Gnezdovo

• 1. Introduction

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  Gnezdovo, also spelled Gnyozdovo, is an archeological site near the village of Gnyozdovo in Smolensky District, Smolensk Oblast, Russia. About 3,000 burial mounds survive there, the graves of a community of Slavic and Varangian people.

  Who were these people, and what did they live on? How does a place that appears in only a few written sources leave so much evidence in the ground? And why did a thriving settlement fade, while a town just downstream took over its role?

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• 2. Measuring Gnezdovo

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  The site centers on a citadel, called a gorodishche in Russian, which once stood where the Svinets River meets the Dnieper. Around it lay a ring of ancient rural settlements covering 17.5 hectares. By the end of the 20th century, only about 5000 square metres of that area had been excavated.

  Those numbers put Gnezdovo near the top of a short list. Among Viking Age sites in Europe, only Hedeby covered more ground, at 24 hectares. Birka spread across 13 hectares, Dublin across 12 and Ribe across 10. Gdansk trails the group at just 1 hectare.

  A settlement this large needed a reason to exist, and the graves around it begin to supply one.

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• 3. The Burial Mounds

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  A hoard of silver ornaments from the 10th century turned up in 1867, when workers were building the Orel-Vitebsk railway. That discovery first drew archaeologists to Gnezdovo. Systematic work began in 1874 under M.F. Kustsinsky. In the late 19th century, V.I. Sizov dug several hundred of the burial mounds, and research continues today.

  The mounds, known as kurgans, stand in eight clusters. Russian and Soviet archaeologists have explored about 1,300 of them.

  Scholars still argue about which ethnic group dominated the community. A Varangian presence is clear. Yet nineteen mounds out of every twenty hold ordinary burials of Krivichs and of Baltic men and women. Cremation was the usual burial rite, and the most common finds are household utensils and pottery.

  The mounds do resemble the so-called druzhina kurgans of Chernigov, a warrior-retinue burial type, including the one called the Black Grave. Not every object at Gnezdovo was humble, though.

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• 4. Silver, Steel and Scissors

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  Seven hoards of Byzantine and Arabic coins were found at the site, and more than 1,100 of the coins were Arabic. A Byzantine dish bearing an image of Simargl turned up as well. Together these finds show that local people prospered from trade along the Dnieper.

  The weapons are striking. Archaeologists recovered helmets, battle-axes, arrows and Carolingian swords. They also found hauberks, which are not typical of Scandinavian sites.

  The everyday tools are just as surprising. One find is an early folding razor with a copper handle. Another is a pair of pivoted scissors, probably the earliest ever found in Eastern Europe.

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• 5. The Mustard Jar

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  A Kerch amphora from Gnezdovo carries the earliest inscription yet recorded in Old East Slavic. The word on it, written in Cyrillic letters, is горушна, transliterated as gorušna.

  The excavator has inferred that the word means mustard, and that the jar once held it. Not everyone accepts this reading. The inscription seems open to other interpretations.

  The pot dates to the middle of the 10th century. That suggests Cyrillic was far more popular in pre-Christian Rus than anyone had suspected.

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• 6. Portage Country

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  According to Tatiana Jackson, Norse sagas say more about the Western Dvina, which they call the Dyna, than about any other river in Eastern Europe. That fact shows how much the Vikings valued the Dvina trade route. Direct written mentions of Gnezdovo are sparse and vague. Only two come from the Primary Chronicle and one from De Administrando Imperio.

  The settlement sat downstream from the portages between the Dvina and the Dnieper. There the Svinets and several small streams flow into the Dnieper. Traders could go south along the Dnieper to Constantinople, or north over the portages to the Dvina and the Lovat. Those two rivers led to the Baltic Sea.

  The local citadel guarded against attacks on the portages, where Norse traders were most exposed. Once tensions inside Kievan Rus eased, Gnezdovo became, in one description, the critical exchange centre and refitting base on the route from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

  The settlement declined in the early years of the 11th century, at the same time as other Varangian trade stations in Eastern Europe. By the end of that century, nearby Smolensk had completely taken over its role as a trade centre.

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• 7. Rival Theories of Smolensk

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  Soviet archaeologists established that the earliest settlement on the site of Smolensk goes back to the early 11th century. Smolensk stands where the Smolnya River meets the Dnieper. Its emergence coincides with the decline of Gnezdovo, and scholars disagree about what that means.

  One view holds that Gnezdovo was the functional and economic predecessor of Smolensk. On this reading, the regional centre moved after Vladimir the Great Christianised Rus.

  Petrukhin and Pushkina argue instead that the two places coexisted peacefully throughout the 10th century. In their account, Gnezdovo was a pogost of the ruling Kievan monarch, from which he collected tribute from the Krivichs. His druzhina was mostly Norsemen, which explains the strong Varangian presence. Smolensk was the Slavic Krivich town, where the regional veche met. When Vladimir the Great created a principality there for his son, princely power moved to Smyadyn Castle near Smolensk.

  This pairing of a Slavic veche town with a nearby Varangian druzhina station recurs across Rus. Novgorod had Holmsgard, Chernigov had Shestovitsa, Rostov had Sarskoye Gorodishche and Yaroslavl had Timeryovo.

  Later princes of the House of Rurik kept the habit of living in a fortified castle away from the capital. They chose Vyshhorod over Kiev, Smyadyn over Smolensk, Kideksha over Suzdal and Bogolyubovo over Vladimir.

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• 8. A Name Hunt

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  The name Gnyozdovo comes from the Slavic word for nest. It is a late medieval derivation, first recorded in documents of the 17th century. Historians disagree about what the settlement was called before that.

  Those who see Gnyozdovo as the forerunner of Smolensk think the name Smolensk first belonged to it. In their view, Constantine VII meant the site of Gnyozdovo when he mentioned the fortress of Smolensk in De Administrando Imperio. The Primary Chronicle names Smolensk even earlier, in connection with the raid of Askold and Dir against Kiev in 867.

  Vasmer and other etymologists trace the name Smolensk to the Smolnya River. If they are right, Gnyozdovo must once have carried a different Slavic name. Tatiana Jackson theorizes that it came from the Svinets River, and she reconstructs it as Svinechsk, written Свинеческъ. The river's name seems related to the Russian word for swine, and the settlement stood on a promontory.

  Jackson therefore identifies it with Sýrnes, Old Norse for swine promontory. The Norse geographical treatise Hauksbók lists that name among seven or eight cities of Gardariki.

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