Eastern Vikings Conference Results

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

The Legends of the Eastern Vikings Sigfús Blöndal memorial conference was held at Laugarvatn on the 21st to 22nd of October. Sigfús Blöndal wrote one of the defining accounts of the Vikings in the east over 50 years ago, but a lot has happened in the field since and at Laugarvatn some of the world’s leading scholars in the field presented their findings. Happily, the papers will be published in a book that should be out next year.

Meanwhile, Sverrir Jakobsson’s The Varangians: In God’s Holy Fire presents an updated account of recent scholarship. And while we wait for the book, here is a radio interview with Þórir Jónsson Hraundal about the conference.

Samfélagið – Flatnefja gæludýr, meðafli og væringjar | RÚV Útvarp (ruv.is)

New Podcast Available! Who Were the Rus?

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

Who were the Rus? Host Valur Gunnarsson speaks with Dr. Sverrir Jakobsson, one of the worlds’ leading authorities, about all things Rus. Where did they come from, and how did they impact the Middle Ages as well as the world we know today? (In English)

Part 2 of the Legends of the Eastern Vikings Podcast.

Spotify – Legends of the Eastern Vikings: Who were the Varangians and the Rus, with Dr. Sverrir Jakobsson – Legends of the Eastern Vikings | Podcast on Spotify

(see also the Podcast Page for Part 1)

Ukrainians March to Commemorate St. Volodymyr

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

This week, Ukrainians celebrated 1033 years since the adoption of Christianity. According to tradition, this took place in the summer of 988. Prince Volodymyr (or Vladimir or Valdimar), soon to become a saint, decided he needed organised religion to hold his vast realm together. To this end, he summoned emissaries representing the major monotheisms to his court. The great prince found Judaism to be too complicated while Islam banned alcohol which was an obvious no-no. This left the two major strains of Christianity at the time, the Catholic and the Orthodox.

Volodymyr went with Orthodoxy, no doubt the promise of marriage to a Byzantine princess having sweetened the deal. Had he opted otherwise, the history of not just Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, but perhaps also of Europe as a whole, might have been very different. However, Orthodoxy was probably always the front-runner, despite this rather amusing story. The Byzantine Emperor was still the regional great power and Volodymyr’s grandmother Olga had converted, although this did not extend to her subjects.

The day has been an official holiday in Ukraine since 2008. However, it can still be cause for contention. 34 percent of Ukrainians see themselves as belonging to the Kyiv patriarchate which became separate from Moscow in 2019, while 14 percent still look to the Moscow patriarchate. The rest see themselves are being Orthodox of no particular denomination or belonging to other Christian sects.

Putin has emphasised the Christianisation of Rus as an event that unites Russia and Ukraine and came to Kyiv to celebrate in 2013, before the present war started. Ukrainian president Zelensky, however, asked people to stay home to avoid contagion. The mayor of Kyiv did allow the Moscow-led event to take place on July 27^th, with tens of thousands of people attending. The next day, the Kyiv patriarchate also held a march. There is now worry that the marching may have been a superspreader event, but participants claim to have faith that God will protect them.

Remembrance of St. Volodymyr of Kyiv and the Day of baptism of Rus celebrated in Ukraine - RISU

Links:

Zelensky criticizes Klitschko for allowing religious mass event amid pandemic | KyivPost – Ukraine’s Global Voice

https://jamestown.org/religion-as-a-hybrid-war-weapon-to-achieve-russias-geopolitical-goals/

BBC World Service – The Fifth Floor, Kyiv march: ‘Eucharist is our vaccine’

Origin Stories: The Kyivan Rus in Ukrainian Historiography

Posted on July 6, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

A new paper is now available in our dissertations segment. Written by your humble editor while on location in Kyiv and having to prolong his stay because of covid, 2020 turned into a very productive period. The stay formed the backdrop to the nr. 1 best-selling non-fiction book Bjarmalönd, now back in the Icelandic charts. The dissertation, which was part of my master’s degree, can be found below. The opening reads:

“The Russians and the Ukrainians, and indeed the Belarusians too, share an origin myth which reaches back to the legendary Rurik’s founding of the kingdom of the Kyivan Rus However, rather than reaching fruition in the early 20th century, as was the case in much of Central Europe, the origin story was subsumed into the Soviet experiment, and only remerged after 1991. It is still very much a work in progress.
Here we will look at how the founding myth of the Rus has been used in the Ukrainian
nation building project, which will unavoidably lead to comparisons with Russia and, to a
lesser extent, other neighbouring countries such as Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. From the Normanist debate of the mid-18th century to the rise of nationalism in the 19th century and the use of the Rus in the the Soviet Union, we turn to the present with its all its historical complexity and political ramifications regarding the relationship between Ukraine and Russia.”

