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- [00:00]
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- [01:34]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History. Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gob smacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and mur find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The Vikings are back, and despite the best advice of the Village People and the Pet Shop Boys, today they're not going west. Instead, we're going to follow them east and explore what happened when they encountered the Slavs and how that meeting defined the geopolitical landscape of northeastern Europe for centuries. Our guide on this voyage will be Martin Witte, whose latest book, Vikings in the east, tells the story of exploration, settlement, and cultural and religious change. Welcome to God Medieval Martin.
- [02:54]
Martin Witte
Good to Be with you.
- [02:55]
Matt Lewis
It's fantastic to have you here to talk about something that maybe people don't think about as much as they think about Vikings going west. Because everybody thinks about Vikings, obviously, all the time, and we quite often think about them going west and particularly arriving, you know, where you and I are, on the British Isles and causing all sorts of chaos. But we're going to think today about them looking to the east. And I wonder if you could start off by telling us when the Vikings begin to look in that direction.
- [03:20]
Martin Witte
Well, that's a very good question, because it begins at about the same time as we come across Vikings in the west, for example. And there is a connection between the two, strangely enough, because in the middle of the 8th century, about 750, 760, there was a real disruption of trade between the Islamic caliphate and Scandinavia. And that just reminds us of the interconnectedness of the ancient world. And this accompanied power shifting from Damascus to Baghdad. And what that did was it disrupted the flow of silver to Scandinavia. And that was one of the factors that caused the start, amongst other factors, of the Viking age, as, in fact, Viking elites, warriors, traders, settlers, moved westward to try to gain precious metals, slaves, because often they were slave takers as well, and steel booty, because they'd been denied this access to Islamic silver, which had been a major factor in the century or so before that, that was to come back later, so the silver would flow again. But it's interesting that it was an eastern front, if you like, an eastern front event that caused the opening up, or was a major factor in the causing of the opening up of the Western Front in the Viking Wars. And it's about the same sort of period, by about 800, a little bit earlier than that, by generation earlier, that particularly Swedish Vikings began to move south and eastward along the southern shores of the Baltic and then started moving down through the river systems of what we'd now call Russia, Belarus and event to Ukraine, at the same time that other Vikings, particularly from, but not exclusively particularly from Denmark and Norway, were moving to the West. So about 750 to 800 is happening in the east and it's happening in the west. This expansion of trading, raiding, stealing, slave taking, a mixed series of impacts on the people on which they have their impact. It's happening both east and west.
- [05:21]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, fascinating. And. And I guess if we've got mainly Norwegians and Danes heading to the west, and we've got predominantly what we would think of as Swedish Vikings heading east and south, is there a connection between those Two groups or are they doing this sort of semi autonomously?
- [05:37]
Martin Witte
We need to remember that when I say things like Norway, Denmark and Sweden, I'm using modern name for modern nation states that didn't exist. So in a sense, they're more like geographical descriptions, really. The area we sort of know as Norway, the area sort of know as Denmark, the area we sort of know Sweden. So they don't have states at the time, but kingdom building is happening or beginning to happen in Denmark and then later in Norway and then later again in Sweden. So there would have been a lot of interconnection between the people who were going the eastern way, as it was known in Old Norse, as well as the Western way. And although there would been different dialects of Old Norse spoken by them, it would have been basically understood right across this area and indeed across the whole, what became the Norse diaspora, which stretches all the way from the Black Sea and eventually to Iceland and indeed to. To North America, where. Where Norse settlers also arrive around the year 1000. So they would have been able to communicate with each other. There would have been connectivity between them. But we won't. We mustn't expect too much. Co there'll be a lot of freebooting, a lot of warrior bands forming and reforming, making alliances, breaking alliances, reforming alliances. Because the nation states of Scandinavia don't yet exist. But these people have a lot in common culturally and linguistically.
- [06:57]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. And you talk early in the book, in particular about the Ingvar runestones as sort of an introduction to all of this happening. I wondered if you could tell us kind of when they date from and what they tell us.
- [07:10]
Martin Witte
These are really important. Beside the driveway of Grips home castle in Sweden, there is this runestone. A runestone is a memorial stone, and the writing on it is in runes, which is an alphabetic form, very common in Scandinavia and also other parts of northern Europe. And it says this Tola had this stone raised in memory of her son Haralda, Ingvar's brother. They traveled valiantly far for gold and in the east gave food, that is, they were eaten by the eagles. They died in the south, in Cirqueland. Now this is really important because this is a memorial stone that's pointing to a disastrous event from the Scandinavian point of view that took place in Cirqueland, in Saracen land, which is the lands bordering the Abbasid caliphate, another Muslim areas of the east. And this runestone is one of about 26 Ingvar runestones. Their name from a Swedish Viking who was called Ingvar the Far Traveled and who led an expedition to the Caspian Sea. Now, that single expedition is mentioned on more runestones than any other event in Swedish Viking history. And what we know from other sources is that Ingvar and most of his companions died in 1041. So they're not amongst the earliest travelers on the Eastern Way. They are on some of the later ones, actually. But their memorial reminds us of this Eastern Way. Some of them died in a fierce battle fought in Georgia, to the west of the Caspian Sea, which involved Byzantines, Georgians and Scandinavian mercenaries. Those that didn't die in the battle itself later succumbed to disease far from Scandinavia. And these included Ingvar himself. And we know quite a lot about this because there's a 12th century Icelandic saga called the Saga of Ingvar the Far Traveled, which puts these oral traditions in written form and states that some survivors made it back from the Caspian Sea to what we now call Russia. Others traveled on to Miklagathor, the Scandinavian name for the great city of Constantine, Constantinople, where Norse are frequently referred to, as in Byzantine written sources, as both raiders and providers of mercenaries. So the Ingvar runestones come from relatively late in this Eastern movement of Norse people, of Vikings. But they are a vivid reminder that the Eastern Way, as it was termed, was well known. The way that led down through the river systems, eventually to the Black Sea and to the Caspian, and that's where Ingvar died as a consequence of that.
