Varangians

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Varangians arrived in what is now Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 9th centuries, and they came not merely to raid but to stay. They were Viking warriors, traders, and settlers, mostly from present-day Sweden, and what they built would shape an entire civilization. Within roughly two centuries, these Scandinavian migrants had founded Kievan Rus', established princely dynasties, carved trade highways from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea, and stood guard at the throne of the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople.

  How did a group of Norse adventurers become the backbone of a medieval superpower's army? How did their silver-seeking traders connect medieval Europe to the Abbasid Caliphate and far-off China? And what does it mean that most of the silver coinage circulating in the medieval West arrived from the East through the very routes these warriors controlled? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A Name and Its Roots

  ›

  The word Varangian carries its meaning in its bones. Old Norse væringi is a compound of vár, meaning 'pledge' or 'faith', and gengi, meaning 'companion'. Put them together and you get 'sworn companion' or 'confederate', a word that extended over time to describe a foreigner who had entered the service of a new lord through a formal treaty of loyalty.

  The same root echoes across early Germanic languages in ways that reveal just how old this concept was. Old English had wærgenga, Old Frankish had wargengus, and the Langobards used waregang. The parallel is not coincidental. The idea of the oath-bound companion who crosses boundaries to serve a distant master was woven into the fabric of early medieval northern Europe.

  There is an important wrinkle in the historical record. Scholars have pointed out that the word Varangian itself does not appear confidently in primary sources until the 11th century, even though later sources use it to describe events from much earlier. The older, broader term was Rus. That label covered Scandinavians generally until it became too firmly attached to the ruling class of Kievan Rus', who had by then largely absorbed Slavic culture. At that point, Varangian stepped in to fill the gap, pointing specifically to Scandinavians, predominantly Swedes, working the river routes between the Baltic and the Black and Caspian Seas.

• 3. Rivers, Silver, and the East

  ›

  In 859, according to the 12th-century Primary Chronicle, Varangians were already exacting tribute from Slavic and Finnic tribes in the north. That same year, England began paying Danegeld, and the Curonians of Grobin faced a Swedish invasion. The scope of Norse expansion in that single year tells you how far and fast this world was moving.

  The Varangians operated two great river highways. The Volga trade route linked the Baltic to the Caspian Sea and the markets of the Islamic world. The Dnieper and Dniester route ran south to the Black Sea and on to Constantinople. These were not minor backroads. They were the main arteries connecting medieval Europe to the Abbasid Caliphate and Byzantium, and the Varangians controlled them.

  What moved along those routes was extraordinary in its variety. Furs, honey, and slaves traveled south and east. Frankish swords, amber, and walrus ivory were exchanged for Arabic silver coins called dirhams. Hoards of 9th-century Baghdad-minted coins have been found in Sweden, with the largest concentrations on Gotland. The variation in those hoard sizes tells archaeologists something important: there were booms and long quiet stretches, phases of intense importing followed by decades when very few coins arrived.

  The key trading centers shifted over time. Norse colonists settled Aldeigja, known today as Ladoga, in the 750s. By the end of the 9th century, Novgorod had overtaken Ladoga as the most important hub. From Novgorod, Rus merchants could reach as far as Baghdad, which in the 9th and 10th centuries was the political and cultural heart of the Islamic world. The merchants who made that journey traded with people connected to China, India, and North Africa.

• 4. Ibn Fadlan's Witness

  ›

  In 921 and 922, a diplomat named Ahmad ibn Fadlan traveled from Baghdad to the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire. Along the way, he encountered the Rus camped by the river Itil and wrote what became one of the most vivid first-person accounts of these Norse traders ever recorded.

  His description of their appearance is startling in its detail. He wrote that they were like palm trees: tall, fair, and ruddy. Each man carried an axe, a sword, and a knife at all times, and from toes to neck was tattooed in dark green designs. The women wore iron, silver, copper, or gold brooches on their chests, the material chosen according to their husband's wealth, and each brooch held a ring from which a knife hung.

  Ibn Fadlan also recorded the only known first-person account of the Rus ship-burning funeral ceremony, a ritual that included dialogue and personal conversations. His account shows that the two groups, Rus and Muslim, were genuinely curious about each other and had developed real familiarity with one another's customs.

  The geography of the Volga region shaped how violence fitted into this picture. There was far less easy plunder available in the east compared with what Viking raiders found in western Europe. The first large-scale Rus expedition into Islamic territory came in 913, when raiders arrived on 500 ships and pillaged Gorgan, in the territory of present-day Iran. On the return journey, Khazar Muslims in the Volga Delta attacked and defeated them, and survivors were killed by local tribes on the middle Volga. The campaign of 943 took Barda, the capital of Arran in what is now Azerbaijan, where the Rus stayed for several months before a dysentery outbreak forced their withdrawal.

