Tracing the Journey of the Eastern Vikings from Estonia to Baghdad
The Story of the Varangians and the Rus’
I have started this off in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. In 1219 CE, the whole area was conquered by the Danish army led by King Valdemar II, the Victorious (1170–1241). The Danes built a castle on the hill, called ‘castrum danorum’ or in local Estonian ‘taani linna,’ today the name of the city, Tallinn. Every Dane has grown up with the legend of the Danish flag falling from the sky during the battle at Lindanisse in which the Danish ‘crusaders’ were about to lose to the Estonians and instead, the flag from the sky encouraged them to win.
My questions have grown over the years — why was a Danish king in the early 12th and 13th century CE called Valdemar (Vladimir/Volodymyr)? Other stories accumulated, all from around the year 1000 to 1200 CE - some examples: Why did the mother of Olav I Tryggvason of Norway flee to Novgorod with him when he was still a child?(1) Why did Olav II of Norway seek refuge in Garðarike (now Ukraine) with the Kyivan Rus’? King Olav II died in the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 in northern-eastern Norway against Swedish nobles loyal to King Canute of Denmark.
King Olav II ended up becoming a saint and is still called ‘the perpetual king of Norway,’ and there has been a pilgrim route ever since leading up through Norway to Trondheim, where the remains of the saint are said to be buried in the Nidaros Cathedral. The pilgrim route has been reconstructed, and the organisers hope to extend it to follow the route Olav II followed back from his exile from Novgorod through Finland and Sweden to reconquer his kingdom. It was on this expedition that he was killed at Stiklestad on his way to Nidaros, today Trondheim. So far, only the Turku and the archipelago part of the Finnish trail is in place, linking up to the Swedish routes towards Norway.
And why did Olav II’s half-brother, Harald Hardrada, best known from King Harald’s Saga (ca 1177), flee to the Rus’ in Garðarike after the defeat at Stiklestad, where he became a military leader in Novgorod, later joined the Varangian guard in Miklagard (= ‘the big city’ = Byzantium). He went on from there to sack cities in Sicily, eventually going back via the western route to become King of Norway, from where he tried to conquer England in 1066 before dying in the Battle of Stamford Bridge.
The majority of stories and sagas have links to warriors/traders from Denmark, Norway, and, mainly, Sweden who went to the east, and over the years, I have tried to find out how much activity and settlement took place in the east. And find out about their former allies along the long river routes and the links to Scandinavia in the Middle Ages.
In Estonia as one example, there were allies, later enemies, the Oeselians (from the area around the island of Ösel) and the Curonians (or ‘Kurs’ from the northern area of Estonia)), also known as the ‘Estonian Vikings’ who sacked Sigtuna in Sweden and sometime in the 7th century CE had killed the Swedish king Ingvar in battle when he had tried to conquer the area. The same Estonians fought against the Danish king Valdemar II five hundred years later. But there were so many other groups of people on the way down the lakes and rivers in what is now Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia — although these names did not yet exist.
Several of the sagas tell about Vikings in and of the area, who raided, took slaves and, hoarded riches, used weapons and longboats of the same type as their western kinsmen. Several runestones refer to the death of friends or brothers in arms who died in ‘Aistalandum’ or ‘Virland’ (references to the ancient land of the Estonians) and others who died in ‘Særkland,’ the land of the ‘Serkir’ or Saracens, saying much about the trade routes that developed in the east.
The Varangians
Vikings from the northern countries, mainly from the southeastern part of Sweden, established trade routes throughout the Baltic Sea in the 8th century. They notably hunted for fur and slaves to sell at the markets in Byzantium and later in the lands of the Khazars and the Abbasid Caliphate.
They had contacts with the other trade centres at the time in Hedeby, Gotland, and Birka, and they founded Staraya Ladoga at the Volkov River south of Lake Ladoga around 753 CE as a trade center for both the indigenous population and the Vikings. They entered via the Neva River from the Gulf of Finland.
As the trade center at Staraya Ladoga developed, many continued the search for a route south via the Volkov River from Staraya Ladoga to Novgorod. The trade centre was known to the Vikings as ‘Aldeigjuborg’, which like Staraya Ladoga means ‘old Ladoga’, and Novgorod was known as Holmgaard or Veliky Novgorod, the ‘great new city’ [2]. Both are situated on the Volkov River, Staraya Ladoga south of Lake Ladoga, and Novgorod to the south, where the river runs from Lake Ilmen.