- [09:41]
Matt Lewis
And does that level of memorialization, as you say, 26 runestones remembering people who died on that and the setting down of it in a chronicle, does that level of memorialization suggest that this was considered a valuable profession to be heading east and south, that there was something worthy of note, worthy of remembrance, and people who went that way, very much.
- [10:05]
Martin Witte
So, the Eastern route promised riches. Today, archaeologists have discovered on Gotland in the Baltic and other parts of Sweden as well, literally tens of thousands, and I do not exaggerate, tens of thousands of Islamic silver coins. There was a huge flow of wealth, forest products, slaves as well, because the Vikings were also slave takers and adventurers and explorers and warriors and swords for hire. This huge movement is moving down through the river systems, but it's meeting Arabic travelers and others moving up, and they are generating fabulous wealth. So when we find tens of thousands of silver coins in the Baltic area, these are products of direct products of the wealth that's being generated by the Eastern way. So many Scandinavians would seen it as be a way of making immense wealth, and then some of it gets back home where they invest it back home. But some of them, of course, stay in these eastern lands, and then they become the ones that give rise to this new state of what's called the Rus.
- [11:22]
Matt Lewis
You mentioned the archaeology there. What are the kinds of evidence? So we've talked about the runestones and we've talked a bit about coins that have been found. What other kind of evidence is there for. For the beginnings of this movement east?
- [11:33]
Martin Witte
We find a number of artifacts on sites in Russia that basically are Norse in their cultural context. Brooches, forms of weaponry. Now, now, the wild artifacts don't necessarily prove ethnicity. They are indicative of, at the very least, a real spread of Norse culture. And the evidence seems to suggest a real spread of Norse peoples moving down through the river systems of Russia and forming trading settlements there. They call that area, in Old Norse Gar, the place of the towns, or Gariki, the kingdom of the towns. And so it's on these sorts of sites in western Russia and then in Ukraine that we start to find artifactual evidence that point to Norse culture and almost certainly Norse travelers themselves. And this picks up on evidence that's coming from the literary sources. So, for example, in the 840s, the director of Posts and Intelligence in the Baghdad Caliphate province of Jabal, a man called Ibn Khodad records that a group of newly arrived foreign traders, who he called the Ar Rus, had brought merchandise to Baghdad on camels. So these are Norse settlers reaching Baghdad. Rus traders are also noted further east in Persia, sailing through the Persian Gulf. They, according to Islamic sources, reach lands described as Sindh, India and Al Sin, which we think could even be as far as the western regions of Tang China or the Kaganate of the Uyghurs. And in this way, they plug into the western end of the Silk Roads. And that's why, for example, we have found a Buddha figure in Sweden that was made in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Not necessarily because Norse traders got to there, but because they plugged into a trading settler settlement, and they plugged into a trading system that was able to move that all the way to Scandinavia. So we find these written sources, but we also find artifactual sources that show there's a real change going on. Something is happening in this area, which is only down to and unexplainable by a vast expansion of Norse trading and settling and taking political control. In the end, as well, they sound.
- [13:54]
Matt Lewis
A little bit like an early medieval equivalent of hackers. You know, they've taken this system that is there that is doing incredible work, the Silk Roads, that is Sending goods and wealth backwards and forwards along it. And they've sort of hacked their way into it and bought this branch off it. Moving north.
