A Brief History of the Vikings

by Jonathan Clements

  By 943, the Muslim merchants in Itil were dwindling, and the few remaining were telling stories of a lack of demand back home. Although the Vikings cannot have known it, their traders told the truth – the supplies of the Afghan silver mines were running out, leading to a financial crisis across the Islamic world. Demand fell for luxuries like fur and slave-girls, and for those Rus unlucky enough to make the arduous journey for no reward, the consequences were predictable. That year a Viking fleet captured the town of Berda near Baku, but was defeated by a Muslim counter-assault, and an outbreak of dysentery. Their enemies showed them no mercy even in the afterlife, looting their buried corpses of their grave-goods.22

  The sudden reduction of Arab silver would have an effect elsewhere in the Viking world, and may have ultimately led to Svein Forkbeard’s search for new revenues in England (see Chapter Eight). The lean times in the Arab world were also a probable cause of renewed pressure on the Byzantines. In 941, Rurik’s son Igor sailed on Constantinople once more. This time, the numbers were serious, with conservative estimates placing the fleet at over a thousand ships. Byzantium was caught, once again, almost unawares, with the army of Romanus I fighting Muslims in the east, and his navy spread thinly across the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. News of the fleet’s approach reached Constantinople early, the reward for renewed diplomatic links between the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgars through whose territory the Vikings passed. The Bulgars made no attempt to stop the fleet, but did get a message to Constantinople that trouble was on the way.

  With no other option, the Byzantine shipwrights dragged everything remotely seaworthy into service, refitting 15 old vessels that had been earmarked for scrap. The ships were kitted with launchers for Greek fire, and sent on 11 June to block the Bosphorus, that tiny strait which forms the portal from the Black Sea to Constantinople and the Mediterranean. It was a pitiful attempt at defence, but Greek fire was not something for which the Vikings were prepared.23 Normal fire was one thing, but the Byzantines had a secret ingredient that made their flames impossible to douse with mere water.24 The front line of the approaching Viking fleet was engulfed in the mysterious flame, and the other ships hastily turned. They headed east, and Constantinople was saved, although the remainder of the Viking fleet wrought havoc along the northern Black Sea coast of what is now modern Turkey, particularly among the inhabitants of the local monasteries, with only occasional resistance.

  Before long, the remainder of the Byzantine fleet had been successfully recalled to the Black Sea, and stood in wait for the Vikings on their homeward voyage. The Vikings made the fatal error of trying to return by the way in which they had come, past Byzantium itself, where their fleet was met by an overwhelming mass of Byzantine ships, many armed with Greek fire. Few Vikings made it back alive; Igor himself was only saved by the shallow draft of his ship, allowing him to seek refuge in waters where the Byzantine ships could not follow him. He was back in 944, with an even bigger fleet, sailing alongside an army that marched on the land – all the better to present a double-pronged threat to the Byzantines. But Igor’s new attempt never made it to Constantiople – instead, Romanus met him at the Danube and negotiated a detailed treaty.

  Both sides came away convinced that they had the upper hand. Romanus had a guarantee that Vikings would only be permitted on Byzantine soil in unarmed groups of fifty, and that a tax was to be levied on trade. Igor could be satisfied with reciprocal military agreements that guaranteed his merchants a much safer passage south of the cataracts. But posterity would show Romanus was the true victor, in the spiritual sphere initially – conditions were now favourable for Byzantine missionaries to travel to Kiev and Novgorod, and their most influential convert was Igor’s own wife. She is known as Olga in the Russian Primary Chronicle, but was Helga to the Swedes, another sign of the slow slide of Viking Rus into true Russian. She came from a rich family in the north, and if Rurik’s younger brother existed, may even have been his descendant. Soon after Igor’s treaty with Romanus, the Viking leader met with an untimely end at the cataracts, murdered by Pecheneg tribesmen of the Drevljane.25

  The Drevljane were attempting to grab for power like the Vikings, hoping to control the rivers and thereby trade between the Black Sea and Baltic. With that in mind Mal, prince of the Drevljane, made a proposal of marriage to Igor’s widow, hoping thereby to bring the lands of the Rus within his own control. So, at least, claims the Russian Primary Chronicle, in a story that grows progressively less believeable, but which has stayed with us because it became incorporated into hagiography.