In most Nordic and old Russian literature, the Vikings are called the Varangians. This is mainly because their original aim in sailing east was to find the waterways south to the imperial court of Byzantium to become guards in the Emperor’s Varangian guard. They knew about Byzantium from other Vikings who had been there, coming from the west through the Mediterranean.
Novgorod was founded about a hundred years after Staraya Ladoga, ‘Holmgaard’ to the Varangians. This is where Rurik (old Norse ‘Hrørekr’) was invited to reign over the city in 862 and made the city the ‘capital’ of what has since been called the Rurikid Dynasty. Rurik is supposed to have come from coastal eastern Sweden—it is said that the name originated from an old Norse term for ‘the men who row.’
At his death in 869, Rurik bequeathed the realm to his kinsman Oleg (Helge in Old Norse) and the upbringing of his son Igor (Ingvar in Old Norse). It should be mentioned that the sources for most of this stem from old Orthodox Russian chronicles (see below), which also explains why the old Norse names are not used. This is also where the Rus’ are called Varangians throughout, basically by monks of the Orthodox Church from the early 11th to 12th century CE.
The Rus’
The Dnepr Trade Route
The trade routes expanded over the years, with the original main trade route via the Dnepr River( also called Dneiper or Dnipro) to the Black Sea (purple on the map) with several portages between the rivers and lakes. The seven rapids on the last stretch of the Dnepr were the most dangerous to pass — the ‘Aifur’ (3) rapids — mentioned on runestones in Gotland in memory of lost fellow travelers just as on the runestone found at the mouth of the Dnepr, on the small island of Berezan (now in the museum of Odessa). Emperor Constantine VII (905–959) calls the rapids Aeiphor in his De administrando imperio by their Varangian name but mentions that the local Slavic name is ‘Neasēt,’ “The Insatiable,” a name that is still in use today. However, the whole area is now submerged by the dam feeding the Zaporizhia hydroelectric power plant.
The most important ‘merchandise’ was slaves and fur to sell in Byzantium or to bring back home for the local slave markets in the Baltic; imports to Scandinavia were wine, spices, jewelry, glass, expensive fabrics, icons, and books from the Byzantine Empire. Others, mainly local tribes, sailed via the Dniester River to join the Varangians at the markets (the thin orange lines on the map), e.g., the Volyn from southwestern Poland traded spinning wheels and other items. Certain kinds of weapons and handicrafts came from Scandinavia.
The Varangians offered timber, fur, honey, and wax, while the Baltic tribes traded amber and slaves. Large treasures of dirhams and other silver were found in the Staraya Ladoga area, in Estonia, as well as in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, indicating that the Volga route had gained importance.
The Volga Trade Route
The Volga trade route developed to the north-east of Staraya Ladoga towards the end of the 8th century CE to establish trade links with the Volga Bulgars and further south with the Khazar Khanate and via the Caspian Sea to the Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad (shown in red on the map of the Varangian trade routes above). They would reach the large slave markets of the Volga Bulgars, the Khazars, and the Caliphate, where they could sell the many caught on the way south or bought at Staraya Ladoga.
The boats would follow the other trade route via the Volkhov River down to Novgorod and Lake Ilmen, then via the Lovat River over a three-kilometer-long portage area to the sources of the Volga River. Via the river, they could reach the markets of the Volga Bulgars and, from there, down to Atil, the capital of the Khazars, before reaching the Caspian Sea and the Caliphate, which had several markets.
The markets of the Caliphate would take as many slaves as the Rus’ could provide, calling them ‘Saqāliba’ (meaning Slavs, later denoting all types of slaves (4)) — the most prized were the Saqāliba eunuchs — and they would pay well also for furs, with lots of them turning up also in al-Andalus. In contrast, thousands of dirhams minted in al-Andalus in the 8th-9th centuries turned up in excavations around Staraya Ladoga and Scandinavia.
The best description of the Rus’ with the Volga Bulgars remains that of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan as part of his participation in the embassy sent in 927 CE by the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir to the vassal king of the Volga Bulgars (vassal king under the Khazars). The embassy aimed to explain Islamic law to the king of the Volga Bulgars, although there is only a short presentation of this in Ibn Fadlan’s account. The embassy followed the trade routes and the descriptions of the market and, in particular, of a Viking burial are the parts best known today, however incomplete the surviving documents may well be (5).