Lokaverkefni: “Origin Stories: The Kyivan Rus in Ukrainian Historiography” | Skemman

Icelandic Fans of the Eastern Romans

Posted on May 10, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

Among the many interesting points raised in Sverrir Jakobsson’s recent podcast on the Varangians is how they have been viewed by posterity. The Varangian Guard was know for its loyalty to the Eastern Emperor, who was not always on good terms with the West, not least after the sacking of Constantinople by Western crusaders in 1204.

In the Icelandic Sagas, however, the view on the Byzantine Empire seems overwhelmingly positive, despite the Great Schism having taken place a couple of centuries earlier, in 1054. In a previous paper entitled “The Schism That Never Was.” (see link below), Sverrir says, as the title implies, that the Schism may not have had as great an effect on contemporaries as often supposed, the real break coming in 1204.

For the Saga heroes, to have served the Byzantines always engenders respect. In fact, to have done so means that the hero is not called upon to prove himself further with great deeds, this seen to already having been done. This view is in opposition to other contemporary Western literature, which tends to have a negative view of the Eastern Romans. In Nordic sources, this only becomes apparent in Sweden in the 14th century. In that sense, he says, Icelanders were more Catholic than the pope, seeing all Christians as belonging to the same group.

It was only centuries later that the Varangians Swedish roots were emphasised in Russia. The Empress Catherine the Great, herself of Germanic stock, even wrote a paly about them and found obvious allusions to herself in noble foreigners ruling Russia. The Scottish poet Walter Scott sees them as English heroes, as later on the Varangian Guard were mainly composed of Englishmen, whereas the Icelandic poet Einar Benediktsson sees them as modernisers and proto-businessmen, an image of Viking-bankers that Icelandic oligarchs would attempt to project. As Sverrir says, the view of the Varangians is usually based on present needs rather than medieval sources.

(article in English)

The Schism that never was: Old Norse views on Byzantium and Russia – Medievalists.net

(podcast in Icelandic)

New Russia/Ukraine Book at Number 1 in Iceland

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

The latest work by your humble editor, Bjarmalönd, which is about Russia, Ukraine and surrounding countries, is now out. Written over a 20 year period starting as a Russian Studies student at the University of Helsinki and concluding in Chernobyl during Covid, it is part travelogue, part bildungsroman with a lot of history thrown in for good measure. While the book primarily deals with the post-Soviet sphere in the 21st century, it does go back to the 9th to explore the common origins of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. And perhaps how different takes on the origin story still influences people today.

Bjarmalönd is currently at number 1 on the Icelandic non-fiction charts and can be bought here in ebook and hardcopy (Icelandic only).

Bjarmalönd – Forlagið bókabúð (forlagid.is)

Rus Family Dramas

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

The Rus may not have looked upon themselves as Russians, Ukrainians or Swedes, but how did they self-identify? And perhaps more importantly, to whom did they owe allegiance. Our podcast with dr. Þórir Hraundal (see under the podcast section) we discussed how various groups of Rus may have competed, fought and even enslaved one another rather than forming one cohesive group that saw themselves as distinct from the locals. When the different groups of Rus formed kingdoms centred on Novgorod and later Kyiv, did they see themselves as a tribe or a proto-nation of sorts? Or were different dynasties competing? What held the kingdoms together, and why did they so often tear themselves apart?

Dr. Daniel Ostrowski and Christian Raffensberger of the Ukrainian Studies department at Harvard University claims that the people who mattered most to the Rus were in fact the immediate family rather than larger dynasties. In a description of their forthcoming book, they say:

“If dynasties are difficult to discuss in the medieval world, where does this leave us? The answer is with families. Families are the building blocks of dynasties and it is through studying families – fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and spouses of both – that we are able to better understand the human face of history. Families, in turn, are part of more extended kin entities that we call clans, which themselves can comprise multiple families which may, or may not, always share the same overarching objectives.”

They will be discussing this further at a live zoom session on Wednesday, March 24th, at 16.00 UTC (Greenwich Mean Time)

To register, click the following link. Registration required. Also available on youtube.
The Ruling Families of Rus’ | Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University

Realism in Viking Movies

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

Our very own Neil Price, archaeologist and Viking expert, went through some of the biggest Viking films of all time. As was to be expected, he found much inaccuracy in the details but nevertheless felt that most of them captured something of the feel of Vikings, which is no small praise coming from someone who is one of the world’s leading authorities on the Viking mind (and author of a book of the same name).

