Viking Lecture with Neil Price Online

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The inimitable Neil Price will be giving an online lecture on Wednesday, October 7th, at 13.30 Co-ordinated Universal Time, which is happily also Iceland time (although for some reason the atom clock is set by Greenwich and not Reykjavik). The lecture is hosted by the Institute of Northern Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland.

Dr. Price will base his lecture on Children of Ash and Elm: A New Look at the Vikings, which is his latest work. Price is also associated with the Legends of the Eastern Vikings program, for further information see his profile on “The Project and Its Participants” page. For residents in Iceland, the book is available in the University book store (Bóksala stúdenta), which remains open although the University library and most of the premises are closed due to Covid.

The lecture will take an hour and a half and is free of charge. If you want to join, please sign up here.

Roman Empire Ended in 1461

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The fall of the Roman Empire might not exactly be breaking news, but it can be a relief to take a break from following the US presidential debates and consider history for a while. Everyone knows that the Western Roman Empire formally ended in 476 and that the Eastern Roman Empire was finally conquered in 1453. Or was it?

While Constantinople duly fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1453, the Empire of Tebizond lasted for eight more years. Trebizond was one of the successor states of the Byzantine Empire after the previous fall of Constantinople to crusaders in 1204. It was founded by Alexios Komnenos, last male descendant of deposed Byzantine Emperor  Andronikos I Komnenos. It’s rulers claimed to be the rightful heirs of Rome and had as their symbol the two-headed eagle.

Situated on both the northern and southern shores of the Black sea, Tebizond was finally subdued by Mehmet II in 1461. The month long siege can se seen as the final stand of the Romans. Nevertheless, a final holdout, the Principality of Theodoro on the Crimean Peninsula, lasted until 1475. Perhaps the Eastern Roman Empire, much like its western counterpart, can be said to have gone out with more of a whimper than a bang. The fate of modern day empires remains to be seen.

Björk’s Salmon Inspires Viking Film

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Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgaard and Willem Dafoe are among the actors in the eagerly awaited Viking epic The Northman. The idea for the film, which is apparently about a Viking prince seeking revenge in Iceland, can be traced to a dinner party that Björk held some years ago. Director Robert Eggers and his wife were on a trip to Iceland and, like anyone would, expressed interested in meeting Björk. Unlike most people, however, they were summarily invited for salmon at the Björk residence, even if they had never met before. Björk also invited her friend and sometime collaborator Sjón to the dinner. It turned out Sjón was a big fan of Eggers debut film The Witch, and Eggers was similarly a fan of Sjón’s 2008 novel In the Mouth of the Whale. Both, as it happens, are about 17th century belief in magic, where the supernatural is ingrained in the world view of the characters. This led to the two collaborating on the screenplay for the upcoming film where, as previously mentioned, Björk will play the role of a Slavic witch. This marks the songstress’ first foray into acting since Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark from 2000, and one of few examples of Vikings interacting with Slavs on the big screen. In an interview with Icelandic National Radio, Sjón said he would rather fail to do a Viking film with Eggers than anyone else. The film will no doubt attempt to capture the Viking mindset in a manner not previously seen.

You can hear the interview here, where Sjón also talks about the movement of myths from east to west, from Asia to Europe, in the past 8000 years (Icelandic only). https://www.ruv.is/utvarp/spila/lestin/23619/923ea3

Viking Societies Were Cultural and Genetic Melting Pots

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Peer-reviewed journal Nature has published an article by a team of researchers who have been mapping Viking DNA by examining the remains of 442 people from burial sites all over Europe. It probably comes as little surprise that Norwegian ancestry is found in Iceland, Greenland and Ireland, Danish in England and Swedish in Eastern Europe, Swedish DNA having been traced to the present day Baltic States, Russia and Poland. However, the study also shows that there was a considerable influx of people from southern Europe and even Asia into Scandinavia. This is in line with recent discoveries of objects from far afield found in Nordic excavations. It seems that rather than Vikings emanating from Scandinavia and setting off to conquer, all blond and blue eyed, they may have been a very mixed group, with Picts from Scotland found to have been accorded full Viking burials. The popular conception of what Vikings supposedly looked like is up for re-evaluation, but some researchers point out that as the study only looks at the Viking Age (ca. 750-1050), we don’t as yet know how far back this cultural melting pot goes. The solution would seem to be to dig deeper.

A short podcast discussing the findings with scholars from Norway and Denmark can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02659-w

The full article is available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8

International Byzantine Studies Congress Moves From Istanbul to Venice

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Much like the Triumphal Quadriga above the porch of St. Marks Basilica in the 13th Century, the 24th International Byzantine Studies Congress has been moved from Constantinople to Venice. The International Association of Byzantine Studies website has announced that the 2021 Congress has been postponed until 2022 and will now take place in Venice and Padua, Italy. The congress was originally to take place in Istanbul in 2021.

The Turkish Duvar Gazette states that while the reason for the postponement was Covid related, the reason for relocating the congress was not. Rather, it was a response to the Turkish government converting the famous Hagia Sophia Byzantine church from museum to mosque. The congress committee quotes Covid as well as “other concerns associated with issues of heritage management” as cause for the move.

The congress has been held every five years since 1948 and over 1000 scholars were expected to attend the 2021 congress. They will now be meeting a year later with the Bronze Horses of Venice instead of the Hagia Sophia as backdrop, with the precise date yet to be announced.

For the International Association of Byzantine Studies website, see: https://aiebnet.gr/

For the Duvar website, see: https://www.duvarenglish.com/culture/2020/07/27/byzantine-studies-congress-moved-from-istanbul-after-conversion-of-hagia-sophia-into-mosque/

Varangians Could Only Visit Constantinople in Small Groups

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At the end of August, Turkish news sources announced that the remains of a Varangian settlement had been discovered outside Istanbul. This is not the first hard evidence of Northmen in what was once the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the most famous being the runes found inscribed on the walls of the Hagia Sophia itself. But it may tell us a lot more about their activities there.