  Mal soon discovered the true nature of his bride-to-be, when he heard of how she ordered his ambassadors thrown in a trench, and asked them if they found her honour to their taste, even as her men shovelled earth and buried the Drevljane alive. Olga then embarked on a campaign of revenge herself, ending in a year-long siege of the Drevljane capital. Eventually, she consented to a truce, asking only for a tribute of six live birds per household. When this strangest of taxes was handed over, she had her men wrap sulphur tapers to the birds’ legs and sent them flying home to their nests under the eaves, causing a terrible conflagration.26

  The story is doubtful, of course, not the least because it is one of several bird-arson tales to be found in Viking legend. But other elements ring true, particularly Olga’s decision in the aftermath to leave many of the Drevljane free, all the better to tax them. For it was in the regency of Olga, as her son Svyatoslav reached maturity, that the Swedish Rus began to institutionalize the collection of revenue from the conquered areas. Each autumn, as the trading season came to an end, the rulers of the Rus would begin their polyudie, a progress among the peoples of the surrounding area to collect tribute, be it in money, furs, slaves or services. In typical Viking style, the ruling class of nascent Russia would leech off their neighbours when times were hardest, returning to their bases of Kiev and Novgorod in the spring, ready for a new season of trading with the south. Olga put a stop to the charade, instead setting up a system of government-salaried tax inspectors, extorting her protection money in a more civilized manner.

  As for Olga, she began paying tribute to a higher power. After ruling in the name of her son Svyatoslav, she found a new faith in the Christian God, and set aside her warlike ways. At the instigation of her mentor, a missionary called Father Gregory, she even made a pilgrimage to Constantinople, there to be baptized in the cathedral of Hagia Sophia itself. But Olga had a rude awakening on her arrival in Constantinople. She expected to be feted as a visiting dignitary, bearing gifts of gold plate, and proclaiming that her baptismal name was to be Helena, in honour of the current empress. But the emperor Constantine VII, son-in-law of Romanus I, had a different view, assuming that Olga was coming to pay tribute to Constantinople as a representative of a vassal state. In his eyes, he honoured her by permitting her to dine with the ladies-in-waiting. Olga returned to Kiev, still a Christian, but embarrassed enough at her treatment to send envoys to Germany in search of Catholic priests, hoping perhaps to have better treatment from them than at the hands of the Eastern Orthodox nobility.

  Despite the occasional disagreement with her son, Olga did not have to endure an outright challenge from him – the closest they came to an argument was over his pagan polygamy, of which Olga sternly disapproved.27 But after Olga, later Saint Olga, was laid to rest in 969, her son did not wait long before renewing war with Constantinople.

  Svyatoslav himself led a campaign along the river Volga to Itil, where he destroyed the centre of the Khazar people who opposed Viking passage to the Caspian Sea. That, at least, was the official excuse – it is more likely that the Khazars were getting the blame for the drop in the flow of Muslim silver. When this led to no appreciable improvement in trade with the Muslim world, Svyatsolav did what any self-respecting Viking leader would, with a financial crisis looming and a large number of unoccupied warriors – he marched on Constantinople, with an army of Rus alongside tributary battalions from the conquered Pechenegs, Magyars a
nd Bulgarians.

  With Constantinople ruled by the usurper John Tzimisces, Svyatoslav sought restitution – he believed, or at least it was his excuse, that Tzimisces had reneged on an earlier Emperor’s offer to pay Svyatoslav to fight the Bulgarians. But when Tzimisces offered to pay his predecessor’s debt, Svyatoslav made it clear that there would be no negotiation:

  If you reject my proposals, you will have no choice, you and your subjects, but to leave Europe forever, where you have scarcely any territory left to call your own and where you have no right to dwell. Retire then to Asia [Minor], and leave Constantinople to us.28

  Tzimisces had hoped that the sight of supremely disciplined Byzantine troops would be enough to put Svyatoslav to flight. His generals were able to win small victories against some of the auxiliaries. The battle against the Rus themselves, fought at Arcadiopolis (modern Lülebargaz), was a tougher affair. But the Byzantines, hardened in countless battles in the east, eventually won, forcing the surviving Rus to retreat. In 972, John Tzimisces pursued Svyatoslav into Bulgaria, ‘liberating’ the region from its conqueror, and besieging the former invaders in Dristra (modern Silistra). After a three-month siege, Svyatoslav made a desperate attempt to hack his way through the Byzantine army, but failed. Humiliated, he called for a meeting with Tzimisces, who was of Armenian descent, short of stature with dark-blond hair and a red beard. Svyatoslav, despite his Slavic name, still had Viking genes – his head was shaved, but for two long locks of blond hair, the mark of rulership in his Rus culture, and a long Scandinavian-style moustache. Suitably cowed, the Rus leader politely expressed his hope that the old treaty would continue to be honoured, and then rowed back to his people.

