Were the Estonians Vikings?

When one visits Estonia (thank god we should soon be able to travel again), one can’t help but notice refrigerator magnets and other souvenirs celebrating Estonian Vikings. But were they?

Perhaps inspired by more recent history as well as Egil’s Saga, it is easy to see the Estonians as on the receiving end of Vikingdom. After all, Egill is captured by Estonians but manages to escape with a fair bit of loot, only to turn back and murder his captor and his family, as robbing a sleeping man would be an insult to said man. Even so, the story tells us two things. The Estonians were able to capture such as ferocious warrior as Egill. And he did, in fact, respect them.

It seems that on more than one occasion the proto-Estonians gave as well as they got. In Heimskringla, Snorri Sturluson relates how the Swedish King Yngvi patrols his shores for Estonian pirates in the 7th century. Eventually, he invades Estonia but is killed in battle and hastily buried there by the sea. In a later chapter, Queen Astrid of Norway escapes with her son, the future king Olaf Tryggvason, from Norway to Novgorod where her brother Sigurd holds high position at the court of the great prince Vladimir (or Volodymir or Valdimar). On their way, they are raided by Estonian Vikings, here being called Vikings in the proper sense of the word as hostile raiders and taken captive. Later, as queen brother Sigurd is collecting taxes on behalf of Valdimar, he finds Olaf being auctioned at the local market and buys him free. This latter story is set in 967 and five years later, a battle between Estonian and Icelandic Vikings off Saaremaa is described in Njál’s Saga.

Archaeological evidence also suggests plentiful contact between Norse and Estonian, reaching to before the Viking Age proper. Probably the Norse navigated along Baltic Coasts and islands before braving the more unpredictable North Atlantic. In 2008, two Viking ships full of slain warriors were discovered on Saaremaa and may have been buried their in a hurry after a fierce battle at around the year 700 CE. If these are the remains of Yngvi and his men remains a matter of conjecture, but it shows that Snorri’s tale is at least historically plausible.

So were the Estonians Vikings? Well, sort of, but that would depend on definition. It seems that to the old Norse societies, they were.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/95-1307/features/941-vikings-saaremaa-estonia-salme-vendel-oseberg

https://books.google.is/books?id=4M1BAAAAcAAJ&dq=eysysla+adalsysla+virland&q=adalsysla&redir_esc=y&hl=is#v=snippet&q=adalsysla&f=false

Saga Heroes in Byzantium

Professor Sverrir Jakobsson is interviewed in Morgunblaðið this week about his new book The Varangians: In God’s Holy Fire. He also talks about the Legends of the Eastern Vikings project and says that the Icelandic Sagas, including the Varangians, has been his main interest for the past 30 years, or more or less since he started university. Already in secondary school, Sverrir was known in Iceland for participating on his school team in the annual quiz show Gettu Betur alongside his twin brother Ármann, himself a now professor of Icelandic literature. The competition was broadcast on TV and needless to say, they won.

In the interview, Sverrir talks about the connections between the Icelandic Sagas and the Varangians. Among famous Saga personalities that served at the court of the Eastern Emperor are Kolskeggur (which translates as Blackbeard), who was the brother of the main hero Gunnar in Njáls’ Saga, and Bolli, one of the main protagonists of Laxdæla Saga, was a renowned Varangian too.

Interestingly, while the Byzantine Emperor’s Nordic troops are called “Varjagi” in Slavic chronicles, the term is not used in the oldest Icelandic sources from the 12th century, although veterans from Constantinople are mentioned. The moniker “Væringjar” first seems to come into use in the 13th century in Iceland, at a time when the Varangians, or at least their Nordic element, was in decline in Constantinople and the cohort was increasingly being constituted of Englishmen. The term “Varjagi” can be found in later Arabic sources, but comes later into the old Norse being used in Iceland at the time.

Morgunblaðið newspaper is of a rather later vintage but is Iceland’s oldest functioning newspaper and was founded in 1913. The full interview can be found (in modern Icelandic) on mbl.is.

“Áhugamál mitt í næstum þrjátíu ár.” Þriðjudagur, 19. janúar 2021.