• 5. Founding Kievan Rus

  ›

  Rurik arrived in Novgorod in 862, according to the Primary Chronicle, leading a group of Varangians known as the Rus'. Before him, an earlier and shadowy polity called the Rus' Khaganate may have existed. After him, the story becomes concrete.

  Rurik's relative Oleg conquered Kiev in 882 and established Kievan Rus', the state that Rurik's descendants would go on to rule. Gnyozdovo and Gotland joined Ladoga and Novgorod as major centers for Varangian trade. The Volga route, which had been central in the 9th century, declined by century's end, and the Dnieper and Dniester routes rapidly took over in importance.

  The early Rus' raided Constantinople in 860, under Askold and Dir, launching from Kiev. The outcome of that attack is disputed, but raids and negotiations continued. Kievan rulers mounted the naval expedition of 907, which was relatively successful, and an abortive campaign in 941. Yaroslav sent his son Vladimir to attack Constantinople in 1043, and the Byzantines destroyed the attacking vessels using Greek fire.

  Yet war was not the whole story. The Rus'-Byzantine Wars, for all their violence, produced advantageous trade treaties. By 988, most Varangians in both Byzantium and Eastern Europe had converted from Norse paganism to Orthodox Christianity, a shift known as the Christianization of Kievan Rus'. Coinciding with the general decline of the Viking Age, the flow of Scandinavians into Rus' dried up, and by the late 11th century the Varangians had largely assimilated into Slavic culture.

• 6. The Guard in Constantinople

  ›

  At least from the early 10th century, Varangians served as mercenaries in the Byzantine Army. They became something more: the Varangian Guard, the personal bodyguards of Byzantine emperors from the 10th to the 14th centuries. Their formal Greek designation was Tágma tōn Varángōn.

  The guard had a distinctive look. According to the late Swedish historian Alf Henrikson, writing in his book Svensk Historia, Norse guardsmen were recognized by their long hair, a red ruby set in the left ear, and ornamental dragons sewn onto their chainmail shirts.

  The demand for these men ran so high that Västergötland in Sweden enacted a medieval law called Västgötalagen, which declared that no one could inherit while staying in "Greece" -- the Scandinavian term for the Byzantine Empire. Two other European courts were recruiting Scandinavians simultaneously: Kievan Rus' from around 980 to 1060, and London from 1018 to 1066, where the Norse contingent was known as the Þingalið.

  The guard's composition shifted decisively after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Many Anglo-Saxon fighting men had lost their lands and were looking for employment. By the reign of Emperor Alexios Komnenos in the late 11th century, the Varangian Guard was largely Anglo-Saxon, alongside others described as those who had suffered at the hands of the Vikings and their cousins the Normans. The Anglo-Saxons shared with the Norse a tradition of loyal, oath-bound service to the death.

  The guard was not ceremonial. It fought in wars involving Byzantium and was typically deployed at critical moments of battle. By the late 13th century, most Varangians had been assimilated into Byzantine society, yet the guard itself operated until at least the mid-14th century. As late as 1400, people in Constantinople were still identifying themselves as Varangians.

• 7. Runestones and Memory

  ›

  Back in Sweden, the Varangians left a different kind of record: runestones. Almost all of Scandinavia's runestones are found in Sweden, and many date to the Viking Age. A significant group commemorates men who served in or died during service with the Varangian Guard.

  The largest collection of these stones is the Greece Runestones, raised by former guardsmen or in their memory. A smaller group, four stones in total, forms the Italy Runestones, which mark those who died in southern Italy. The oldest Greece runestones, six stones carved in what scholars call the RAK style, date to before 1015 AD. Among them are the Skepptuna runestone U 358 and the Nälberga runestone Sö 170.

  One of the most personal runestones is the Ed runestone U 112, a large boulder on the western shore of the lake of Ed. It was raised by Ragnvaldr, who served as captain of the Varangian Guard, in memory of his dead mother after returning home.

  The youngest runestones, in the Pr5 style, were carved between 1080 and 1130, after which the tradition fell out of fashion. One of these, Ed runestone U 104, is now held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The Byzantine influence the guardsmen absorbed abroad sometimes appeared in the stone itself: the Risbyle runestone U 161, carved in the early 11th century, bears a Byzantine cross. That cross design later became the coat-of-arms of Täby, today a locality in Stockholm County. The runemaster who carved U 161 was Viking Ulf of Borresta, known from the Orkesta runestone U 344, who made the inscriptions at the request of a man commemorating his son.