Although Ibn Fadlan admired the physical presence of the Rus’ as “tall as palm trees, with blond hair and ruddy skin,” he was disgusted by their manners and described them as “… the filthiest of all Allah’s creatures: they do not purify themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of ritual impurity after coitus and do not even wash their hands after food. They are like wandering asses” (6).
The Khāqān of the Khazars converted to Islam around 800 CE although the Khazars had officially been of the Jewish faith, documented by imitation dirhams dated 838 CE and found in a hoard of dirhams in Gotland, the Spillings Hoard, until now the world’s largest Viking treasure found in 1999. In total, around 100 kg of silver — in comparison, about a ton of silver has been found in excavations at seven hundred sites on Gotland, with silver mainly originating from the Arab World, the Maghreb, and Central Asia. The imitation Khazar dirhams have the inscription “Moses is the messenger of God” and some have the additional inscription “Land of the Khazars”.
In reality, the Khazars were multi-confessional as well as multilingual and multinational. Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Shamanists lived and traded in Atil — they all had their judges and laws on internal matters. A mission with the Slav brothers Cyril and Methodius took part in a debate on the merits of Christianity and Judaism in the presence of the Khazar Khāqān. It succeeded in converting two hundred of the Khāqān’s entourage, but the Khāqān declined the invitation to be baptized (about 860 CE). During the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (789–809 CE), the Khāqān had converted to Islam as reported in Ibn Fadlan’s report. Eventually, the might of the Khazan regime would be challenged by the expansion of the Kyivan Rus’.
The Rus’ fortified their trading posts along the rivers and portages, slowly taking control of the waterways. They also organized the collection of honey, wax, furs, and slaves for the lucrative Khazan and Muslim markets. They also started to claim tribute from the populations along their way, often paid in furs.
The Rus’ were warrior-traders in an expanding area under the control of Rurik’s dynasty, first through his kinsman Oleg, who conquered Kyiv in 882 CE and established the state of the Kyivan Rus, which controlled both major trade routes, the Dnepr-Dniester routes and the Volga trade route.
Curio: The Slavic word for ‘marten fur’ was kuna, which was the name of the Croatian currency until January 2023.
Most of the information about the Rus’ is found in the Primary Chronicle, written down in the early 13th century in the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet used to transcribe Old Church Slavonic, devised by Cyril and Methodius. The Primary Chronicle tells about the Kyivan Rus’ from about 850 to 1110 CE. There are several versions of the Chronicle, but I have followed the translated version called ‘Nestor’s Chronicle’ in Danish, based on research done over several years to establish a fairly consistent version of the Primary Chronicle, often called the Tale of Bygone Years.
One of the first mentions of the Rus’ is found in the Baghdad-born geographer Ya’qubi’s book Kitab al-Buldan (The Book of Countries) around 880 CE. In a description of the Maghreb countries, including al-Andalus, he tells about the invasion of ‘majūs’ sailing their longships up the Guadalquivir River to sack Sevilla — Ya’qubi wrote, “The majūs who are called al-Rūs entered it in the year 229/884 and looted, pillaged, burned and killed”. Born in Baghdad, Ya’qubi identified the invaders with the characterisation he knew, the Rus’.
There is one earlier mention of the Rus’ in an embassy from the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus to the new Roman Emperor Louis the Pious in 838 CE (Charlemagne’s son), and among the embassy delegates were some called Rhos. Theophilus asked Louis to help the Rhos to return to their land, Sweden, as they would not be able to travel home past the lands of the Bulgarian Magyars from Byzantine land. Louis put them in jail, certain that they were spies sent by all the Vikings from the same northern lands who raided the Atlantic coasts of his realm.
It is clear, however, from the description of the lands known to the Byzantine Emperor where the Rhos had lived and traded, that the process of integration of the Rus’ and settled life in foreign lands had started, the process that would eventually make the Rus’ meld with the Slavic population just as Danish and Norwegian Vikings were transformed into French-speaking Normans or, as the historian F. Donald Logan wrote in his The Vikings in History (1983), “In 839, the Rus’ were Swedes; in 1043 the Rus were Slavs.” (p. 184).