  However, Svyatoslav was not so lucky on his return journey. The Pechenegs had permitted his army to pass through their territory unhindered on the promise of a cut of the loot, and Syvatoslav was returning home empty-handed. The locals allowed him and his starving men to get as far as the cataracts of the Dnieper, where they ambushed them during the vulnerable portage process. Svyatoslav was killed, and the rulership of the Princedom of Kiev passed to his sons Jaropolk and Oleg.

  It was a third son, Vladimir, overlord of Holmgard (Novgorod), who became the eventual ruler of Russia. Since he was the bastard offspring of Svyatoslav and a guard-captain’s daughter, this outlying, unimportant town seemed suitable for him. Its northerly position, however, put it much closer to Scandinavia. Novgorod, it is thought, was the place of exile where Vladimir’s contemporary Olaf Crowbone grew to manhood (see Chapter Six), and sagas relate several tales of the young Vikings’ friendship.29 It was thanks to Vladimir’s proximity to the old country that he was able to call on Viking aid. In the inevitable power struggle that ensued between him and his brothers around 978–80, Vladimir arrived in Russia with an army of fresh recruits from Sweden, killed his brothers, and became the ruler of many pagan peoples. Vladimir’s coup may also have revitalized the population with more Scandinavians and allowed it to preserve its Norse identity for another generation or so. The original ‘Rus’ had largely gone native by this time, replaced by semi-Slavic descendants. Vladimir’s mercenary ‘Varangians’ from Sweden, many of whom stayed, brought stronger connections once more to the motherland.30

  Vladimir was not a pagan for long. In far Constantinople, the new emperor Basil II, ‘the Bulgar-Slayer’ invoked the terms of his predecessor’s treaty with Svyatoslav, and Vladimir was obliged to send 6,000 Viking soldiers to serve him. Beleaguered by no less than three challengers, themselves backed by reinforcements from Baghdad and Georgia, Basil II badly needed help. Vladimir insisted on a terrible price for his aid – the hand in marriage of the emperor’s sister Anna. Contemporary writers present this as a mismatch of almost horrific proportions, a 25-year-old beauty, led weeping to the altar where waited a savage Viking beast who already had four other official wives and, it was later said, 800 concubines. Vladimir was, after all, the man one German chronicler called fornicator immensus et crudelis, whose second wife, Rogned, became his when he raped her in front of her terrified family in Polotsk.31 Princess Anna accused her brothers of selling her into slavery, and her fears seem well founded.

  But Vladimir was most insistent. He had kept his end of the bargain, and his 6,000 warriors turned the tide in Basil II’s war. Many of them were to stay and form units within the household troops, the first of the famous Varangian Guard. When the weeks turned into months and there was still no sign of his new bride, Vladimir showed the Byzantines what could happen when treaties were broken – he attacked the Crimea, in blatant defiance of another of Svyatoslav’s promises.32 Realizing that the Crimean campaign was a prelude to yet another Viking assault on Constantinople itself, Basil II caved in, although he did insist that Vladimir set aside his allegiance to the Thunder God, and instead accept Christian baptism.

  If it was an attempt to call Vladimir’s bluff, it failed. Vladimir was no stranger to Christianity, having grown up in the shadow of his grandmother, Saint Olga. He accepted, the extremely reluctant Princess Anna arrived with a group of priests, and Vladimir was baptized in Kiev. The marriage and attendant conversion was, says one authority, ‘perhaps the most fateful religious ceremony in Russian history’.33 It linked the fate of the Rus with that of the rulers of Constantinople and it led to the conversion, over a long period, of thousands of Vladimir’s subjects. Most importantly of all for posterity, it locked Russia into the orbit and influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