The team doing the dig consisted of 75 archaeologists led by the Turkish Şengül Aydıngün and including the Polish Viking expert Blazei Stanislawski. The site is in the the ancient city of Bathonea near Lake Küçükçekmece, and findings date from the 9th to the 11th centuries. Bathonea was an international port at the time and among the objects found are a north European ambergris cross and a necklace bearing the symbol of Jörmundgandur, the Midgard Serpent.

Among the theories prompted by the discovery are that the Varangians were not allowed to live within the walls of Constantinople at the time, but could only enter in groups of 35 men at the most and had to be gone by sundown. It seems that fear of the Northmen encouraged social distancing long before our era.

For the news story in Hurriyet Daily news, see:

https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/archaeologists-unearth-viking-neighborhood-in-istanbul-157658

Did the Finns Help the Swedes Go East?

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The tribes that populated what is now Finland and Estonia have traditionally seen to be in the receiving end of Viking raids, most notably in Egils’ Saga where the titular hero slaughters a whole Estonian farmstead instead of letting them suffer the indignity of being robbed in their sleep. New research suggests that the Finno-Ugric tribes may ialso have played a key role in allowing the Vikings to navigate the waterways that led to the Black Sea, having familiarised themselves with the territory at a far earlier date. Archaeological evidence also suggests that influences from the east may have played a greater role in the culture of the Mälaren area. The iconic thick leather belts with metal buckles may even have come to present day Sweden from nomadic tribes to the east via present day Finland. A new Finnish documentary highlights this and the second part is shown on Icelandic State Broadcasting tonight:

https://www.ruv.is/sjonvarp/spila/eystrasaltsfinnarnir/26872/808ls1

(In Finnish and Swedish with Icelandic subtitles)

A Sami in modern day Finland

Björk Goes Viking in New Historical Epic

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Filming of the Viking epic The Northman has finally commenced in Northern Ireland, after having been suspended due to Covid-19. The film is directed by Robert Eggers, known for his portrayal of New England historical epochs, such as The Lighthouse (late 19th Century) and The Witch (1630s), often adding supernatural elements. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman and is written by Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón. Perhaps most interestingly, Björk will appear in the film, her role being that of a “Slavic Witch.” The film is set in Iceland in the early 10th Century and perhaps Björk’s character description indicates that connections between the western and easternmost parts of the Viking World will be utilized in the story.

Sjón and Björk have collaborated before. He has been her lyricist on various tracks, including the soundtrack to Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark for which they were nominated for an Oscar. This was where Björk debuted her famous Swan Dress, so we can only hope she will be nominated again.

Belarus: Waving the Flag of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

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Avid news watchers may have spotted that Belarusian protesters are waving a red and white flag, often with a picture of a knight on it. This flag, in fact, goes back to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania when it was used by Belarusians under Lithuanian rule. It was briefly adopted as the flag of the independence movement at the end of World War I. The white reflected the country’s name. One theory behind the naming of Belarus (sometimes called White Russia) is that it was the part of the Rus kingdoms that was not conquered by the Mongols in the 13th Century and hence was ruled by Christian princes. The westernisers in Belarus, as in Ukraine, see continuity from the ancient Rus through the Lithuanian Duchy and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to today.

Hence, a red stripe was added and sometimes the picture of the knight. This was the official flag of Belarus from independence in 1991 until 1995, when Lukashenko changed it back to the flag of the Belarusians SSR of the Soviet Union. Perhaps it will be changed back if he relinquishes power. For more on the Belarus flag, see:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/flag-of-Belarus

Belarus: He Who Controls the Present Controls the Past

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History is being made these days in Belarus and inevitably whoever comes out on top will have his own of history canonized. The current conflict between Westernizers and Pro-Russian groups goes back over 100 years, each faction viewing historical events in very different terms. The difference between the two is recounted in an article late last year by Moscow-born University of Radford Professor Grigory Ioffe called “Split Identity and a Tug-of-War for Belarus’s Memory.”

https://jamestown.org/program/84916/

For the pro-Russians, the history of Belarus goes back to the Polotsk principality, which was subservient to the Kyivan Rus, the precursor to both modern day Ukraine and Russia. For centuries after the collapse of Kyiv, most of Belarus was occupied by Lithuanians and Poles before being liberated by the Russians in the 18th Century (and again during World War II). The official view, quite neatly, sees Kyiv, Novgorod and Polotsk as separate ancestors of the three eastern Slavic states of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

For the Westernizers, the county’s history also begins with Polotsk but here the connection with Kyiv is downplayed. St. Volodymyr is seen to have incorporated the principality against the wishes of the populace (as related in the Primary Chronicle) and so a heritage of resistance to foreign authority is established. Conversely, the union with the Lithuanians and the Poles in the later Middle Ages is seen as having been on equal terms, making Belarus a full member of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In this narrative, Russia comes the main enemy and the many uprisings of the Poles against the Russians in the 19th Century are seen as joint Polish-Belarusian affairs.

According to Belarusian philosopher (and Westernizer) Valantsyn Akudovich, the former view appeals more to Belarusians as it allows them to be a part of the glory of Russian and Soviet Empires rather than its victims.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s move to Lithuania and Lukashenko’s calls for assistance to Russia can be the seen as the latest chapter in the long running debate about whether Belarus’ history runs through the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or Muscovy, and whether its future belongs to the Westernisers or pro-Russians.

St. Vladimir and Comrade Stalin