The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

  The slow evolution is represented in the names of the Princes of Kiev. Helgi was followed by Ingvar (sometimes rendered as the slavic Oleg), who was followed by the purely slavic Sviatoslav, and Vladimir. As the names began to change, the dress and habits followed. A Byzantine chronicle provides a physical description of Sviatoslav during a visit with the emperor John Tzimiskes in 971. Sviatoslav is described as more of a slavic Khan than a Viking sea-king.

  He came rowing in a Viking boat, pulling the oars along with his men like a good Viking, but there the northern comparisons stopped. He was of only medium height, with light blue eyes obscured by bushy brows and a snub nose. His head was completely shaved except for a topknot on one side, which was braided as a sign of his noble status. He wore a simple white tunic, indistinguishable from those of his men except for its cleanliness, and wore no decorations other than a dangling gold earring in one ear.

  This process was sped up by contact with Constantinople. A treaty in 945 had thrown open the gates of Constantinople to the Rus, exposing them to the great lure of Orthodox civilization, and it was their eventual adoption of Christianity which, more than anything else, marked the great transition from Rus to Russian. It needed time to take root, and was not fully embraced for several generations, but it locked the nascent Russian state to the Byzantine cultural orbit.

  Ironically, it was the great Rus defeat by Greek fire in the 940’s, that had indirectly paved the way for Christianity. Prince Ingvar had returned to Kiev badly weakened by the attempt to take Constantinople. Several of the surrounding tribes which had fallen under Rus domination took the opportunity to revolt, and Ingvar was forced to expend most of his energies putting them down.

  The most troublesome of the client-states were the Drevlians, an eastern Slavic tribe that inhabited part of what is today the Ukraine. When news reached them of Ingvar’s defeat, they took the provocative step of ceasing all tribute payments to Kiev. Ingvar couldn’t immediately respond, pressed as he was by other concerns, so the Drevlian issue was left to fester.

  When Ingvar had finally stabilized Kiev, he sent the Drevlians a demand for the backpay they owed, with threats of retribution if they should withhold even a small amount. The delay in addressing the problem, however, had given the Drevlians the impression that Ingvar was powerless, so their prince, Mal, responded with words to the effect that ‘an equal does not pay tribute’.

  The Prince of Kiev immediately set out with his army for the Drevlian capital of Iskorosten, now the modern Ukranian city of Korosten, and at the sight of the massed troops, Mal’s bravado evaporated. Formally apologizing to Ingvar, he handed over the gold that was owed. A wiser ruler would have left it at that, but on the way back to Kiev, Ingvar decided that the Drevlians hadn’t been punished enough. Defying his authority had to have a higher price. Ordering his men to continue on to the capital, he turned back with his bodyguards.

  When prince Mal was informed of the demand for more gold, he stalled by claiming to need to inspect his treasury to see if the funds were available. When he asked his advisors what to do, one supposedly offered “If a wolf comes among the sheep, he will take away the whole flock unless he is killed.” Mal heeded the words. At his sign, a group of Drevlians burst out of the gates, massacred Ingvar’s guards, and captured the Prince of Kiev.

  According to a Byzantine source, the grisly revenge Mal took was one the Vikings could appreciate. Ingvar was held down on the ground while two young birch trees were bent toward him. Each of his feet was secured to a tree, and then the saplings were released, ripping the unfortunate man in half.

  Having a leader cut down in the prime of life, was a nightmare for any medieval society. It usually left a young successor and, if a regent didn’t grab control firmly, all the attendant horrors of a civil war. This would indeed have been the fate of Kiev since Ingvar’s only son was only an infant, if it had not been for his remarkable wife Olga. Not only did Olga have the loyalty of the nobility of Kiev but, according to the colorful account given in the Russian Primary Chronicle, she was also a more effective leader than her late husband.

  The news of Ingvar’s death was followed closely by a group of twenty ambassadors from Prince Mal with a proposal of marriage. The request was not quite as outlandish as it at first seemed. Royal widows were among the most eligible wives of the medieval world. They would frequently look to remarry quickly to avoid upheaval, and such a marriage offered the chance of a dramatic rise in political fortunes for ambitious suitors.

