Harald’s Bluetooth’s origins

Harald was born in ca. 928, in the town of Jelling in Jutland, Denmark. He was the second son of Gorm “the Old” and his wife, Thyra. His older brother, Knut, was said to be King Gorm’s favored son. Where Knut was tall, strong and handsome, Harald was the polar opposite – short and thin. It appears, though, that the two brothers got along, at least in terms of their joint raids on the West. It was on one of these raids that Knut met his end, though accounts vary as to how and where exactly he died.

Knut’s death left Harald as the next in line to Gorm’s throne, which he took in roughly 958 upon his father’s death. At that time, the “kingdom” of the Danes was much like that of the Swedes and Norwegians. Rather than a unified realm, it was a land split into multiple “clans” and regions, each owing allegiance to their own kings. Gorm seemed to control much, if not all, of Jutland, but the islands were another matter. It was to these (and to the shores even farther north) that Harald now turned his attention when he took the throne.

Harald’s reign and projects

Harald Bluetooth was roughly thirty when he became king, and he proved to be a highly energetic and ambitious ruler. Much of his energy went into his military campaigns. During the next twenty-plus years, he not only subjugated the smaller clans and islands to form a unified Denmark, but through shrewd support of Erik Bloodaxe’s sons, managed to capture much of the Norwegian kingdom as well. All this while fighting off the Germans under Otto I and II who, along with the Slavic Wagrians, threatened his kingdom from the South — a threat that may well have led Harald to accept Christianity in order to reduce the threat of German invasion.

But those kingdom-building projects were rivalled by the building projects he conducted in his own realm – projects that were done as much to protect himself as to help him maintain order throughout his growing kingdom. Those projects began with the completion of a massive burial mound for his father, which mirrored the mound his father had constructed for his wife, Thyra. Harald had stones placed around the burial mounds to construct a 370-meter-long Viking stone ship, and around the entire site he had built a massive oak palisade.

In roughly the 960s, to protect himself from the Germans, Bluetooth expanded and fortified the defensive earthwork and wood “wall” along his southern border known as the “Dannevirke”, which stretched across the neck of Jutland close to the German border. He also constructed another wall further south called Kovirke in the 980s, and may have reinforced the defensive perimeter around Denmark’s main trading town Hedeby to keep his coffers flowing with silver from trade.

While the efforts mentioned above seemed to be more defensive in nature, Harald embarked on more offensive-minded construction projects, too. In roughly the late 970s, he built a number of circle, or ring, forts across the lands he had so recently conquered. So far, eight ring fortresses from his reign have been unearthed, but there is speculation that more may have been built. There is no doubt that the Viking fortresses were built for military purposes, but some have also suggested that they may have served some administrative function as well as been used by Harald Bluetooth when he traveled around Denmark.

Given the size of the construction projects, King Harald must have had access to massive resources, from wealth to manpower. If you consider the manpower and material it took to build one ship, let alone a fleet, his many projects are a remarkable achievement. How he organized such projects, who he used to engineer such projects, and what manpower he used (slaves or otherwise) is all unclear. Regardless, it is clear that he had the ability to start and finish these projects well and quickly, and that speaks to Harald’s energy, shrewdness and authority.

Harald’s demise

Harald Bluetooth was ultimately done in by his own son, Sweyn Forkbeard, who wanted no part of his father’s Christianity and whose greed for power and control led him to denounce his father and fight him for the realm. The rebellion began ca. 986 and culminated with Harald’s death around that same time. The stories of Harald’s death vary depending on which saga you read, but most generally agree that he ultimately died in Jomsborg from his wounds. He was buried in Roskilde, though his grave has never been found.

As a side note, it’s unclear why Harald had the nickname “Bluetooth.” One rumor suggests he had a bad tooth that had turned black or a dark blue color. Another rumor is that he loved to eat blueberries or licorice. Regardless of its meaning, or when the label was actually given to Harald, that blemish did nothing to hold Harald back from his many pursuits.