The Kyivan Rus’
Oleg, Rurik’s kinsman, continued the policy of securing the trade routes, also to ensure that the expansion of the Khazar Khanate did not encroach on the interests of trade as it expanded. The story of Oleg’s way to conquering Kyiv is described in the Primary Chronicle, as he started by conquering Smolensk on the Dnepr River and from there to Kyiv. According to the Primary Chronicle, the force he brought with him to conquer Smolensk comprised Varangians, Chuds (Estonians), Slavs, and Merians (Finnic people in the Upper Volga Region).
Oleg took Kyiv from two rulers called Askold and Dir and buried them in what is known as the Hungarian Hill — according to the Primary Chronicle in 882 CE. I should mention that the Primary Chronicle operates with two sets of dates, one since the world's creation (in this case, year 6390) and the other since the birth of Christ, 882 CE. The date of Oleg’s death is normally set at 912 CE, but there is much uncertainty about this as some set it at 941 or 942, mainly due to a gap in the Chronicle between 912 and 942.
Oleg also launched an attack against Byzantium in 907 CE and plundered nearby Thrace. The attack is described in some detail, some more believable than others, but Oleg’s army came close enough to the gates of Byzantium to fix his shield on one of the gates. Byzantium offered a peace deal and even paid tribute to each boat involved.
Igor, Rurik’s son, became the ruler of the Kyivan Rus’ in 912 CE when Oleg died (or later?). There are various stories about Oleg’s death, not all believable, but there is a mound at the Volkov River near Staraya Ladoga called Oleg’s burial place. Igor is mentioned in 941 and 944 when he also besieged Byzantium and struck an advantageous deal, although less advantageous than the one struck by Oleg. He had several ships destroyed by “Greek fire,” the feared weapon of the Byzantines. He was killed in 945 when collecting tribute from the Drevlians, an east-Slav tribe west of Kyiv, first conquered by Oleg. Igor’s wife, Olga, took her revenge on the Drevlians and went on to rule as regent while their son Sviatoslav I grew up.
Sviatoslav I ruled for twenty-seven years, and his reign was marked by rapid expansion into the Volga River valley, the Pontic steppes, and the Balkans, leading him to carve out the largest state in Europe for himself. In 969, he moved his seat to a town on the Danube when pursuing a campaign against the first Bulgarian empire. While he was there in 968, the Pechenegs, a Turkic tribe from Central Asia that ruled most of the eastern steppes, attacked Kyiv, but Sviatoslav’s general stopped their attack. There is a fine description in the Primary Chronicle of the fears in Kyiv and, notably, the princely family with Olga, Sviatoslav’s mother. Sviatoslav returned from the Danube in 969. In 970, he appointed his sons Yaropolk and Oleg as subordinate princes of Kyiv and Drelinia. In contrast, he appointed Vladimir, his illegitimate son by his housekeeper and servant Malusha, as the prince of Novgorod.
He became known as Vladimir I, Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kyiv, who protected King Olav I Tryggvason’s mother, later Olav II, and his half-brother Harald. His way to the princely realms was at first barred by his half-brothers, and he had to flee when Yaropolk murdered his brother Oleg. He then raised a Varangian army and deposed Yaropolk. As sole ruler from 980 CE, he consolidated the realm and strengthened the borders, notably from attacks from the Bulgarians, the Baltic tribes, and eastern nomads.
Vladimir I was the first ruler to adopt the Christian Orthodox faith in 988 and Christianised the whole of Kyivan Rus’. Vladimir’s grandmother Olga was the first of the Rurik dynasty to be baptized and the first ruler of the Kyivan Rus to enlarge the territory and secure its frontiers. She was a formidable ruler but did not realize her dream of ending the pagan traditions. Vladimir I, however, managed to do so only thirty years later. The year 988 and the conversion to Orthodox Christianity is often seen as the year when the Kyivan Rus’ stopped being Vikings or Varangians and became ‘Russian’, having settled, mixed with the local tribes, tilled the earth, traded under their own rules, with the frontiers secured and agreements in place with the major players in the area.
