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The Varangians ( ; ; ; , or )" Varangian ," Online Etymology Dictionary were VikingsIldar Kh. Garipzanov, The Annals of St. Bertin (839) and Chacanus of the Rhos . Ruthenica 5 (2006) 3–8 sides with the old theory. conquerors, traders and settlers, mostly from present-day Sweden, who settled in the territories of present-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine from the 8th and 9th centuries and established the state of Kievan Rus' as well as the principalities of Polotsk and Turov. They also formed the Byzantine Varangian Guard.
According to the 12th-century Primary Chronicle, a group of Varangians known as the Rus' settled in Novgorod in 862 under the leadership of Rurik. Before Rurik, the Rus' might have ruled an earlier hypothetical polity known as the Rus' Khaganate. Rurik's relative Oleg conquered Kiev in 882 and established the state of Kievan Rus', which was later ruled by Rurik dynasty.
Engaging in trade, piracy, and mercenary service, Varangians roamed the river systems and portages of Gardariki, as the areas north of the Black Sea were known in the Norse sagas. They controlled the Volga trade route (between the Varangians and the Muslims), connecting the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea and the Dnieper and Dniester trade route (between Varangians and the Greeks) leading to the Black Sea and Constantinople.Stephen Turnbull, The Walls of Constantinople, AD 324–1453, Osprey Publishing, . Those were the main important trade links at that time, connecting Medieval Europe with Abbasid Caliphates and the Byzantine Empire.Schofield, Tracey Ann Vikings , Lorenz Educational Press, p. 7, Most of the silver coinage in the West came from the East via those routes.
Attracted by the riches of Constantinople, the Varangian Rus' began the Rus'-Byzantine Wars, some of which resulted in advantageous trade treaties. At least from the early 10th century, many Varangians served as mercenaries in the Byzantine Army, constituting the elite Varangian Guard (the bodyguards of Byzantine emperors). Eventually most of them, in Byzantium and in Eastern Europe, were converted from Norse paganism to Orthodox Christianity, culminating in the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988. Coinciding with the general decline of the Viking Age, the influx of Norsemen to Rus' stopped and Varangians were gradually assimilated by East Slavs by the late 11th century.
The oldest of the Greece runestones are six stones in the RAK style, which dates to the period before 1015 AD. Runriket Täby-Vallentuna – en handledning, by Rune Edberg gives the start date 985, but the Rundata project includes also Iron Age and earlier Viking Age runestones in the RAK style. The group consists of Skepptuna runestone U 358, Västra Ledinge runestone U 518, Nälberga runestone Sö 170 and Eriksstad runestone Sm 46.The dating is provided by the Rundata project in a freely downloadable database.
One of the later runestones in the Pr4 style is Ed runestone U 112, a large boulder at the western shore of the lake of Ed. It tells that Ragnvaldr, the captain of the Varangian Guard, had returned home where he had the inscriptions made in memory of his dead mother.
The youngest runestones, in the Pr5 style, such as Ed runestone U 104 (presently in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford), are dated to the period 1080–1130, after which runestones became unfashionable.
The Varangians returned home with some influence from Byzantine culture, as exemplified by the Byzantine cross carved on the early eleventh-century Risbyle runestone U 161, and which today is the coat-of-arms of Täby, a trimunicipal locality and the seat of Täby Municipality in Stockholm County, Sweden.The article 5. Runriket – Risbyle on the website of the Stockholm County Museum, retrieved 7 July 2007. The runes were made by the runemaster Viking Ulf of Borresta, see Orkesta runestone U 344, in memory of another Ulf, in Skålhamra, and at the request of the latter's father.
Having settled Aldeigja (Ladoga) in the 750s, Norsemen colonists played an important role in the early ethnogenesis of the Rus' people and in the formation of the Rus' Khaganate. The Varangians ( Varyags, in Old East Slavic) are first mentioned by the Primary Chronicle as having exacted tribute from the Slavic and Finnic tribes in 859. It was the time of rapid expansion of the Vikings in Northern Europe; England began to pay Danegeld in 859, and the Curonians of Grobin faced an invasion by the Swedes at about the same date.
It has been argued that the word Varangian, in its many forms, does not appear in primary sources until the eleventh century (though it does appear frequently in later sources describing earlier periods). This suggests that the term Rus was used broadly to denote Scandinavians until it became too firmly associated with the subsequent elite of Kievan Rus who assimilated Slavic culture. At that point, the new term Varangian was increasingly preferred to name Scandinavians, probably mostly from what is now Sweden, plying the river routes between the Baltic and the Black and Caspian Seas.Marika Mägi, In Austrvegr : The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication Across the Baltic Sea, The Northern World, 84 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), p. 195, citing Alf Thulin, 'The Rus' of Nestor's Chronicle', Mediaeval Scandinavia, 13 (2000), 70–96.
Due largely to geographic considerations, it is often argued that most of the Varangians who traveled and settled in the lands of eastern Baltic, modern Russia and lands to the south came from the area of modern Sweden.
The Varangians left rune stones in their native Sweden that tell of their journeys to what is today Russia, Ukraine, Greece, and Belarus. Most of these rune stones can be seen today, and are a telling piece of historical evidence. The Varangian runestones tell of many notable Varangian expeditions, and even account for the fates of individual warriors and travelers.
