A Very Varangian Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

A very happy Christmas from the Eastern Vikings. Enjoy the holidays and don’t forget to clash your weapons loudly in honour of your Emperor-King, for it is written:

“In describing the imperial banquet at Christmas and its attendant ceremonies, the author tells us that before the actual dinner the officials in their several sorts and ranks came to the dining hall to chant their polychronion to the emperor,
that is, they prayed in ceremonial forni that the emperor might live many years.

To each party the appropriate official replied : ‘ Our Lord the Emperor bids you many
years.’ First came the officials of the palace, each class distinguished by special robes
then in order, the Genoese of Galata, more functionaries, the Pisan colony, then the
Venetians, and after these distinguished foreigners came the Varangians. They gave
their greeting in their own language, and this was English-clashing their weapons with a loud noise.

But whether the language was really English, or whether it was Norse, and Codinus says English because there were so many English Varangians, must be left uncertain. To the Greeks all barbarous languages were much the same; and Freeman judiciously says: ‘We must remember that any distinction between English and Danish would disappear in the latitude of Constantinople.’ An acclamation was made by another set of men in the Persian language, a choir sang the Christmas canticle of Romanos, and then the banquet was served.

(from Dawkins, The Later History of the Varangian Guard.)

The Later History of the Varangian Guard: Some Notes on JSTOR

Worst Year Ever (No, it’s not 2020)

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

Back in that distant golden age which was 2018, people, it seems, were still not very happy. In fact, so miserable were they that it took a team of scientist to prove that 2018 was not, in fact, the worst year ever, despite a new polio-like disease that could appear at any moment, fear of global warming and Trump still being president.

The experts unanimously agreed on the year 536 and perhaps inevitably, it was all the fault of Iceland. Apparently, a volcanic eruption in the-still uninhabited island at around that time blocked the sun from the sky for 18 months and led to widespread crop-failure and famine. If this makes the Eyjafjallajökull eruption of 2010, which grounded all flights for a week, seem like a mere speck of dust, then the bubonic plague which that year spread from Egypt and across Europe and killed some 50 million people makes Covid look like a case of the sniffles. Also, it was uncommonly cold, worth remembering now that Iceland is going through an uncharacteristic dry spell.

Even the horrors of 2020 (I, for one have put on 10 kilos watching Netflix) can´t hold a candle to 536. Now that we are in the endgame with a mere weeks to go, this Annus Horriblis really must try harder if it is to beat the king.

And speaking of kings, Justinian the First of Byzantium, also known for building the Hagia Sophia, was at the time busy reconquering the Western Roman Empire, ruling over Italy, North Africa and Spain as well as the East. When the plague reached Constantinople in 541, it killed around 40% of the inhabitants. Had it not been for this, who knows, perhaps the Roman Empire would have been reconstituted, the Middle Ages as we know them never happened, and Varangians perhaps never become the elite forces of the Eastern Emperor?

Read more in the Time Magazine article here: https://time.com/5460027/worst-year-history/

For more detailed information, here is an interview by Ann Gibbon with Harvard Medievalist Michael McCormick: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

The Hagia Sophia in International Politics

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

In late July, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke on the phone about the Turkish decision to change the Hagia Sophia from museum to mosque. Putin had previously criticized the Greek-Macedonian name deal that led to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to change it’s formal title to Northern Macedonia. But last summer, the heads of the two orthodox countries found much to agree on, apart from the status of Constantine’s church.

This autumn, they seem to be drawing yet closer as Putin has recognised Greece’s claims to an exclusive economic zone in the Aegean Sea, contested by Turkey. The support was reiterated by the Russian Embassy in Athens via its Twitter account. The title of the account might be confusing to Medievalists. At the top, it say “Rus embassy, Greece.” The Rus are not known to have sent an embassy to the Greeks for roughly 700 years.

https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/10/23/putin-greece-2021/

International Byzantine Studies Congress Moves From Istanbul to Venice

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

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

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

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

The History of Hagia Sofia

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

As probably everyone knows, the Hagia Sofia church in Istanbul has been turned back into a mosque for the first time in almost a century. On Icelandic National Radio this week, our very own Þórir Jónsson Hraundal spoke about the history of the church from Orthodox to Catholic and back again, to mosque to museum and again to mosque.

https://www.ruv.is/utvarp/spila/morgunvaktin/23614/7hhgb6

(Icelandic only)

Meanwhile, on the podcast Byzantium and Friends, University of Pennsylvania professor Bob Ousterhout also recounted the history of the illustrious church, contextualising it with the current global trend of changing memorials. He also mentions the considerable part its reputation played in the Christianisation of the Rus.

https://byzantiumandfriends.podbean.com/e/29-the-many-identities-of-hagia-sophia-past-and-present-with-bob-ousterhout/

(In English)