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Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2018-7-29-harald-bluetooth-the-builder-king/

A single longship sail required the annual wool harvest of approximately 2,000 sheep. Two tons of fleece. And that’s before a single man stepped aboard.

Now multiply that. A raiding party of ten ships needed the wool of roughly 20,000 sheep — for sails alone. A fleet of 100 ships? 200,000 sheep. Researchers at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark calculated that sails for the entire Norse fleet in the 11th-century required the equivalent of 2 million sheep worth of wool every single year.

Then add the crew. Researchers estimate that fully outfitting a single vessel — sail and crew together — required the production of at least 2,000 additional sheep.

So where did it all come from?

The short answer: it had to be organised, and only the wealthy could do it. Ship ownership conveyed status. Kings and chieftains measured power not only in land or wealth, but in the number and quality of ships they could command. Behind every jarl’s longship was a network of farms, families, and women working looms — communities that banded together to produce what one man’s ambition required.

Textile researcher Amy Lightfoot has even suggested that the demand for grazing land to feed all those sheep may have been as much a driver of Viking expansion as the desire for plunder or trade.

The longship didn’t just need timber and tar. It needed wool and entire communities to work on it.

Read more in my essay about Viking ship economics.

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What? No Vikings?

After releasing Vengeance of the Damned in October of 2025, I decided it was time to explore an era beyond the Viking Age. I considered multiple ideas – a modern thriller, an 1800s immigrant story, a medieval spy series – but nothing was quite landing.

One thing I’ve learned in my time as an author is that writing about new places and people gets me excited. That’s one of the reasons I enjoyed writing Olaf’s Saga so much. Every book was a chance to explore a different place, whether that was medieval Estonia, Kievan Rus’, Bulgaria, the long-lost kingdom of Wagria, or Ireland. With the end of that saga, I wanted to dive into a new challenge with new research, new characters, and new cultures to explore and mold into a story.

But don’t worry. Though I might be veering away from Vikings for now, I won’t abandon the style of story I like to write. My books are fast-paced and adventure-forward. I won’t shy away from the mud and blood, beauty and horror of the early medieval world. Nor will the story lack in the deep research I like to do.

So what’s the Migration Period?

For those unfamiliar with it, the Migration Period (also called the Barbarian Invasions or in German Völkerwanderung) was a period of human migration that occurred roughly between 300 to 700 AD in Europe, marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The period sees the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the mass migration of tribes across the so-called “barbarian frontier” and into the areas formerly ruled by Rome. It was a time of tumult and chaos, of kingdoms rising and falling, of warfare and treachery and diplomacy. In other words, fertile ground for storytelling!

Stay tuned for more details on the novel in the coming months.

In the meantime: a Stamford Bridge story

While the new book takes shape, there's something else I can’t wait to talk more about. During spring and early summer, I wrote a short story for an anthology project about the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It features a number of amazing authors and is not to be missed if you like Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and early medieval history (of course you do or you wouldn’t be here).

It’s coming soon, so I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above. Please drop them in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

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Each trunk had to be at least a meter in diameter, and old-growth timber. Archaeologist Ole Crumlin-Pedersen calculated that a typical 20-meter longship required 11 such trunks, plus a single 18-meter trunk just for the keel.

The planks were never sawed. Instead, they were split along the natural grain with axes and wedges. A sawed plank cuts across the grain and cracks under stress. A split plank follows the wood’s own fiber, stays flexible, and moves with the ship. The hull could twist in open ocean swells without breaking. That was the genius of it.

It’s mind-boggling to think about the tremendous amount of labor and wood (and other resources) it must have taken to get one ship into the water, let alone a fleet!

Read more in my essay about Viking ship economics.

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In 2018, archaeologist Andreas Hennius of Uppsala University published a landmark study in the journal Antiquity that finally answered that question.

His answer: industrial-scale production sites hidden deep in the forests of Uppland, Sweden. Hennius documented large funnel-shaped pits, carbon-dated to 680–900 AD — the precise window of the Viking expansion. A single pit could produce up to 300 litres in one burn. And there may have been pits like these scattered across the northern world.

