A History of the Vikings
Chapter 5
148
Theophilus at Constantinople, they reported that in coming thither they had had to pass through countries inhabited by peoples so cruel and so dangerous that to prevent a repetition of this hazardous journey Theophilus sent them home by way of the Frankish court at Ingelheim with a recommendation to Louis the Pious that he should give them safe conduct through his realm. (1)
In soliciting the friendship of Theophilus the Swedes showed themselves aware that the development of the Dnieper trade-route depended largely upon the co-operation and goodwill of the Byzantine Greeks, but the viking spirit of their Scandinavian leaders in these early days of sudden power was too urgent and unruly to permit the practice of a wholly conciliatory policy. At the beginning of the ninth century an army from 'Rus' under a prince named Bravlin had begun the struggle for the command of the lower Dnieper by a long campaign that ended after many years' fighting with the capture from the Khazars of lands in the Cherson district, (2) and just before the year 842 another fighting force from Rus had raided the southern coasts of the Black Sea and plundered Amastris in Paphlagonia. (3) Such
1. Ann. Bert. M.G.H. ( Pertz), SS. I, p. 434. Theophilus called them 'men of Rhos' and said that they had come to him with a message of friendship from their khagan (chacanus), a word that is the Khazar equivalent of king. Louis ascertained that his visitors were Swedes and as he already knew something of vikings he regarded them with the utmost suspicion, throwing them into prison until he was satisfied that they were not spies.
2. But this may not have been a Scandinavian venture. Theophanes, for example, records the presence of hostile Russian vessels in the Black Sea about A.D. 765 ( Chron. C.S.H.B., XXVI, p. 691) and this most certainly must refer to the southern and non-Scandinavian 'Russians' who are first heard of in the Caucasus neighbourhood as early as the sixth century.
3. The authorities for these two raids are the legendary biographies of St. George of Amastris (early ninth century) and St. Stephen of Sugdaea ( eighth century), published in V. G. Vasilievsky Russko-Vizantiyskiya Izsledovaniya, St. Petersburg, 1893. The 'Russian' passage in the life of St. George (Greek text with German commentary) is given by E. Kunik, Bull. Hist.-Phil. Acad. Imp. des Sciences, St. P., III ( 1847), 3, col. 33 ff., who identifies the raid there described with that of Bravlin in the life of St. Stephen and dates it 866. A Latin version of the passage in St. George's life will be found in Acta Sanctorum (Boll), Feb., III, p. 282. For the Russian passage in St. Stephen's biography see A. Vostokov, Opisanie Russ. y Sloven. Rukopysey Rumyantsovskago Muz., St. P., 1842, p. 689 (cf. nos. CLXVIII, CLXIX), and for further discussion see D. Pogodin , Zapysky Odesskago Obshchestva, I ( 1844), p. 191. On the general question of the date of these biographies, see W. von Gutzeit, Bull. Acad. des Sciences, St. P., XXVII (1881), p. 333, and E. Kunik, ib., p. 388, V. Jagitch (reviewing Vasilievsky), Arch. f. slav. Phil., XVI ( 1894), p. 216; also F. Golubinsky, J.M.N.P., 187 (1876), p. 78 and the same author's Istoriya Russkoy Tserkvy ( Moscow, 1901), I, pp. 54, 57. For a valuable discussion of Bravlin and his raid in English, see N. T. Belaiew, SagaBook of Viking Soc. X, Pt. 2, p. 272.
149
reckless warfare could only lead, of course, to friction with the Greeks, and in 860 a quarrel between Greek merchants and the now presumptuous traders of Rus was followed by an impudent and astonishing attack upon Constantinople herself. Queen of Cities, surpassing all others in luxury and magnificence, lay at a distance of about ten days' sail from the Dnieper mouth along the western coast of the Black Sea; her thronged wharves were the centre of the world's commerce, and travellers' tales of this fabled metropolis of the Eastern Empire had long enthralled and amazed her barbarian neighbours; no richer prize ever tempted the vikings to their wars. But when in 860 the Varangian princes of Kiev, said to be two brothers named Askiold and Dir, led forth a flotilla of 200 of the little Russian boats to threaten the city, it may be that they dared hope for no other reward than a renewal of those trading-privileges that were essential to the prosperity of the Dnieper town. The time, however, was well chosen, for the viking leaders had learnt that the weakling emperor Michael III and his resolute uncle Bardas had left the capital to fight the Saracens, and it was a dark hour for the Greeks when the Russian fleet sailed suddenly into the Bosphorus and lay at anchor before the lovely city of Constantine. What exactly happened is unknown; 1 the town walls were strong, and the remaining garrison was sufficient in numbers to preclude all danger of the capture of the city by the viking force. But the Greeks were certainly taken by surprise and seriously alarmed. It seems that the emperor returned hastily and had some difficulty in passing through the cordons of Russian boats; but when the Byzantine and the Russian armaments were face to face the Greeks soon gave proof of their overwhelming superiority in ships and in equipment, so that the 'rude (çmÒj) and barbarous' invaders, as the Patriarch Photius called them, met with a crushing and complete defeat. Yet Photius himself admits that the Russians gained great renown as a result of this raid upon Constantinople, and their own chronicle avers that the Greeks and their city only escaped because of a storm that rose suddenly and wrecked the viking fleet, this storm being the
1. The accounts of this raid are summarized by C. de Boor, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, III (1894), p. 445. The date of the raid, as de Boor points out, is fixed by a passage in Anecdota Bruxellensia, I. Chron. Byz. MS. 11376, Ghent, 1894, p. 33.