For our purposes, perhaps most interesting is The 13th Warrior from 1999, starring Antonio Banders as Ibn Fadlan, the famous Arabic chronicler of the Vikings. The film is admittedly very loosely based on his accounts, and Neil does point out some of the flaws. Nevertheless, he says that it captures some of the cultural exchange that did take place along the Volga 1100 years ago, with various cultures conversing through interpreters. The Arabs, being the main protagonists, here speak English as cinema Vikings are wont to do. In this case, however, the Norwegians speak modern Norwegian. Shouldn’t they have gone for Icelandic instead?

Neil even has a kind word to say for the Marvel Universe Thor films, pointing out that it’s fascinating that people are still interested in stories first told around 1500 years ago, however much has changed in the retelling.

But the best and the worst is reserved for one of the first big-budget Viking films in Technicolour, the aptly titled The Vikings from 1958. While he says that the Vikings are dressed unhistorically as cavemen, he is impressed that the hero is shown jumping between oars to show is prowess, a feat attributed in the Sagas to Olaf I. of Norway and here shown for the only time in cinema.

The story is not about the famous Olaf, however, enthusiasts of whom should be directed to the Icelandic film White Viking from 1991. The Vikings recounts the story of Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons, lately seen in the TV series of the same name. The aging Ragnar is played by Ernst Borgnine but the leading role goes to one of his sons, played by Kirk Douglas. Kirk himself is a Rus of sorts, being born Issur Danielovitch to Belarusian parents in New York. Everything always leads back to the Rus.

For the 13 minute video, click here:

Viking Expert Breaks Down Famous Viking Movies & TV Shows – YouTube

Happy New Year (again)

Posted on January 16, 2021 by Valur Gunnarsson

It’s the third day of the New Year, at least for those who follow the Julian calendar like the orthodox church does. The Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar, was used throughout Europe until 1582 when it was found to be two weeks out of step with the lunar calendar and the changing seasons. Western Christianity went with the new calendar, but the old one was retained in orthodox lands until the 1917 revolution.

In the Soviet Union, Christmas was found to be too Christian for an atheistic country and probably Santa Claus became too capitalist. The new New Year which began at midnight on January 1st was free of religious connotations and hence became one of the main events of the year, Father Frost and the Snow Girl arriving and bearing gifts.

However, for the orthodox church, Christmas Day remains on the 6th of January and hence New Year’s Day is on the 14th. The orthodox New Year’s is not so much a time for celebration as for reflection. All of this should be good news for those who feel that the beginning of 2021 has been…well, weird. The first two weeks don’t really count. And if the second half of January gets even weirder, we can look forward to another reset on February 12th when the Year of the Ox begins according to the Chinese calendar.

Hey Pandas, What's Your Favorite Meme So Far In 2021? (Closed) | Bored Panda

The Return of The Vikings

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

2020 is about to leave us and no one will be sad to see it go. Of course, it’s been 10 days since the solstice and so technically a new year has already begun. The day grows longer by a few minutes each day and soon it will be time to plant the crops again. But for the Vikings (probably) the equinox was the first day of a 12 day feast and when the party’s over, a new year begins. And so it is to this day, more or less.

More importantly, today marks the premiere of the final series of The Vikings, the History Channel series that has been running since 2013. Although increasingly anachronistic, this is as close to history as the History Channel gets these days.

The series begins with the raid on Lindisfarne in 793. This is led by the probably mythological Ragnar Lothbrok, though even the myths don’t credit him with the raid, as he is said to have lived somewhat later. By the present and 6th series Ragnar is dead but his sons have come into conflict with Oleg of Novgorod, thought to have reigned from 879 to 912, although inevitably scholars dispute the chronology and some put him a few decades later. In any case, both Ragnar and his sons seem to have reached Old Testament ages, according to the show.

The first part of the 6th season ended with Oleg invading Scandinavia, which is not only historically but also geographically inaccurate. A Rus invasion of the Nordic countries would probably have been as unthinkable militarily as it was politically, although longships certainly did sail back and forth. The Slavic steampunk look with hot air balloons and all does little for authenticity.

Still, Eastern Vikings scholars can have some fun spotting other famous Rus figures, such as Igor and Askold, but the greatest fun to be had is in pointing out the inaccuracies to non-specialists. If they will have as much fun is another matter, but if not, they are advising us to spend New Year’s Eve alone anyway.

Happy New Year.

Vikings Season 6B | Official Trailer | Prime Video – YouTube