- [14:10]
Martin Witte
Yes, they've. They've moved into areas where there obviously are already existing trading relationships with Slavic peoples, with Baltic peoples, and then further south, of course, with the Byzantines and the Islamic caliphate, they've moved into this. And what they've provided is a new connectivity to the north. And that connectivity allows those channels of trade to flow even more energetically than in the past. And it shows itself in all sorts of strange examples. So, for example, there's a 12th century Icelandic saga called the Saga of Ingva the Far Traveled that I've just spoken about. But this isn't the only one, because we also have, and it's quite extraordinary, we also have Icelandic sources that talk about an Irish princess kidnapped as a teenager, bought by an Icelandic chieftain on an island in the Baltic, sold to him because this is a slave owning community by a slave trader from the Rus, from what we now call Russia. And in that one story of that woman's tragic experience, we see the whole connectivity of the Viking world. We see the Rus, we see Ireland, we see the Baltic, we even see Iceland. And this is this the connectivity that they bring, which creates great wealth for them, but would have had hugely negative impacts at times, not always, but at times on some of the indigenous people on whom they impact hacked. Some they would have worked with, some they would have created situations of tribute where things have to be given to them in return for overlordship, which may not have been negotiated, may have been forced upon these people. Other times it's straightforward slave trading using violence, but a whole range of different connectivities are happening and that's causing a vast amount of wealth and people and products and people who are treated like products as well. Tragically, north and south, along this route that has been energized by the Norse.
- [16:10]
Matt Lewis
Input, do the stories give us any idea what happens to this Irish princess in the end? Or are we left wondering what her final fate was?
- [16:17]
Martin Witte
The story tells us that she pretended to be mute, that she was married to this. Obviously she has no choice in this, but she does become the wife, albeit not with choice, of this Icelandic chieftain. They have a son together. He later discovers that she can speak. He discovers her talking to their little child and realizes that she can speak. And then this goes on to tell us how their son then becomes a major adventurer in Iceland and Norway. So in that way, this woman's life from ice Ireland to the Baltic to Iceland becomes part of the settler colonist movement of Iceland. But we must remember that she was a bought slave. She did not have agency in. In choosing this route, but she then becomes part of this settler commonwealth which is Iceland. Now, this is a literary source, but it's almost certainly based upon echoes of realities.
- [17:12]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's. It's a fascinating story, isn't it? And the things you've been outlining there point to a need for us to think about the Vikings in far more complex terms than just these violent raiders who turn up and steal what they can and then go home. There is so much more going on.
- [17:29]
Martin Witte
That's absolutely true, but there are shocking things too. So, for example, an Islamic traveler wrote an account of meeting Norse traders and slavers of the Rus, the River Volga in the first half of the 10th century. And there he witnessed the funeral of Rush chieftain, which shockingly included the sacrifice of a slave girl to go with him into death. So there, there, there are really shocking areas of this history, as well as other areas that are about trading and settlement and political arrangements and treaties and so on and so forth. It is a very mixed experience that happens in this area that we've come to call called the area of the Kievan Rus, or the Kievan Rus, as it used to be called. It's a very complicated community.
- [18:12]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. So we need to think of them as more than violent without forgetting that they were incredibly violent.
- [18:17]
Martin Witte
Exactly. That's quite so.
- [18:19]
Matt Lewis
And we've used the. Well, you've used the word ruse a couple of times. I just wonder if you give us an idea where that word comes from and what it means.
- [18:27]
Martin Witte
Yep. In the 12th century, a Russian source. So by this time we are talking about people who are speaking origins of modern Russian Slavic language. This Slavic source, the tale of bygone years, is compiled in what is now Ukraine. It's now often known as a Russian primary chronicle. And according to this account, it says that Viking adventures, which they call the Varangian Rus. So this word's appearing again, the same word that appears in Islamic sources. So clearly it's one they use of themselves. The Varangian Rus tried to subjugate Slavic and Finnish tribes living southeast of the Baltic. They were expelled. But the story goes, once free of the Rus, warfare broke out, so they were invited back and asked to take control of the area. Now, this is clearly later spin designed to enhance the prestige and legitimacy of the later dynasty of the Rus. But what's clear from this is that these Norse settlers and traders who form Communities in what we now call Russia and Ukraine clearly call themselves and are called by others the Rus. They're sometimes called Varangians. And it's interesting that the bodyguard of, of the Byzantine emperor is known as the Varangian Guard. So, you know, around the year 1000, it's recruiting in very large numbers from directly from Scandinavia, but also from amongst the Varangian Rus from Eastern Europe. So this word Rus or Varangian Rus is one that was used, we think at the time. Certainly it has echoes in contemporary sources and certainly within sources that come soon afterwards to describe this mixed community of, to start with dominant Norse arrivals, but also in the end this mixed Norse Slavic state which stretches eventually all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea and which we call the Kingdom or the Princeton rather of the Rus.
- [20:13]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And we've introduced another group as well, the Slavs. I just wonder if you could tell us who the Slavs are and how do the, the Vikings come to encounter them first?
- [20:23]
Martin Witte
Well, we'd like to know a lot more about what happened at the sharp end of the encounter between the Norse and the Baltic peoples and the Slav peoples who are primarily groups of tribes who are living in areas of Eastern Europe and down towards the Black Sea on the river systems there. But also then to, in the southern area we also have other tribes, nomadic tribes like the Pechenegs for example, the Khazars. But basically these are people who are speaking the origins of the languages, rather the origins of modern Slavic languages. Agriculturalists, people working in all the very heavily forested areas as well. But at this point in time they're not literate. So we don't know entirely what the relationship was between the Norse and the Slavic peoples and the bolts. And we assume that it's probably mixed. Probably in some cases there is cooperation, intermarriage, forming hybrid communities in other cases, because we know this was how the Norse operated with regard to the Sami for example, and the Lap tribes. Alongside intermarriage and connectivity, there was also the forcing of taking of tribute as well, which obviously a much more one sided relationship and arrangement. So it probably was a mixture of this similar kind of mixed economy of cooperation, negotiation and force between the Rus and, and the native peoples of this area of Eastern Europe and also with other groups as well, such as the Pechenegs and the Khazars as well. So it is a complicated world that we're moving into here.