150
(Opens New Window)
151
generous gift of the Virgin in answer to the urgent prayers of the terrified inhabitants. (1)
Askiold and Dir, the reputed leaders of this expedition, are said to have been the founders of the Varangian state of Kiev; but the Russian chronicle is at fault in the matter of the date assigned to the beginning of the Swedish supremacy over this town, for its first masters are described as companions of Rurik when he established himself in Novgorod, and this did not happen until two years after the raid from Kiev took place. The fact emerges, however, that the Polyane city under its earliest foreign lords remained independent of the Swedish rulers of Novgorod until the year (c. 880) when Rurik's successor, Oleg, himself went south with an army and, after taking Smolensk and Lyubetch, captured this new prize, slaying Askiold and Dir. Thereafter Kiev, the master-city of the Dnieper and the route to the Black Sea, became the capital of the 'Russian' state.
The half-legendary Oleg, though unknown to foreign writers, was, if the Russian stories of him are true, one of the greatest, bravest vikings who ever ruled a Slavonic state. His power and his dominion were alike enormous, for soon after Kiev fell to him and the 'mother of Russian cities' became his capital, he found himself the sovereign of a mighty political confederacy of town-provinces; all the eastern Slavonic tribes now looked to him as their protector and to Kiev as their rallying-point, wherefore Oleg began the building of fortifications to prevent the inroads of the Khazars and the Patzinaks, and set himself to achieve, knowing it to be a matter of paramount urgency, the safeguarding of the Russian merchants on their annual and most perilous journey to Constantinople.
It was the custom of the royal convoy of merchantmen, loaded with furs, honey, wax, and slaves, to depart from Kiev in June (2) and sail a short distance downstream to Vitichev, where a halt was made until such time as all the traders from far-off towns like Novgorod, Smolensk, Lyubetch, Tchernigov, and Vishgorod had joined the flotilla. From Vitichev the great convoy descended the Dnieper, each day in increasing peril of attack from the lawless peoples on their left flank, until the eastern
1. For the two homilies of Photius dealing with the Russian raid of 860 see Frag. Hist. Graec. (ed. Müller), V, i, p. 162. For other references, see F. Dvornik, Les Slavs, Byzance, et Rome au 9e. siècle, Paris, 1926, p. 58, n. 2, and cf. A. A. Vasiliev, Hist. Byz. Emp., Univ. Wisconsin Studies 13, Madison, 1928, p. 337.
2. This account is based on the well-known description by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus VII ( 912-959), De Administrando Imperio, IX.
152
bend of the river was reached, where for forty miles progress was stayed by the necessity of passing seven cataracts in quick succession. (1) It was only with the utmost difficulty that these obstacles were overcome; at some points armed detachments had to be sent out to the flanks to ward off the Patzinaks while the slaves were marched overland past the rapids, and to circumvent the worst of the falls not only the cargoes, but also the boats themselves, had to be dragged along the banks. Then, when the cataracts were safely passed and the grateful traders had duly sacrificed to the gods, a journey of four days took the convoy to the island of Berezan (2) at the mouth of the Dnieper estuary, where two or three days were spent in fitting out the ships for a voyage that was henceforth by sea. But the convoy was compelled to hug the shore and until it reached Sulina, at the middle rivermouth of the Danube delta, the Patzinaks patrolled the coast ready to take advantage of storm-driven or disabled Russian ships that were forced to put in to land; but once past the Danube mouth nothing more was to be feared from the Patzinaks; only tempest and piracy on the high seas henceforth threatened the convoy with disaster as it made its slow way past Constanza, Varna, and Misivria to the New Rome.