Read more in my essay about Viking ship economics.

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You could say this about many periods in history, but the Viking Age was not an easy time to live. Scandinavian winters, food shortages, dirty living conditions near animals and rodents, raids and fighting, and a lack of hygiene (when compared to today) created conditions that combined to ensure Vikings did not live longer than 35-50 years of age. In fact, it was a rarity if someone did live longer than 50 years, which throws into question the age of the famous Viking king, Harald Fairhair, who is purported to have lived into his 80s. But that is a story for another day.

Rather than focus on some of the grim daily diseases from which Vikings suffered, such as intestinal worms, liver fluke, osteoarthritis, rotting teeth, battle wounds, and more, this blog post will look at those diseases that spanned kingdoms and affected entire populations.

The Justinian Plague and Vikings

The first major pandemic occurring in the time of the Vikings (barely) was the Justinian plague. Some historians believe the plague of Justinian resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25–50 million people during the two centuries of its multiple recurrences, a death toll equivalent to 13–26% of the world’s population at the time of the first outbreak. The Justinian plague petered out in ca. AD 750, just before the Vikings raided England and Western Europe, but not before the Vikings began roaming the Baltic Sea.

According to the International Encyclopedia of Public Health, “black rats” carrying plague-infected fleas likely brought the disease to Constantinople from Egypt aboard ships importing grain. However, those black rats did not make it as far north as Scandinavia, sparing the Vikings from the pandemic. Equally, the rats did not make it to northern France or Germany either, so despite interactions between the Vikings, Franks, Saxons, and other northern tribes, the plague did not affect the northern realms.

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The Black Plague and Vikings

The so-called “Black Death” began in ca. AD 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina with a mostly dead crew. The harbormaster ordered the ships out of the harbor, but it was too late. By the end of the 14th century, nearly 50 million people, or 60% of Europe’s population, had died. Though the Viking Age had ended by this point, the former kingdoms that produced the Vikings were not immune to its wrath.

According to a 2018 story on History.com, “a team of German scientists used in-depth analysis of skeletons found in a sixth-century German cemetery to reconstruct the genome of the pathogen that caused the Justinian plague. They found that the microbe responsible for those 50 million deaths…was Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis), the same bacterium that caused the Black Death.”

Interestingly, in a CNN health report from the same year: the “University of Oslo modeled the three transmission routes for the disease — rats, airborne and human fleas and lice — using mortality data for nine outbreaks that spanned the time period of the second pandemic [the Black Plague]. Their analysis found that human ectoparasites, such as fleas, reflected the death trends most accurately.” In other words, the spread of the plague was mainly attributable to human fleas and body lice.

Whatever the exact cause, the Black Plague did not skip the former Vikings in the Nordic kingdoms as the Justinian Plague had. More international trade and population flow ensured that the plague ravaged the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. According to an article titled “Population Decline and Plague in late medieval Norway”, “Population decline in the two centuries following 1350 [in Norway] has been estimated to be as much as two-thirds of the pre-plague level.” The loss of life led to a substantial weakening of the kingdom, as well as a population decline from which it took several centuries to recover.

Greenland and its three calamities

Greenlanders suffered three-fold during the late Middle Ages, all three of which are believed to have led to the colony’s demise. First, the climate cooled because of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia. Sea ice increased and so did ocean storms, leading to famine and crop failure. Second, the market for walrus ivory declined in part because Greenlanders over-hunted their walrus and because Europe began looking to sub-Saharan Africa for higher-quality elephant ivory. And finally, the Black Death devastated Europe. With growing competition and less to exchange for European goods — and with fewer Europeans left to buy those goods — the Greenland way of life collapsed.

Update 3.29.22: A more recent study suggests that drought rather than declining temperatures may have precipitated the coloni’s demise.

