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

1200 Year Old Norwegian Ship May Shed Light on the Rus

Posted on December 4, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

Excavations around the Gjellestad ship in south-eastern Norway continue unabated and it is hoped they will be completed this month. GRE radar has shown it to be 19 metres long and five metres wide, and even though much of it has rotted away, it is hoped that a replica may eventually be built.

This is the first major excavation of its kind in Norway for over a century and this boat is of roughly the same size as the famous Oseberg and Gokstad ships, on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. Those ships were found at the westside of the Oslo fjord, but this on the eastern side.

While this does not mean that it was intended for journeys east, the find is nevertheless of interest to scholars of the Eastern Vikings. In the 9th Century the Vikings started using sails which enabled them to cross the open seas to the west. Many ships combined rowing and sailing, depending on the weather, but the Gjellestad ship has a different keel than previous findings, which has gotten archaeologists excited.

The shallow draught enabled the ships to travel across the waves, but also over inland waters as found in eastern Europe. The king buried with the ship may have travelled far and wide, even to Byzantium. The ship was light enough to be carried from one river to the next, as was crucial to navigate the rivers in present day Russia and Ukraine. The ship has been dated to roughly the century between 750 and 850 CE.

For the BBC article, see here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55145985

For more specific questions, you can contact chief archaeologist dr. Knut Paasche directly here: knut.paasche@niku.no

Varangians are the Icelandic Jedi Knights

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

In a hugely entertaining podcast, professor Sverrir Jakobsson discusses among other things the Varangians in culture. Grettis’ Saga is the perhaps the best example of a Varangian novel, whereas one of the most notable characters is Bolli from Laxdæla Saga. It turns out the Varangians rarely have to do anything to win respect in the Sagas, simply having been a Varangian is enough.

In a surprise turn of events, we also learn that the original Icelandic translation of Star Wars is based on the Sagas. One of the best known examples is Darth Vader’s moniker Svarthöfði (Blackhead) but the Jedi are also called Væringjar, which means … you guessed it … Varangians!

The podcast is episode 24 of Flimtan og fáryrði (Icelandic only):

Finally, finally … The Varangians Are Here

Posted on November 17, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

Sverrir Jakobsson’s eagerly awaited tome The Varangians: In God’s Holy Fire has finally arrived. Years in the making, it should bring the reader up to speed on what is now the most cutting edge field in Viking Studies, their journeys and settlements in the east.

Dr. Sverrir Jakobsson is a professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Iceland and has previously done much scholarship on Vikings, but this is his definitive study of their complete history as gleamed from the sources, including interactions with the great empires of the east, including the Abbasid Caliphate and the Eastern Roman Empire. He also supervises the Legends of the Eastern Vikings project and you can find more about him in these pages.

It is available on Palgrave Macmillan here in both eBook and Hardcover formats. You can even purchase individual chapters separately:

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030537968?fbclid=IwAR3OO16aPI-YGE3glXGAMnK-lXlmiJDDGjc7q7Nvvo4F_XdDVRBz9bAkOK4#aboutBook

The description reads:

This book is the history of the Eastern Vikings, the Rus and the Varangians, from their earliest mentions in the narrative sources to the late medieval period, when the Eastern Vikings had become stock figures in Old Norse Romances. A comparison is made between sources emanating from different cultures, such as the Roman Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate and its successor states, the early kingdoms of the Rus and the high medieval Scandinavian kingdoms. A key element in the history of the Rus and the Varangians is the fashioning of identities and how different cultures define themselves in comparison and contrast with the other. This book offers a fresh and engaging view of these medieval sources, and a thorough reassessment of established historiographical grand narratives on Scandinavian peoples in the East.

Eastern Vikings in New Jersey

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

To the serious medievalist, it might be a cause for some disappointment that when one googles Eastern Vikings, the first thing that comes up is the sports team of the Eastern Regional High School in New Jersey. As is to be expected, the logo is of a bearded man with (backwards facing) horns on his helmet. This is also how Leifur Eíriksson is portrayed on statues all over Minnesota, as opposed to our own clean-shaven, hornless Leifur in downtown Reykjavik, itself a gift from the Americans.

Minnesota has its own sports Vikings, of course, and Nordic immigrants in the state have a habit of fabricating evidence that the Vikings reached that far west. As far as we know, they only made it to Newfoundland and there is no evidence of them making it to New Jersey. However, these were western Vikings, emanating from Iceland via Greenland. Eastern Vikings, of course, went east, to present day Russia and Ukraine and even all the way to Iran and Iraq.

So it would be slightly less inaccurate to name the team Western Vikings but in the America-centric view, New Jersey is at the easternmost part of the known world. Of course, it would be more proper to place Scandinavia at the centre of the universe, from where Russia lies east and America (all of it) is west.

Viking Soup, or What Did They Really Eat?

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

“The Soup Wars” are currently raging over who owns the beetroot soup, or borscht, Russia or Ukraine. In some papers it’s called The Battle of the Borscht, while one said that the knives where out, which seems like an unhandy way to eat soup.

But the question that concerns us here is: Did the Vikings in the east eat borscht? Probably not, as the first documented mention of borscht is in Domostroy, a 16th century Russian cookbook with some handy moral advice thrown in.

But people largely agree that borscht originated in what is now Ukraine, so it may have been eaten there much earlier. In fact, the soup reference in the Domostroy is an entirely different soup, here also called borscht, with wild hogweed grass and a light beer made from fermented bread.

So what did the Vikings actually eat? This will be discussed in some detail on a webinar next week hosted by culinary archaeologist Daniel Serra.

Click here if you wish to attend: https://www.facebook.com/events/988015935051696

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about the Soup Wars, you can follow this link to the New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/world/europe/russia-ukraine-borscht.html

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/

The Next Frontier in Viking Studies

Posted on October 7, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

In his very interesting online talk, Dr. Neil Price of the University of Uppsala suggested that the Eastern Vikings are the next frontier in Viking studies. Whereas 20 years ago it was unproven that they had gone east of the Urals, it now seems that they went as far as Central Asia and even to western China. Dr. Price even mentioned that the Chinese character in season 4 of the Irish/Canadian TV show Vikings was not at all unpalatable.

He further said that one of the reasons why the eastern Vikings have been under researched so far was due to the Cold War. It was very hard for western scholars to be granted access to the Soviet Union and even to communicate with people there, which has led to an overemphasis on the raids, trade and settlements in the west, rather than on a Viking worldview that stretched from North America to China.

Among his other points was that the first documented Viking raid took place not in Lindisfarne in England in 793 but on the Estonian island of Saaremaa in 750. What we now call the Viking Age probably had its roots in around 500 CE, with the major shifts that occurred with the end of the Western Roman Empire.

For more information, his book Children of Ash and Elm is widely available and the Facebook page for the talk can be found here

Roman Empire Ended in 1461

Posted on September 30, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

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.

Viking Societies Were Cultural and Genetic Melting Pots

Posted on September 17, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

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