- [22:00]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I guess not dissimilar to Viking presence in, in Britain in that they will become quite heavily integrated and they will become part of the. The resident community. And as you described then, the emergence of this idea of a Rus as a group that encompassed kind of Vikings, Slavs and other Baltic peoples suggests that there was at least over time, a degree of integration so that they became viewed at least from the outside, perhaps as one group of people.
- [22:28]
Martin Witte
Yes. In the end, Rus becomes increasingly Slavic in its name giving, in its language, in its culture, in its artifacts. So after a couple of generations in which we have primarily a minority of elites who have Norse connections, what this gives way to is an increasingly composite and complicated arrangement which is effectively becoming a Slavic state, albeit one that has had Norse origins. And as I say, we find increasingly Slavic names are being given to children, Slavic gods are being worshipped before the conversion to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in around 988. And this is increasingly becoming a Slavic state, or at the very least a hybrid North Slavic state, which doesn't forget its northern connections. And there are some curious examples of that. For example, in the 11th century, the northern connection is not forgotten, but is increasingly becoming a Slavic state. Yes, yeah.
- [23:30]
Matt Lewis
Is there a good you can give us of that, that way in which they remember those northern connections?
- [23:35]
Martin Witte
Oh, yeah, yes, very much so. Harold Hard Rada, for example, who's famous for losing at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in the early autumn of 1066, prior to the normal Harold Hardrada is.
- [23:48]
Matt Lewis
Very much a favorite of gone medieval. We love a bit of Harold Hard.
- [23:51]
Martin Witte
Extraordinary larger than life character. And part of his larger than life backstory was he lived amongst the Rus. He would have known Kiev well. He served in the Varangian bodyguard of the Eastern Roman Emperor. Later stories say he went on pilgrimage to the east, where he made the route from the Jordan to Jerusalem safe from raiders and robbers and in the end gain the wealth there. And with opportunities he returns back to Scandinavia and of course becomes ruler of Norway and then Tajkum ruler of England and is defeated in 1066. But he is very much part of this eastern way, that the route, route to the east is very well remembered as a source of wealth. And another example is that in. In 1016, Canute conquers England in an Anglo Danish or Danish Anglo conquest, actually, because it's the Danes of the dominant force to start with, that lasts from 1016 until 1042 when Edward the Confessor returns from exile in Normandy. But for those periods of time, basically England is part of a mixed Danish Danish English empire, really. But in 1016, when Canute comes to power in England, the two little children, sons of the previous king, Edmund Ironside, are in real danger. And later written sources tell us they were sent to Sweden where they were ordered to be killed. But the King of Sweden wouldn't do it. He then sends them on to the Rus. They spend some time in Russia, they eventually end up up in Hungary. And a little bit later on, one of the, the youngest of them, then somewhat grown up, returns. Edward the Exile returns to England with his son Edgar atheling in the 1050s as one of the, one of the succession strategies of, of Edward the confessor. But in 1066, Edgar Atheling is passed over because he's too young. And whenever the Confessor dies, it's Harold Godman son, he of the arrow in the eye, who becomes king and then gets killed at the Battle of Hastings. But the point is there is somebody in the mix in 1066 who could have been King of England, whose roots go back via his father, through to Hungary, to the Russ, via Sweden and back to England again. Because this eastern way is operating at all sorts of levels, particularly amongst the elites right into the 11th century.
- [26:17]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Fascinating and interesting how between the Irish princess and someone like Edward the Exile, you can get these very human examples of traveling that whole distance from, from the west to the east and then south and being sort of pulled along by this system of, of trade and connectivity that the Vikings had fostered.
- [26:36]
Martin Witte
Yes, absolutely. So. So it's happening on a whole bunch of levels. And even when the trading has become much less of a factor, this sense of the east as being a place of adventure, a place that you can go and, you know, make your personal wealth or your name or your status. Then come back and deploy that in Scandinavia. That's carrying on well into the second half of the 11.
- [26:58]
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- [28:22]
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- [30:07]
Matt Lewis
If we if we follow the Vikings a little, a little bit further than where the Rus were based, we've talked about them encountering the Byzantine Empire. We've talked about them encountering Islamic caliphates. How did they interact with those peoples? We we often think of the Vikings arriving as conquerors, but they seem to have a slightly different image in the.
