Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough

Author:Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough [Barraclough, Eleanor Rosamund]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780198701248
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2016-10-19T18:30:00+00:00

Another history

We’re familiar with images of the Norse sailing chilly northern seas under slate-grey skies, exploring wide, open waters, foreign countries, and empty lands. We read thundering missives penned by fire-and-brimstone holy men in the churches and royal courts of Western Europe, conjuring up images of fleeing monks and bloodstained altars. We can picture them bartering with cautious natives for furs and skins, offering butter, cloth, and bloody cold steel in return. But the story of the Norse who went in the opposite direction is rather different. These east-facing Scandinavians were another breed. When we think of the words ‘Norseman’ or ‘viking’, the first image that pops into our heads is unlikely to be a Norse trader bartering with the nomadic tribes of the Slavic steppes. We are probably not thinking of Norse mercenaries fighting Russian civil wars for foreign kings. And, almost certainly, these words don’t immediately conjure up a picture of Norse merchants sitting astride flea-bitten, stinky camels, jolting and bumping their queasy way to the markets of Baghdad.

Even so, all these images are just as true as the ones we’re more familiar with. They are recorded in texts written in Arabic, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts, telling of brutal raiders, canny traders, hard-working mercenaries, and fearless adventurers who came from the north and enthusiastically launched themselves into some of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen. These images are also reflected—albeit through a glass, darkly—in saga stories of far-travelling heroes who journey east for the courts of great princes and kings, or battle man-eating giants and gold-guarding dragons out on the Russian rivers.

Scandinavian activities in the east began even before the first ominous sails were spotted from the shores of Lindisfarne. Travellers from the medieval Nordic world came in many guises: traders, raiders, explorers, settlers, rulers, mercenaries, and political exiles. Just as in Western Europe, they were masters of the water. They navigated vast, dangerous waterways that ran for thousands of miles down the length of Russia, from northern forests and wide steppe plains to the balmy shores of the Black and Caspian Seas.

In Western Europe, as we have already seen, Nordic visitors were known by a name that reflected their activities: Vikings. Alternatively, they were named after the cardinal direction they came from: Northmen. To those living further east, they were named for different activities. They were the Rus.7 The etymology of this word is debatable, but it is likely that Rus comes from the Old Swedish word Roþz, meaning ‘band of rowers’. This was adopted into Finnish, where it became Ruotsi. Eventually, this word was carried down the Russian rivers towards Byzantium and beyond.8 To Arab geographers and diplomats from the Abbasid Caliphate in the east, these people became known as al-Rus. To the Byzantines further west, they were the Rhos. If the word in its various manifestations looks familiar, it is because eventually it was the Rus who gave their name to the land whose waterways they navigated. This was ‘the land of the Rus’, or in Latin, Russia.

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