the Varangians is the fashioning of identitiesand how different cultures define themselves in comparison and contrast withthe other. This book offers a fresh and engaging view of these medieval sources, and a thorough reassessment of established historiographical grand narrativeson Scandinavian peoples in the East.

Bibliographical Essays

Chapter 1

The standard work on the history of the Varangians is still Sigfús Blöndal, Væringjasaga. Saga norrænna, rússneskra og enskra hersveita í þjónustu Miklagarðskeisara á miðöldum, Reykjavík: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja, 1954, or the more widely known English translation: Varangians of Byzantium. An Aspect of Byzantine Military History, ed. Benedikt S. Benedikz, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Another well-known overview is H.R. Ellis Davidson, The Viking Road to Byzantium, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976. For works challenging this view see especially Roland Scheel, Skandinavien und Byzanz. Bedingungen und Konsequenzen mittelalterlicher Kulturbeziehungen. 2 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2015, but also Byzantium and the Viking World, eds. Fedir Androshchuk, Jonathan Shepard, and Monica White, Stockholm: Uppsala Universitetet, 2016. A new review of the Arabic sources is provided by Þórir Jónsson Hraundal, The Rus in Arabic Sources. Cultural Contacts and Identity. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bergen, February 2013.

For a thorough discussion of the concept “cultural memory” and its uses see Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1992. For the identity of the medieval Romans see Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland. Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Cambridge, Mass. & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.

Chapter 2

Gottlieb Bayer, a Prussian Sinologist and professor of Greek and Roman Antiquities at St Petersburg Academy of Sciences between 1726 and 1737, was the first to examine the account in the Annals of St Bertin. In 1729 he published a book called De Varagis in which he used The Primary Chronicle as a key source of Russian history, emphasizing the role of Scandinavian Vikings in creating the first state of the Rus. Thus, he was a precursor of the so-called “Normanist theory”, which highlights the outside element in Russian state-building. This encountered resistance by many Russian historians, placing the debate on the Varangians in Russian historiography in a context of a dichotomy between Scandinavians and the native Slavic population. It could be argued that such a dichotomy is already implicit in The Primary Chronicle, but a new context developed with the rise of nationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In 1845 Ernst Kunik conducted an exhaustive scrutiny into this narrative, in the second volume of his work Die Berufung der schwedishcen Rodsen durch die Finnen und Slawen, St. Petersburg: Druckerei der Kaiserlichen Academie der Wissenschaften, 1844–1845. Kunik was heavily influenced by the Normanist ideas of Bayer and his successors. The early debate on the Rus visitors at Ingelsheim was heavily enmeshed in the controversy surrounding the role of Scandinavians in the earliest state-building in Russia, see for instance Alexander V. Riasanovsky, “The Embassy of 838 Revisited: Some Comments in Connection with a “Normanist” Source on Early Russian History”, Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas. Neue Folge 10:1 (1962): 1–12; Igor P. Saskolskij, “Recent Developments in the Normanist Controversy”, in Varangian Problems. Scando-Slavica. Suppl. I. Report on the First International Symposium on the theme “The Eastern Connections of the Nordic Peoples in the Viking Period and Early Middle Ages”. Moesgaard-University of Aarhus 7–11 October 1968, Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1970, pp. 21–38. This argument has been exhausted in later years, as noted by Wladyslaw Duczko, Viking Rus. Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe. The Northern World 12, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004, pp. 3–5.

On the political context of the visit of the Rus see Constantine Zuckerman, “Les Hongrois au pays de Lebedia: Une nouvelle puissance aux confines de Byzance et de la Khazarie ca. 836–839”, in To empolemo Byzantio = Byzantium at war (9th–12th c.). International symposium 4 [of the] Institute for Byzantine Research, eds. Nicolas Oikonomides and Kostas Tsiknakis, Athens: Goulandri-Horn Foundation, 1997, pp. 51–74. See also Juan Signes Codoner, The Emperor Theophilos and the East, 829–842. Court and Frontier in Byzantium during the Last Phase of Iconoclasm. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, Farnham: Routledge, 2014. On Bishop Ansgar and his mission in Scandinavia see Ian N. Wood, “Christians and pagans in ninth-century Scandinavia”, in The Christianization of Scandinavia. Report of a symposium held at Kungälv, Sweden 4–9 August 1985, Alingsås: Viktoria Bokförlag, 1987, pp. 36–67.

On Louis the Pious and his government see Mayke De Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009; Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), eds. Peter Godman and Roger Collins, Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1990. On the Khazars and their state see The world of the Khazars: New perspectives, eds. Peter B. Golden, Haggai Ben-Shammai and András Róna-Tas, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007, and Boris Zhivkov, Khazaria in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2015.

On the dating of the Life of George of Amastris see the conflicting views of Ihor Sevcenko, “Hagiography of the Iconoclast Period”, in Iconoclasm. Papers given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 1975, ed. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin, Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977, pp. 113–131, Alexander Kazhdan, “George of Amastris”, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, 837, and Warren Treadgold, “Three Byzantine Provinces and the First Byzantine Contacts with the Rus’”, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 12/13 (1988–1989): 132–144.

For a review of the historical and archaeological evidence concerning the earliest see Simon Franklin & Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of the Rus, 750–1200. Longman History of Russia, London & New York: Longman, 1996, as well as Duczko, Viking Rus, and Elena A. Melnikova, The Eastern world of the Vikings. Eight essays about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages. Gothenburg Old Norse studies, Gothenburg: Litteraturvetenskapliga Institutionen, Göteborgs Universitet, 1996.

For a wide-ranging overview of the archaeological evidence see Cultural interaction between east and west: Archaeology, artefacts and human contacts in northern Europe. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 44, eds. Ulf Fransson, Marie Svedin, Sophie Bergerbrant, and Fedir Androshchuk, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies; Stockholm University, 2007. See also Ingmar Jansson, “Communications between Scandinavia and Eastern Europe in the Viking Age”, in Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittel- und Nordeuropa, vol. IV Der Handel der Karolinger- und Wikingerzeit, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1987, pp. 773–807; Anatoly Nikolaevich Kirpichinikov, “Ладога и Ладожская земля VIII-XIII вв.” in Историко-археологическое изучение Древней Руси: Итоги и основные проблемы, Le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Introduction
• Incursion
• Attack
• Accommodation
• Engagement
• Adaptation
• Adventurer
• Intermission: History Becomes Legend
• Expeditions
• Interconnections
• Icons
• Empire
• Orthodoxy
• Afterlives
• Conclusion: A Special Relationship
• Back Matter