- [30:27]
Martin Witte
The nearest yes, they come to Constantinople to begin with, using strategies of siege, robbery and raiding. But they're just not up to taking the great city of Constantinople. It's out of their league. They ca a lot of trouble, a lot of destruction. But in the end this violence becomes negotiation with violence. Because what they're really wanting is they're wanting trade opportunities within Constantinople itself. And in the end they gain this, but they gain it with the Byzantines having the upper hand. So There are limits as to how many rust traders can come into the city. They have to be named, their details have to be taken. They are monitored by both the military and the tax authorities in Constantinople. So in the end they negotiate a relationship with the Byzantine world in which the Byzantine world is, if you like, the senior partner in this, although a beneficiary of things being brought down from the north and indeed the muscle that they can buy in to serve in the Vranjing guard. For example, carved into the upper balustrade of Hagia Sophia in modern Istanbul, it's a runic inscription that basically says Halfdan was here. Now, clearly he was, he was a member of the Varanging guard and in a quiet moment he carved his name into the marble. But there they're coming, with the Byzantines being the more senior partners. The same thing's pretty true of the Islamic caliphate as well. They raid in the Caspian Sea, they cause a lot of problems around the Caspian Sea, but increasingly they are, have to recognize they are dealing with a community here that is very strong, very powerful, militarily, very impressive. And again, they have to come to heel more in order to try to get trading opportunities. So in both areas we see Vikings, as we would recognize them, raiding and taking slaves. But we also see Vikings being forced to come to terms, as one could argue they eventually have to do in England as well. You know, in, in their conflicts with Wessex, with indigenous peoples who are able to push back, fight back, and have agency to dictate their own terms.
- [32:31]
Matt Lewis
It's interesting, isn't it, to think of the Vikings as, as this adaptable force like that, because it's easy, again, it's easy to view them as very one dimensional. They turn up with violence and they try everything that they can take. But here we can see them trying that approach, but also willing to modify their approach to be a junior partner in an arrangement if actually they're benefiting from it still, they're still going to get rich from this. So we can see them willing to adapt and mold themselves to the enemy or the situation they find in front of them.
- [33:02]
Martin Witte
Yes, the Norse, as they move into this Norse diaspora, move out of Scandinavia, are highly flexible, highly opportunistic and highly adaptable in some ways almost chameleon like such that after a few generations, they suddenly seem to vanish in many areas, but they're there and their DNA is still there and their impact still there. But because they are frequently tying in with coming to terms, with adapting to reflecting the cultures that they are taking over because in many areas, of course, they are a minority. They might be an influential minority, a significant minority at times of rul minority, but in many of these areas of the Viking diaspora, they are a minority. They have to come to terms with the people who are there. And the people who are there will discover they have agency in time to actually be negotiators in how these things are done. So, yeah, and I suspect in many cases it depended upon the kind of reaction. I suspect they arrived to do some raiding or attacking, found that the resistance was strong, so they moved to trading, you know, in amber, in forest, forest products, move on a bit further where the response is weaker or taken by surprise, and then raiding and trading occurs. So I suspect there wasn't one size fits all for any of these adventurers, I suspect. And the evidence would seem to suggest this, they adapted their strategies depending upon what they saw as being the main chance and what they saw as being the most lucrative option on the table. And they were flexible.
- [34:43]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Does this leave the Vikings with a different reputation in the east to the one that they have in the west, which is dominated by violence in the West? I guess it will, it will evolve into settlement. But do they have a. A different kind of reputation and legacy in the East?
- [35:00]
Martin Witte
Yes, they very much do. Because of this connection with the Byzantine world, they become representatives on its northern front of the remains of the Rome, you know, Romanitas lives on in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Byzantine Empire, struggling right through until the 15th century, of course. And the Kievan Rus, as they negotiate with Byzantium, as they come to terms Byzantium, they become part of the northern front, if you like, of the Byzantine world, they are representatives, they are allies of the Byzantine world. And when in 988, Vladimir the Great, Ukrainian Vladimir converts to Christianity. He converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity on Crimea in 988. And so the Rus have become part of this whole deep story both in Ukraine and Russia, of Byzantine connections of Holy Russia, of Orthodox Russia. Now, this is a long way forward from the pagan first generations that came bringing huge destruction at times and huge change because they have adapted. So they are now very much part of the origin story. And it's interesting that after destruction of the Kievan Rustate by the mongols in the 1240s, Russian rulers based in Moscow increasingly from basically the time of Ivan the Terrible onwards in the 16th century, reference these Norse origins when trying to enhance the their power and secure control of Ukrainian lands as rulers of Muscovy expanded their area control. And since the 18th century. The credit that foreign Viking income was recorded in the formation of the Kievan Rus has fluctuated over time in line with changing Russian politics and it's sometimes termed the Normanist debate. And in the mid 18th century, foreign involvement in the formation of Russia became intellectually unacceptable. It had to be indigenous countries culture. However, it became more fashionable again in the late 18th century and then 19th century as tsars married into German royal families and relished tales that Russians needed the strong hand of autocrats to bring order. I mean, clearly this is their myth making for their own advantage. They like the idea of these outsiders being brought in to bring order, you know, in inverted commas, because they themselves would say, that's why we are not, you know, we're not democrats, we're autocrats, because basically, you know, we drink deeply from that same. Well, under Stalin, promoting the idea of foreign invaders of Russia would and did bring a death sentence. Today, it's more complicated and more nuanced, with the Vikings sometimes being given credit, sometimes less credit, outsiders, sometimes more credit, outsiders less credit, but still very much part of being integral part of the deep story of the origins of often a contested deep story of Ukraine and Russia today.