Vikings, pandemic and modern times

Interestingly, and sadly, many of the factors that led to the spread of the Justinian Plague and the Black Plague in the Middle Ages are still relevant today. International trade and interconnected societies move viruses quickly. However, unlike then, we now know what causes viruses and how best to treat them.

Stay safe out there!

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I hope this email finds you well. I have some big news to share.

To simplify my life, balance my day job, and focus more on writing, I’m moving my website blog and newsletter over to Substack. Managing separate spaces for website writing, emailing, and blogging was proving to be too much of a bottleneck.

Just like my old blog, everything I write here will remain completely free. Because you are a valued reader, your email has been automatically moved over—no action is required on your part.

The vision

You might notice a slight shift in the focus of what I share. My posts going forward will center heavily on research, new discoveries, and the journeys (both real and imaginary) that take me to the places that inform my stories. In other words, it will be a dedicated space combining my passions for writing, history, and a little travel. I’ll keep including the special offers for my books, but they might not be front and center.

Some posts will be polished historical stories. Others will be rougher behind-the-scenes notes packed with pictures and raw thoughts from my desk. Though I’ve written mainly about Vikings for the last 30 years, I’m deeply curious about other eras and places, too. So look out for stories that venture farther afield into new ancient and medieval times and locations.

An idea for the future

Many of you have requested limited-edition, signed copies of my books. Others have asked for access to advanced reader copies (ARCs) and merchandise like custom bookmarks and digital art.

Because these items are more complicated and expensive to produce, I’m contemplating a future paid tier on Substack specifically to make those tangible perks available to you.

I should have more details on that down the road. In the meantime, please let me know if that is something you’d support by participating in the quick poll below:

For now...

I hope you enjoy this new chapter in my writing journey. I recently returned from a research trip to Europe for my next book, so keep an eye on your inbox for my first dispatches coming very soon!

If you have any specific ideas for historical topics and content you’d like to see me cover, please drop them in the comments below.

Thanks and happy reading!

Eric

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P.S. If you like reading about travel and history, I highly recommend this book: Blue Highways: A Journey into America. It’s not ancient history (unless you think the 1970s in America is ancient), but it does a great job of wrapping historical context with travelogue in fluid (and sometime deep-minded) prose.

The story begins in the summer of A.D. 536. In that year, a volcano erupted, leading Byzantine historian Procopius to write: “The sun gave forth its light without brightness, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.”

Then, in 539 or 540, another volcano erupted. It spewed 10 percent more aerosols into the atmosphere than the eruption in Tambora in 1815, which caused the infamous “year without a summer”. You can read more about these events here and here. It is believed that there may have been a third eruption. Regardless of the number, those eruptions led to a long cold spell that coincided with a period of widespread social turmoil across Eurasia that included the plague sweeping across Eastern Europe, Chinese dynasties changing, the Slavs expanding across Europe, and the transformation of the eastern Roman empire into the Byzantine empire. The cold period, which saw temperatures drop in some cases 4 °C, lasted until around A.D. 660.

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How did climate affect the Viking Age?

So my main question is, what affects might these climate events have had on the peoples living in the far north, where populations were scraping a living in the cold, and now colder, climate? Could these events have marked the dawn of the Viking Age?

Research shows that during this period in Scandinavia, there were considerable changes in settlement patterns, most likely due to poor weather and crop failure, but quite possibly also related to warring over diminished resources. Archaeologist Neil Price stated in a story written for National Geographic that, “In the nearly three centuries before the raids on foreign shores began around A.D. 750, Scandinavia was wracked by turmoil. More than three dozen petty kingdoms arose during this period, throwing up chains of hill forts and vying for power and territory. In the midst of these troubled times, catastrophe struck. A vast cloud of dust…darkened the sun…In Sweden’s Uppland region,…, nearly 75 percent of villages were abandoned, as residents succumbed to starvation and fighting. When summer at last returned to the north…, Scandinavian society assumed a new, more truculent form. Leaders surrounded themselves with heavily armed war bands and began seizing and defending abandoned territory.” In short, the long cold period could have led to a more warlike people and a more warlike society.