  What was unseemly was the boldness of the ambassadors. Mal rationally assumed that a newly widowed Olga would be feeling vulnerable and open to suggestion, so instead of tactfully ignoring his part in her husband’s murder, his emissaries openly admitted it. When they were shown into her quarters they told the grieving widow that Ingvar was ‘like a ravening wolf‘ who deserved to be killed. Now, they continued, Olga had the chance to marry a real prince.

  Surprisingly, she seemed open to the idea. Her husband would not rise from the grave, and how he died was not as important as the fact that he was dead. Olga said she needed a day to think about it, but strongly hinted that this was only a formality. Pleased with her pragmatic approach, the ambassadors withdrew to their camp, agreeing to visit her the next morning.

  As soon as the Drevlians had gone, Olga ordered her men to dig a deep ditch just behind her citadel. By the morning it was finished, and when the ambassadors arrived – dressed in their finest clothes as a token of respect to the woman who was about to become their princess – Olga had them seized, dragged past her citadel and buried alive.

  Even as her servants were leveling the earth of the mass grave, Olga sent a message to Mal. She would gladly marry him, she said, but only if he provided a grand enough escort. The twenty ambassadors he had already sent were an insufficient honor guard for a woman of her status. She would arrive in state with the most noble men of Iskorosten, or not at all.

  Prince Mal, perhaps impressed by her sense of decorum, eagerly sent the leading men of the city with as sumptuous an honor guard as he could afford. When they arrived at Kiev, Olga was the model of civility, offering the use of her own private bathhouse to wash the dust from their long journey. When they were all safely inside, however, Olga had the door barricaded and then set fire to the building, ignoring the agonized screams.

  As the embers flared, she calmly sent a final message to Mal requesting that she be allowed to conduct the customary funeral feast for her dead husband when she arrived at Iskorosten. The prince, still unaware that anything was amiss, hastily agreed. When he saw her approaching the city with a large group of retainers, he rode out to greet her, asking where his ambassadors were. She replied that she had been so excited to meet him that she had ridden ahead, and that the rest would soon join them. Satisfied, the prince escorted her into the city to a great feast had been prepared.

  Olga gave every appearance of the joyful bride, but had carefully instructed her men not to touch a drop of alcohol – a proscription that neither Mal nor his soldiers noticed. When the Drevlians were deep into their cups, the lethal widow gave a signal and her guards drew their swords, butchering all of their bleary-eyed hosts.

  Cutting their way out of the city, Olga and her retinue joined her army, which was hiding nearby, and reappeared before the walls of Iskorosten. The terrified inhabitants, now without their prince or leading men, begged for mercy, and to their immense relief, Olga agreed. Her terms were surprisingly modest. Instead of honey or furs – the usual stuff of tribute – she asked only for some birds; three pigeons and three sparrows from each household. Unfortunately for the Derevlians this was an old Viking trick. When she got the birds she had her men attach rags dipped in a flammable material to the feet of each bird. When they were lit, the panicked animals returned to their nests, lighting the houses on fire.

  Before long, the wind had turned the scattered flames into a raging inferno. The panicked citizens came pouring out of the ruined gates into the waiting arms
of Olga’s army. They showed no mercy. Those who weren’t slaughtered on the spot were rounded up and sold into slavery. Only in the morning, with Iskorosten a blackened, deserted ruin, was Olga finally sated.

  Whether or not Olga was as cold-blooded as the legends make her out to be, she was certainly an effective ruler. The Russian Primary Chronicle notes with succinct admiration that “although she was a woman in body, she possessed a man’s courage.” Her shrewdness not only kept the throne safe for her son, but also increased its authority.

  Regardless of the numbers of Drevlians left alive, the message that Kiev’s new ruler was not to be trifled with quickly spread. To her credit, Olga chose not to govern with the sword. Although focused on revenge, she was not blinded by it, and was shrewd enough to realize that forcing Kiev’s client tribes to pay a tribute each year built up murderous resentment. The gold usually came out of each chief’s personal hoard, lessening his ability to reward his men, and thereby weakening his authority. This virtually ensured that the moment Kiev’s grip slipped, there would be a rebellion.