- [37:48]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's fascinating how everyone wants to be a Viking, so sometimes everyone wants to, to be descended from the Vikings, because Vikings are cool. Yeah, but like you say, there's, there's that element there of, part of the, the old medieval story of the Slavs. Inviting the Vikings into, to give them some structure and some order and to, to unify them and bring them together can still be kind of a tool and a weapon that, that, that comes and goes. You know, if it's needed, it can be wheeled out from the, the garden shed. The idea that these elites came in and organized Slavic communities, when it's less fashionable, you pop it back in the shed and forget about it for a while.
- [38:28]
Martin Witte
Yeah, yeah. It's a classic ethnic and racial trope that the rulers are here because they rule better than anybody else. You know, the rulers are in charge because they know how to run the place. You know, they commit the trains run on time. Well, obviously not in Viking times, but you know, the equivalent of that. And so the Rus mythology is very much of the incoming peoples from Scandinavia who sought things out. Now, there would have been a very different take on this, I am sure, amongst the people who negotiated these arrangements so from the Slavic side, but we just don't hear so much from them for the simple, for a long time, for a simple reason, because they're not illiterate people. And then by the time we do hear from Slavic sources, the Kievan Rust Dynasty is the dominant dynasty. And then it becomes politically advantageous to say, oh, well, this is the dynasty that rules here and it should rule here. It's providential. It rules here because it was brought here to bring order. And look, it's brought order. We're now Orthodox. We, you know, we're now part of connection with Byzantium. So it is a classic ethnic and racial trope to basically explain why those in charge are in charge and those who aren't. And it can have some very dark sides. So, for example, Hitler claimed this with predictable Nazi racism. Quote, unless other peoples, beginning with the Vikings, had imported some rudiments of organization into Russian humanity, the Russians would still be living like rabbits, unquote. So we see them being wheeled out there as part of the racist hierarchy. And that point of view of Nazi Germany and its hierarchical view of races to say, there you go. If there's anything worth having in Eastern Europe, it's not due to indigenous skill or genius. It's just due to the fact that they've been plugged into Germanic heritage in the past and that's fed into the DNA. So we see the sort of racist ethnic trope being deployed by Hitler, as you could have predicted, to tell people why he's now got the rights to rule the Russian lands, you know, after, you know, 1941 when the Germans invade Operation Barbarossa. And it's quite intriguing that the Vikings are wheeled out yet one more time, but this time very negatively towards the Slavic peoples of the east as a way of justifying German invasion, just as earlier they've been wheeled out to justify German marrying aristocracy as the people who were thoroughly Russian, but really were the ones who were best placed to rule Russia in their terms.
- [41:09]
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- [42:23]
Matt Lewis
It's a pretty shocking legacy of stuff that happened, you know, a millennium earlier. I did want to return to the Christianization that you mentioned in 988. How significant was that that in changing the culture of the Viking rooster? And I'm also slightly interested in why Christianity. Could it easily have been Islam?
- [42:42]
Martin Witte
Yes, it could have been, according to later sources, some of which are sort of rather mythological, some which are legendary. We are, we are told of Vladimir the Great basically sending emissaries out and some sources say bringing them back to him. But others say the emissaries went out from Kiev to the west to talk about should we convert to Catholicism to the east, should we convert to Judaism? Because there are Judaic communities as well around the Caspian Sea and north and the Northern Caucasus. Should we convert to Islam? Of course, they're very familiar with the Abbasid Caliphate. Should we convert to Eastern Orthodoxy? Because they're very familiar with Byzantium now. They're part of a cultural shift that's taking place in the 10th and 11th century where increasingly states in Eastern Europe or communities in Eastern Europe, not all of them Lithuanian, for example, stand out for a lot longer, but are converting to Christianity for a whole range of reasons, no doubt, including the fact that there's the aura of Romanitas about Christianity and the superpowers of the age. You know, the Franks in the west and Byzantium in the south, they're Christians. And that obviously gives it a very attractive appeal as well. Clearly. Obviously that same appeal can also be seen in Islam as well, with its extraordinary culture and wealth and power. But we're told, told that in the end, and again, we're seeing this written by the people that made the final decision. So, you know, to what extent is this actually showing the weighing up of options? We don't know, but we're told that, that basically Vladimir looked at all these various options and for various different things, he found things about it he didn't find appealing. He was concerned about prohibitions on alcohol and pork, for example, because he liked eating pork and he liked drinking alcohol. There were things about Catholicism we didn't like either. But the Emerson Ministry said, we came back and with the incense and the sounds and the smells, we felt we were in heaven. We should go for Orthodoxy. Now, clearly that's an Orthodox take on the decision. But what we can tell is that in that decision they plugged into one of the superpowers of the age, which was the Byzantine Empire, which had also given them enhanced trading powers and diplomatic relationships as well, with a superpower power which obviously saw the Black Sea as being, it's near abroad, its backyard, and also realized the advantage to having allies north of the Black Sea on Crimea and in the river systems, what we now call Ukraine. So we can't get to terms with the nuts and bolts of the decision other than seeing it through. Mythological or semi mythological sources are written later, but they're very dramatic and very exciting and they certainly personalize this choice that's made. And then in 988 there's this conventional conversion on Crimea. So Crimea has a big part within this holy rust story. And then Vladimir makes it quite clear that anybody doesn't convert he will see as his personal enemy. And as you can imagine, that accelerates conversion quite significantly. So in a couple of generations, the Eastern Orthodox conversion of the Rus really seems to accelerate it. Now, what's happening in the rural areas, probably lagging behind, as often is the case, but there really does seem to be a really significant change as this community unity becomes Eastern Orthodox in its culture and its language, in its literature, in its liturgy, in its building styles as well. So we see buildings going up that otherwise wouldn't have been seen in this area using Byzantine architecture. And we see this really inspiring people and saying, yes, we've definitely plugged into the right source here. So it is a game changer, albeit one in which ordinary people didn't always have much choice. Choice in these elite decisions.