No doubt it was some quarrel between Greeks and Russians, some infringement of a trade-agreement made in or after 860, that gave Oleg pretext for the master-stroke of his career. Yet it was no mere retaliatory raid that he led against Constantinople in 907, but a solid and carefully planned demonstration of Russian might. The force he had collected for this great expedition was indeed a large one, and is said to have consisted of 80,000 men in no less than 2,000 boats, together with a cavalry detachment proceeding overland, a naval and military array that represented more than the full fighting strength of the Kievan state and included contingents of Tchuds and other peoples of the north.
1. This is the number given by Constantine; actually there are 9 or 10 'great' rapids and another half-dozen that are less formidable; for an account of them see T. J. Arne, Det Stora Svitjod, Stockholm, 1917, p. 38. Some of the rapids were known to the Greeks not only by Slavonic, but also by ON. names; thus the second cataract, says the Emperor, was called 'island-cataract', ostrobruniprach (ostrovunyj pragu) in the Slavonic tongue; in 'Russian' it was ulborsi (holm-fors). For the philology of the cataract-names see the literature cited by L. Niederle, Manuel de l'antiquité slave, I, Paris, 1923, p. 206, n. 3. It is worth remarking that apart from these there are no Norse place-names in the Dnieper basin of South Russia.
2. For the relics of the vikings here, which include a Runic inscription on a memorial stone, see N. Cleve, Esa, IV ( 1929), p. 250.
153
On this occasion the Greeks were prepared for trouble from the Russian quarter and Oleg found the Bosphorus barred against him by a chain. But a fleet of light ships that had successfully navigated the Dnieper rapids was not to be hindered thus, and the story goes that Oleg had his ships drawn overland past the barrier and so arrived with his huge fleet before Constantinople. There was reigning at this time the Emperor Leo VI, and this wise man, acting in accordance with the customary Byzantine policy of conciliation and toleration, showed himself disposed to welcome rather than resist the threatening armament before his walls. The Russians had already plundered churches and palaces in the neighbourhood of the city, but there was no fighting before Constantinople; mediators from the emperor arrived; they suggested that the maintenance of friendly relations with the empire and the stimulus of Byzantine trade were alike indispensable to the well-being of the state of Russia; on their part they admitted that they had need of the commodities that the Russian traders brought to their doors; they showed themselves prepared to listen sympathetically to Oleg's grievance and made proposals for a generous commercial treaty. (1)
Oleg professed himself satisfied and was entertained hospitably; presents were lavished upon him and the chieftains in his train; gifts were made to his ships' crews, both Scandinavian and Slavonic; moreover, subsidies were paid by the Greeks to each of the several Russian towns where dwelt princes who were under Oleg's authority. And so he returned to Kiev, having struck no blow against the Greek forces, but having laid enduring foundations of commercial prosperity for Russia and having thrown open the
1. Oleg's attack upon Constantinople is not mentioned in any Byzantine source nor is Oleg himself named, and for this reason some authors believe that the account of his expedition in the Russian chronicle is apocryphal; but there can be no doubt that the story of the treaty is based on historical fact. Thus, much later, the Emperor John Zimisces avowed to Svyatoslav that Igor of Kiev, Oleg's successor, had disregarded the sworn agreements by attacking Constantinople in 941, and this can only refer to the treaty made between Leo VI and Oleg (see A. A. Vasiliev, op. cit. p. 389). I find it hard to believe that this treaty was not the sequel to some sort of demonstration by the Russians and I have therefore incorporated the story of the raid in my narrative; but I admit that the strength of Oleg's force may be much exaggerated. A supposed reference to Oleg and a mention of a reluctant Russian raid upon Constantinople occurs in a twelfth-century Hebrew document concerning Khazar history (Jewish Quarterly Review, N.S. III, 1912-13, p. 196 ff., pp. 217, 218, and cf. P. K. Kokovzev, J.M.N.P., 1913, p. 150); but the chronological difficulties in connexion with identification of Oleg are most formidable and it is much more likely that the events referred to belong to the time of Igor.
<< Previous Page Next Page >>
© 2004-2007 Northvegr.
Most of the material on this site is in the public domain. However, many people have worked very hard to bring these texts to you so if you do use the work, we would appreciate it if you could give credit to both the Northvegr site and to the individuals who worked to bring you these texts. A small number of texts are copyrighted and cannot be used without the author's permission. Any text that is copyrighted will have a clear notation of such on the main index page for that text. Inquiries can be sent to info@northvegr.org. Northvegr™ and the Northvegr symbol are trademarks and service marks of the Northvegr Foundation.
|