The links to their Scandinavian origins remained, mainly through trade and through marriage alliances of the ruling classes, and this is where I finally find an answer to the question of why a Danish king in the 12th century could be named Valdemar: his mother was Ingegerd of Kyiv, the daughter of Mstislav I of Kyiv (1125–1132) and Christina Ingesdotter of Sweden, and her brother was Vladimir III of Kyiv. She married Canute Lavard, Duke of Schleswig, who was murdered by King Magnus of Sweden a few days before the birth of his son. Ingegerd named her son after her grandfather Vladimir II Monomach of Kyiv.
Valdemar II was the son of Valdemar I, and his mother was Sophia of Minsk, the daughter of Vladimir Vsevolodich, son of the Prince of Pskov, i.e., of the Rurik Dynasty. However, at this point, the dynasty had started to unravel.
Mstislav was the last ruler of a unified state, and after his death, the state began to unravel when the princely families proliferated and broke into several branches and sub-branches. Just a hundred years later, a prince from one of those branches, now ruling over the principality Vladimir-Suzdal, Alexander Nevsky, then Prince of Novgorod, won the Battle of the Neva (1240) against the Kingdom of Sweden with its Norwegian and Finnish allies; they were no longer ‘family’ — and the Novgorod Prince added ‘of the Neva,’ Nevsky, to his name. He submitted to the more powerful Mongols in the east to avoid a war on two fronts, as the Mongols were willing to let him rule as long as he paid tribute. Two years later, he led the Novgorod army against crusaders of the Teutonic Order and the Livonian heavy cavalry in the Battle of the Ice on Lake Peipus (today still on the border between Estonia and Russia), halting the expansion to the east of the Teutonic Order. Anyone who has seen Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky (1938) will remember the battle scenes.
The time of the Varangians was over. So was the time of the Kyivan Rus’, but the name of the Rus’ became the name of the new country forged by the descendants of the Rus’ and the Slavs, with a number of the early Rus’ rulers now declared saints by the expanding Kyivan, later Russian Orthodox Church, founded by priests and monks originally sent from the Byzantine Emperor. Indeed, as the historian F. Donald Logan wrote: “In 839, the Rus’ were Swedes; in 1043 the Rus were Slavs.” — and now facing the onslaught of the Mongol invasions as the rest of eastern Europe and the Caliphates.
Back from where I started, at the walls of Tallinn, I now know that Olav I Tryggvason’s mother fled to her brother Sigurd, who served the king of Gardarike. On the way there, they were attacked and caught by Estonian Vikings, and Olav was sold to a kind couple, where he spent six years until he was recognized by his uncle, Sigurd, who took him back to Gardarike. He spent the next nine years with King Vladimir and Queen Allogia in Gardarike before he left to be a Viking.
The two Danish kings, Valdemar I and II, were named after their grandfathers. They both were warrior kings, expanding their realms just as their families among the Rus’ did. The Rus’ were family to the Scandinavians until the 12th century, when they unraveled as a unified realm. Valdemar II’s attack on Estonia in the early 13th century, thus, was not against family but a crusade.
References
(1) You can read more about Olav I of Norway in my piece on the Danish Viking-Age Ring Fortresses
(2) Aldeigjuborg: there is a fine short presentation on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4AOcRFwN9k
(3) In the 1990s, a reconstructed Viking ship, based on the Gokstad ship (found in 1880), was called Aifur, built and owned by a Swedish association based at a folk high school on the Lake Mälaren. They organsied three expeditions, one of which was called “Expedition Holmgård”, sailing the ship from Sigtuna in Sweden via the rivers to Novgorod. The next went from Novgorod to the Dnepr’s outlet in the Black Sea. A third expedition went from north-eastern Belarus to Hapsai in north-west-Estonia after a visit to Riga to celebrate the city’s 500th anniversary. The expeditions clearly showed that it was easy to portage the Viking ships between the rivers. (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aifur — only in Swedish, Danish, and French)
(4) just like the western word for ‘slaves’ or ‘esclaves’ comes from Byzantine Greek ‘esclábos’ borrowed from a Slavic tribe’s self-name ‘Slověne’ turned into sklábos (σκλάβος).
(5) Many may never have heard of Ibn Fadlan but have probably seen Antonio Banderas as the emissary in The Thirteenth Warrior, the 1999 film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead.
(6) From the section ‘The uncleanliness of the Rus’, p. 47 of the Penguin Classics edition, 2014, Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness.