  To convert the chiefs from potential enemies to firm allies, she abolished the hated payment, replacing it with a simple tax on every household.151 The local leaders, freed from the financial burden, were then allowed to handle all minor administrative or legal issues. No longer would Kiev rule by fiat. Olga had in effect, transformed rebellious allies into full members of her government. Her regency also saw the construction of numerous trading centers, as well as the first stone buildings in Kiev, Novgorod, and Pskov. The system she devised worked remarkably well, and provided a firm foundation for Kiev’s continued growth.

  Olga spent the rest of her son’s minority successfully dodging marriage proposals and steadily building up Kiev’s power. As successful as the regency was, however, Olga seems to have been aware of a lingering problem. No matter how politically integrated she made the various tribes, they still saw themselves as different from the inhabitants of Kiev. There was no underlying unity beyond a common ruler, no big identifying idea that could turn the people of individual cities into a unified state.

  In an attempt to rectify this, Olga took the boldest move in a career full of them. She traveled to Constantinople around the year 955 – ostensibly to shore up trade relations – but in reality to officially adopt Christianity. The ceremony was carried out in the golden church of the Hagia Sophia, with the emperor Constantine VII standing in as her godfather.152 As a token of respect, Olga took the Christian name of Helena after the emperor’s wife.

  Her personal conversion may have helped to seal an alliance and perhaps squeeze more trade privileges out of Constantinople, but Olga was quickly disabused of any notions that her people would follow suit. There was a small Christian community in Kiev, but the vast majority of her subjects were pagan, worshiping a variety of Viking, Turkic, and Slavic gods. The aristocracy in particular were vocal supporters of Thor, and instead of uniting them behind her, she risked undermining the stability that she had worked her entire regency to maintain.153

  Olga did her best to spread the new faith, bringing Bibles, priests, icons, and vestments back with her. She ordered the construction of several churches in multiple cities, and publicly attended them, but all to no avail. The aristocrats, particularly the new arrivals from Sweden, violently resisted, as did most of her family. Her son, Sviatoslav refused to even consider it, informing his mother that the gentle virtues of patience, forgiveness, and mercy were hallmarks of a feeble religion that would see him mocked by his own men.

  Olga may have failed to establish Christianity in her son’s generation, but she did at least plant the seeds for it to take root in the next one. Sviatoslav, in a conscious rejection of his mother’s conciliatory policy towards Byzantium, carried out the last major Rus attack on the empire. While he led the army overland – yet another sign that the old Viking ways were dying out – he left his mother in charge of Kiev, as well as of the education of his three sons, Yarolpolk, Oleg and Vladimir.

  She performed both tasks admirably, although the latter would take several years to manifest. The last glimpse we get of her, fittingly enough, is once again acting as a military commander. When a group of raiders invaded in 969, she organized a vigorous defense, which managed to drive them off. She died a few months later, having lived a life more suited to a Valkyrie (a Viking deity that rewarded bravery in battle) than a saint.154

  Her reign marks the beginning of a great watershed in European history. By converting to Christianity, she had chosen to align Kiev with Europe instead of Asia, to look west instead of east. The Viking roots of the Rus were gradually supplanted by Byzantine ones, and Kiev would drink so deeply from Constantinople’s cup, that the three modern states which claim descent from the House of Rurik – Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia – continue to see themselves as the heirs to ancient Greece and Rome.155

  Olga may not have been responsible for all of this, and in fact may have died considering herself a failure, but the Orthodox faith she championed would one day give her people the common identity she envisioned, and make possible a vast empire.

  Chapter 18

  From Rus to Russian

  “Every king of Europe marries a princess of Kiev.”

  - Russian Primary Chronicle

  As much as Sviatoslav admired his mother – he ordered that she should be buried according to Christian custom as a sign of respect – there appeared to be little danger that Odin or Thor would have to give way in Kiev. His immediate neighbors may have been falling like dominoes – Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Hungary all had or were about to accept Christianity, but Sviatoslav was aggressively pagan. Thor demanded victory, and only victory would keep his nobles loyal.