The economic relationship between the Rus and the Islamic world developed quickly into a network of trading routes. Initially the Rus founded Staraya Ladoga as the first node from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. By the end of the 9th century, Staraya Ladoga was replaced as the most important center by Novgorod. From these centers the Rus were able to send their goods as far as Baghdad. Baghdad was the political and cultural center of the Islamic world in the 9th and 10th centuries and the Rus merchants who went there to trade their goods for silver interacted with cultures and goods from the Islamic World, and also from China, India, and North Africa.
The trade between the Rus and the lands south of the Black and Caspian seas made it possible for cultural interactions to take place between the Rus and the Islamic World. The account written by Ahmad ibn Fadlan about his 921–922 travels from Baghdad to the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire gives details which can reveal the cultural interaction between the two groups. Ibn Fadlan gives a vivid description of the Rus and their daily habits. He describes them as perfect physical specimens........ having bodies tall as (date) palm trees, with blond hair and ruddy skin. Each is tattooed from "the tips of his toes to his neck" with dark blue or dark green "designs" (they were known to make an inky-blue dye from wood ash) and all men are armed with an axe, sword, and long knife. He wrote the only known first-person account of the complicated ship-burning funeral ceremony. Certain details in his account, especially the dialogue of the ceremonies and his personal conversations with Rus individuals, show that the Rus and the Muslims were interested in and fairly knowledgeable about each other's cultures.
The geography of the Volga region and the relative lack of physical wealth available for stealing (compared to targets of Viking raids in the west) made raiding a less important aspect of the Rus/Varangian activities in the East. Some raiding was necessary to gain initial control of the towns and regions that they developed into centers of economic activities. The first small-scale raids took place in the late 9th and early 10th centuries. The Rus' undertook the first large-scale expedition in 913; having arrived on 500 ships, they pillaged Gorgan, in the territory of present-day Iran, and the adjacent areas, taking slaves and goods. On their return, the northern raiders were attacked and defeated by Khazar Muslims in the Volga Delta, and those who escaped were killed by the local tribes on the middle Volga.
During their next expedition in 943, the Rus' captured Barda, the capital of Arran, in the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan. The Rus' stayed there for several months, killing many inhabitants of the city and amassing substantial plunder. It was only an outbreak of dysentery among the Rus' that forced them to depart with their spoils. Sviatoslav, prince of Kiev, commanded the next attack, which destroyed the Khazar state in 965. Sviatoslav's campaign established Rus' control over the north–south trade routes, helping to alter the demographics of the region. Raids continued through the time period with the last Scandinavian attempt to reestablish the route to the Caspian Sea led by Ingvar the Far-Travelled in 1041. While there, Varangians took part in the Georgian-Byzantine Battle of Sasireti in Georgia (1042).
In 860, the Rus' under Askold and Dir launched their first attack on Constantinople from Kiev. The result of this attack is disputed, but the Varangians continued their efforts as they regularly sailed on their monoxyla down the Dnieper into the Black Sea. The Rus' raids into the Caspian Sea were recorded by Muslim authors in the 870s and in 910, 912, 913, 943, and later. Although the Rus' had predominantly peaceful trading relations with the Byzantines, the rulers of Kiev launched the relatively successful naval expedition of 907 and the abortive campaign of 941 against Constantinople, as well as the large-scale invasion of the Balkans by Sviatoslav I in 968–971.
In 1043, Yaroslav sent his son Vladimir to attack Constantinople. The Byzantines destroyed the attacking vessels and defeated VladimirT. D. Kendrick, A History of the Vikings (Ch. Conversion of Russia), Courier Corporation, 2012
These raids were successful in forcing the Byzantines to re-arrange their trading arrangements; militarily, the Varangians were usually defeated by the superior Byzantine forces, especially in the sea due to Byzantine use of Greek fire.
Immigrants from Scandinavia (predominantly immigrants from Sweden but also elements from Denmark and Norway) kept an almost entirely Norse cast to the organization until the late 11th century. According to the late Swedish historian Alf Henrikson in his book Svensk Historia ( History of Sweden), the Norse Varangian guardsmen were recognised by long hair, a red ruby set in the left ear and ornamented dragons sewn on their chainmail shirts.
In these years, Swedish people men left to enlist in the Byzantine Varangian Guard in such numbers that a medieval Swedish law, Västgötalagen, from Västergötland declared no one could inherit while staying in "Greece"—the then Scandinavian term for the Byzantine Empire—to stop the emigration,Jansson 1980:22 especially as two other European courts simultaneously also recruited Scandinavians:Pritsak 1981:386 Kievan Rus' c. 980–1060 and London 1018–1066 (the Þingalið).
Composed primarily of Scandinavians for the first hundred years, the guard increasingly included Anglo-Saxons after the successful Norman Conquest of England. By the time of Emperor Alexios Komnenos in the late 11th century, the Varangian Guard was largely recruited from Anglo-Saxons and "others who had suffered at the hands of the Vikings and their cousins the Normans". The Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples shared with the Vikings a tradition of faithful, oath-bound service (to death if necessary), and after the Norman Conquest of England there were many fighting men, who had lost their lands and former masters, looking for a living elsewhere.
The Varangian Guard not only provided security for Byzantine emperors but participated in many wars involving Byzantium and often played a crucial role, since it was usually employed at critical moments of battle. By the late 13th century, Varangians were mostly ethnically assimilated by Byzantines, though the guard operated until at least the mid-14th century, and in 1400 there were still some people identifying themselves as "Varangians" in Constantinople.
Additional secondary sources
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