- [46:22]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. And I guess it's easy. I'm probably going to sound horrendously cynical here, but it's also easy to, to think that they were weighing the political and trade benefits alongside the religious one. So we've got this idea that, you know, Roman or Eastern Orthodoxy created this idea of being in heaven, but actually, are they thinking these are our main trading partners? This is where we're going to get the, the main financial benefit of tying ourselves closest to them, rather than maybe Western Europe or, or the near east of the Islamic caliphates.
- [46:52]
Martin Witte
I think there's no doubt that was in the mix because we're talking about a community which now for a century has been interacting with Byzantium, Constantinople, they know it, the Byzantines know them. It's become a source of great wealth. Byzantine silk, for example, flowing north to Scandinavia alongside the Islamic silver that's coming from the Abbasid Caliphate. So there's no doubt that this change, although clearly they were impressed by and inspired by the or majesty of Eastern Orthodoxy, was also accompanied by significant trading and political advantages. Yes, I think that's all in the mix.
- [47:31]
Matt Lewis
So I'm not just a horrendous cynic.
- [47:33]
Martin Witte
I don't think so.
- [47:35]
Matt Lewis
And I wondered if we could just talk a little bit to, to end with about the significance of this Viking presence in the emergence of, of a Ruse state and then a Russian and a Ukrainian identity. Do we see the legacy of this Viking invasion, this Viking contact in, in thinking in the centuries that have followed?
- [47:56]
Martin Witte
Very much so, because this state until the 1240s when it's devastated, so the state of Kievan Rus is huge. It's absolutely huge. Really influential. As I say, it basically connects the Baltic with the Black Sea. It interacts with the German and Polish lands to the west, interacts with forest peoples and tribes and nomadic tribes to the east and to the Islamic caliphate and to Byzantium. It is huge. It is really significant. So we're seeing something in the region of, you know, 300 years, 250 years of a major state in Eastern Europe, which is really significant in terms of the geopolitics of the area. And when it's destroyed, what's left is a huge area echo. Because those people who are, who survive afterwards, after the Mongol invasions of the 1240s and 1250s, see themselves as being, if you like, living within the wreckage of the Rus. They're trying to piece together the bits and pieces which they associate with this golden age of Kiev, this golden age of the Rus. So it, it in the same way that Rome casts a very long shadow in the west after, you know, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the, in, in the fifth century. So in the same way it is an empire really, in many ways, of the grand princes of the Rus sets cast a very long shadow over the history of the communities primarily based on Moscow, but elsewhere, who emerge out of the wreckage, if you like, of the destruction of Russia in the the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th century, such that by the 16th century, rulers such as, as Ivan, often known as Ivan the Terrible, see themselves as being inheritors of this. And it's quite interesting actually that the last Rurikid, the dynasty claiming descent from the Viking Rurik, who the Russian primary chronicle says was the one that came back with his two brothers to found this rust state, the last rurikid in to rule Russia, didn't die until the late 16th century. The late 16th century, then following a time of extreme turbulence, the infamous time of Troubles, the next Russian dynasty. In the early 17th century, the Romanovs manufactured connections with the older royal line stretching back to the Norse founders of the Rus state. So it's quite clear that in the 16th and 17th century as an independent Russia emerges having been through a hugely formative and at times traumatic period after the collapse of Kivros, as it as itself identifies itself identifies as the inheritance of these lands. And it then becomes a way to enhance the power increasingly of Muscovy as that becomes a dominant force within this emerging political unit. And it also is a way to justify the pushing of Russian authority south, including into what we now call Ukraine. Because they claim this, we see this coming out very clearly in the 19th century example that they are, they would say, simply gathering in of the Rus lands. And in that way they are saying that they are inheritors of everything that Rus once encompassed, despite the fact that since the collapse of Rus, many of these communities have had very different histories and have begun to identify themselves significantly different and no longer see themselves as being just waiting for the rulers of Muscovy to come and take control control again. So it becomes part of the deep mythology, but very contested because it casts a long shadow.