  His first advance, while his mother still lived, had been against the Khazars, whom both Olga and Ingvar had tacitly acknowledged as their overlord. In a brutal, six year campaign, he annihilated their forces, culminating with a sack of Atil, their capital city. Clearly, he had inherited his mother’s vindictive streak. The city was smashed beyond recognition. The tenth century Arab writer, Ibn Hawqal, who visited the ruins shortly after, remarked, “No grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch“.

  The triumph inspired Sviatoslav to try to conquer in the west, and he savaged his way through the Balkans, adding present day Bulgaria to his domain. Within his first ten years on the throne, he had carved out the largest state in Europe, stretching from modern Romania to Kazakstan. It was a vindication of the old gods, dramatic evidence that the All-father was more powerful than Christ.

  A clash with Byzantium, the great bastion of the new faith, was inevitable, but unfortunately for Sviatoslav, Byzantium was, at that moment, in the midst of a revival. The scholar-emperor who had baptized Sviatoslav’s mother had been replaced by the militant John I Tzimisces. In a series of sharp strikes, the new emperor drove the Rus back, pinning Sviatoslav inside an old Roman fort on the Danube. After more than two months of a siege the Prince of Kiev surrendered, humbly rowing across the river to meet with his counterpart.

  The emperor John met him on top of his favorite white charger, dressed in golden armor with the heavy Byzantine crown on his head. He accepted the offer of peace on the condition that the Rus pull their forces out of the Balkans, and abandon the most recent of Sviatoslav’s conquests.

  Worse humiliation was to follow. On the return trip to Kiev, while attempting to negotiate one of the dangerous rapids along the Dneiper, a group of barbarians ambushed Sviatoslav. They had probably been bribed by the emperor John to do so, an indication of just how nervous the Rus made the emperor feel. Sviatoslav’s head was cut off and made into a drinking cup as a warning to the Rus in any future dealings.156

  Sviatoslav’s death threw Kiev into chaos. It was made worse by his sons who began a slow-burning civil war that lasted for nearly a decade and forced the youngest brother Vladimir to flee.

  Although the Rus were well on the way to becoming fully slavicized, they still had strong Viking cont
acts, and Vladimir chose Sweden as his place of exile. There he was greeted by relatives who helped him pick a Swedish princess for a wife, and agreed to raise an army to overthrow his brother.

  With several hundred Swedish and Norwegian Vikings at his back, it didn’t take long for Vladimir to seize most of the important Rus cities. He dispatched his brother and offered to share power with him. When Yaropolk arrived to discuss terms, his men were ambushed and he was cut down by Vladimir’s soldiers.

  Not content to simply take his brother’s crown, Vladimir rode to the convent where Yaropolk’s wife had taken refuge. The abbess tried to protect her by barring the gates, but Vladimir had his men hack through them with their axes, and sent them surging through the cloister to find her huddled in a room. After she had been violated by Vladimir, he forced her to marry him to lessen the resistance of his nobles to the new regime.

  As a political ploy, the marriage worked, so Vladimir repeated it six more times, collecting along the way – if the Russian sources are to be believed – eight hundred concubines. He divided these among his major cities so that wherever he traveled he would have a range of female company.

  His prodigious appetites were matched with even greater ambition. He expanded and secured his borders by crushing the tribes inhabiting present-day Slovakia, and forced both the Lithuanian and Bulgar tribes to recognize him as their overlord. The success both increased his prestige and made his neighbors nervous. King Boleslav of Poland hurried to sign an alliance with the Rus warlord to prevent him from moving toward the Polish border.

  The most gratifying recognition of his power came in 988 when the emperor Basil II sent his request for six thousand Varangians, offering his sister’s hand in marriage in return. The stipulation that he convert to Christianity first, probably didn’t bother Vladimir too much. Paganism had its downsides for an aspiring autocrat since the crowded pantheon of Slavic and Nordic gods all too accurately reflected the political realities of Vladimir’s territory where every prince had a fortified citadel and could declare themselves independent. Odin may have been the All-father but he was certainly not all powerful, and like the Prince of Kiev, could easily get drowned out by a hundred other petty gods.