  6

  ADVENT OF THE WHITE CHRIST

  FROM HARALD GREYCLOAK TO OLAF CROWBONE

  In 961, the oldest surviving son of Erik Bloodaxe was Harald Greycloak,1 who became the nominal ruler of western Norway after the death of Hakon the Good, although his mother Gunnhild and, we may assume, her other Danish relatives had no small say in her son’s decisions. He had four surviving brothers, who were also clamouring for areas of their own. Meanwhile, other parts of Norway belonged to non-relatives. Trondheim stayed in the hands of Earl Sigurd (who recognized the authority of Harald Greycloak, so long as he kept his nose out of Trondheim business), Tryggvi Olafsson still had the eastern coast of the Vik, and Guthroth Bjarnarson hung on to the western area.

  The conflict over Norway became one of pagan independents versus the Christianized descendants of Harald Fairhair – or, from a more secular point of view, it was a matter of increased interference from the Danes. Unlike Hakon, Harald Greycloak was determined to force Christianity on the Norwegians – possibly as a result of an agreement made with Harald Bluetooth in Denmark. Envoys of Greycloak interrupted sacrifices and despoiled places sacred to the gods of the Vikings, and did so with bad timing. The farmers began to wish for the more flexible days of Hakon, while a series of poor harvests and bad weather convinced both sides that their gods were angry.

  On that much, historians are agreed, although Snorri pushes into more dubious ground in his Heimskringla, preferring to continue his one-man vendetta against Gunnhild Kings-mother.2 Gunnhild, so claims Snorri, was incensed that such large sectors of Norway were not under the direct rule of her sons. Tryggvi and Guthroth in the south she could understand, since they at least had some claim to royal blood and some relationship with the departed Harald Fairhair. But these earls of Trondheim had no right to throw their weight around. Either through chance, or Gunnhild’s sorcerous influences, depending on whom one believes, strife broke out among the earls of Trondheim. The weather in Norway continued to be very bad, such that it became unfeasible to leave cattle in the open, causing a skald to complain that: ‘like the Finns, have we our bud-eaters bound in barn in middle summer.’3

  Sigurd’s brother Grjotgarth, a younger sibling unlikely to ever gain the title of earl through natural causes, was won over as Greycloak’s man on the inside, and participated with the sons of Erik Bloodaxe in a surprise attack on the incumbent ruler of Trondheim. Sigurd perished in the flaming hall, but Grjotgarth did not gain the earldom for which he had hoped. Instead, he was forced to defer to Sig
urd’s son, Hakon the Great. Hakon had the full support of his region and the Uppland hinterland, which had often voted in favour of paganism and still supported its prime candidate. He fought Harald Greycloak to a standstill, and the king was forced to accept that Hakon the Great had the same dominions as his father before him. Harald Greycloak was eventually lured to Denmark and killed by an agent of Hakon, who ensured that he himself then captured the ‘criminal’ and sent him off to the gallows.

  Gunnhild Kingsmother and the survivors of her brood fled for the Orkneys. Although the remaining sons of Erik Bloodaxe would continue to raid the coasts of Scandinavia and points beyond for another 20 years, they no longer presented any firm candidates for kingship in Norway.4 In purging the powerful earls and kinglings of southern Norway, Harald Greycloak and his brother had cleared the way for an unexpected alliance of their bitterest enemies. Hakon the Great struck a deal with Harald Bluetooth, reclaim his title of earl, and no more. Meanwhile, the fleet of the Danish king arrived among the strongholds of southern Norway. On either side of the Vik, the depleted earldoms saw little choice but to swear allegiance to the Danes. Southern Norway was given to Harald Grenske, an obscure great-grandson of Fairhair – he took the title ‘king’ but ruled as an agent of the king of Denmark. Norway was split between the Danish puppet and the earl of Trondheim, and would remain so for a generation. Heimskringla reports a series of scuffles between Hakon the Great and a few fractious kinsmen, but essentially, he had what he wanted. Norway’s sea coast belonged to Trondheim, and the southern districts were now, at least in theory, ruled by a descendant of Harald Fairhair. What Harald Bluetooth had to say about Norway’s continued pagan status is not recorded – it seems that he would rather have peaceful heathens on his northern frontier than Greycloak and his covetous Christians. Possibly, Bluetooth had other plans for the Norwegians, but he was soon ousted by a series of misfortunes to the south, and by a betrayal from amongst his allies, and possibly from within his own family.