- [51:23]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. And that comparison to the, the influence of, of Rome on Western Europe, I think is, is quite interesting, isn't it, that there is an equivalent in the east that we maybe don't think about too much. And I'm quite. You and I are sitting here in a world in which Russia has invaded Ukraine a few years ago. That is currently an ongoing situation. But how much should we see the legacy of this emergence of the Rus state and the involvement of the Vikings who went east in 20th and then 21st century attitudes to the relationship between Russia and Ukraine? Because under the ussr, Ukraine was always viewed as almost a part of Russia. To what extent are Russia trying to get back still to that state of recovering ruse lands that you were just talking about? And how much is that playing into to the relationship in in eastern lands today?
- [52:18]
Martin Witte
It's very much in the mix. And that's not just an assumption. In 2015, when Vladimir Putin sought to justify his annexation of Crimea From Ukraine in 2014, he asserted that Crimea has sacred meaning for Russia at the Temple Mount, for Jews and Muslims. And furthermore, he said and claimed Crimea is the spiritual source of the formation of the multifaceted but monolithic. Note that but monolithic Russian state. It was on this spiritual soil, he said that our ancestors first and foremost recognized their nationhood, one nationhood with no room for independent Ukrainian nation experience. He, of course, was referring to the baptism of the Russ ruler, Vladimir the great in 988. And if that wasn't enough, in 2016, he raised a massive statue of Vladimir the Great of the Russian Rus in Borovitskaya Square in central Moscow, unveiling himself immensely controversial because it was even taller than the statue of Saint Volodymyr, the Ukrainian force of Vladimir in Kiev. And Many Ukrainians in 2016 viewed that as being a provocative gesture because it was read as being. That's undermining our nationhood. You're saying that this man, man is yours, you are the inheritors of his legacy. And that was in 2016. And it's significant that the statue was unveiled on Russian national unity Day in 2016, a national holiday revived by Putin in 2005. So it's quite clear that this deep story is being deployed amongst a whole range of other deep stories and claims to justify current situations in the relationship between. Between Moscow and Ukraine, and being explicitly done so as well. In fact, when he was talking to Tucker Carlson In 2024, some people might remember that Putin said this. In 862, the townspeople of Novgorod invited a Varangian Prince Rurik from Scandinavia to reign, and then went on to say how that had created a unified state which is now being reunified under the Kremlin control. That's as late as February 2024. And it came straight out of the Russian Primary Chronicle. That's a medieval chronicle, which itself referred to events that had taken place 300 years earlier.
- [54:41]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. It's incredible to see how these medieval developments, the. The way these things evolve, can leave such a long shadow that affects whole regions for. For centuries. And is. Is still something that's in play today. Whatever else might be going on, there is still this early medieval element to politics in the world today.
- [55:05]
Martin Witte
Absolutely. It just reminds us, and of course, the health warning to this is we are inheritors of our past. We are not prisoners of our past. And I need to stress that as a health ward, that all historians and everyone studies history has to remember we are inheritors of the past. The past decides an awful lot of our parameters and our experiences, but we're not prisoners of our past. We can still. We have agency to make of it what we will. But it is quite clear that around the world, world now, as always, much of the future and the present is still framed in the context of the past. In terms of what I call deep stories, in terms of mythological elements and claims and understandings. And increasingly, I suspect it's always been there, people saying, who are, are we? Well, we are the people who are the ones who've come out of this past. And I guess it ever was that way. It just seems to be more contested and more violent in our generation than for quite some time. But it's not new. People have always used the past to frame and explain themselves and that can have a very positive, energizing effect, but it can also be very negative. It can justify war, violence and conquest. The past is complicated and our engagement with it. It's complicated.
- [56:24]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there can't be a better advert for a history podcast, I guess, can there?
- [56:29]
Martin Witte
Indeed. We need to know our past to understand our future, but also remember we're not prisoners of our past.
- [56:35]
Matt Lewis
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Martin. It's been fascinating to follow these Vikings on their journeys east and south and to see how they interacted with, with the various people that they encountered and how they formed a community of peoples who today still identify with that, that origin story. It's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [56:57]
Martin Witte
Thanks for having me on this show. It's been my pleasure.
- [56:59]
Matt Lewis
Thank you, Martin. Hope you enjoyed our voyage into the East. There are a number of episodes in our back catalogue about this aspect of the Viking age, including one about the Vikings in Baghdad that you might enjoy. And a reminder, reminder that Martin's book, Vikings in the east is available to buy now. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please come back and join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original original documentaries with a new release every week. And all of History hits podcasts ad free. Head to historyhit.com forward/subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.
- [58:16]
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