The cold period may have also formed some of Viking mythology, such as the story of Ragnarok. Ragnarok begins with Fimbulwinter, or three successive winters and no summers. There is then a giant war that leads to the death of the gods. And when they die, the sun turns black, steam rises, flames touch the heavens, etc. Sounds a lot like A.D. 536.

The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high about heaven itself.

– Völuspá

During this cold, warlike period, new technologies begin to emerge. Ships were being perfected, and tar began being produced on an industrial scale. Add to that the sail, which began to appear around the end of the 7th century (curiously, at almost the same time as the first large tar pits that have been discovered), and you have the means to travel, trade and raid. With their shipbuilding skills, Scandinavians could now travel to far-flung places such as Ribe in Denmark, where researchers have discovered the remnants of long-distance trade from as early as A.D. 725. Around A.D. 750, Scandinavians established a trading center in Staraja Ladoga in the lands of the Baltic Finns.

An increase in trade would have also led to a newfound profession: piracy. The sagas tell us of sea kings fighting each other and harrying in other lands before the official Viking Age began. Evidence of this was found in 2008 at a construction site on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. There, workers uncovered the remains of two Viking ships near Salme, and multiple warriors who apparently died in battle some time around A.D. 750.

Much of these connections point to a Viking Age that began long before Vikings appeared at Lindisfarne. Though many questions still remain, these clues suggest that the dawn of the Vikings can be found in the cold, dark days of the 6th century, when the volcanoes erupted and the sun turned black.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2019-4-4-dawn-of-the-viking-age/

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The raw materials

Let’s start with the most obvious of the raw materials: wood. To create the 30m-long Sea Stallion Viking ship replica in 2000-2005, 14 large oak trees, each 1m thick, were used. While “green” or unseasoned oak was used in more prominent ships, unseasoned ash, elm, pine, spruce, and larch were also used in construction. Whoever ordered a ship to be built would have to have had access to enough mature trees to build one, as well as a way to transport those trees to the construction site.

The economics of Viking ship construction get a little trickier when we introduce the next raw material: wool. It is believed that the wool of short-tailed sheep common in Viking Age Scandinavia provided the ideal weave for ships’ sails. Historical textile researcher Amy Lightfoot estimated that “a 100-square-meter sail (big enough for a 30-meter longship like the Sea Stallion) used two tons of fleece, the annual production of about 700 sheep.” To create one sail, Lightfoot further estimated it took two skilled women nearly a year to weave, treat, and, if needed, paint a ship’s sail. Moreover, wool would also have been needed to pack the ship’s hull for waterproofing. While two skilled weavers may not have been as difficult to come by, tons of wool per ship would require either the sheep and the pastureland to support them, or the financial means to purchase the wool, or both.

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Pine tar was another significant ingredient of the Viking ship and was used to treat and waterproof the wood of a ship. In this article from the Daily Mail, it is estimated that 100 gallons of pine tar was needed to waterproof a single Viking ship. That would have been difficult for any noble to produce. Archaeologists now believe the production of pine tar was industrialized around AD 700 in certain areas of Scandinavia. They have uncovered a surprising number of extra-large pits over the past 15 years, which have been carbon-dated to between AD 680 and 900. This both pre-dates and coincides with the Viking Age (roughly AD 750 to 1050). Each was capable of producing 50-80 gallons of tar each production cycle, or 10 times the amount of a standard kiln. The building, operation, and maintenance of the larger pits in the forest required a number of additional specialized tasks, such as forest management, fire control, and transportation.

We do not know how much metal was used in the construction of a Viking ship, though we do know its use on the ship was probably kept to a minimum to keep the weight of the ship down. Still, most preserved Viking ships have shown a significant number of iron rivets. Metal may have also been used in the ship’s anchor. Just as importantly, iron would have been needed for the myriad ax heads, adzes, draw knives, etc to shape the wood for the various parts of the ship, such as the keel, the stems and stern posts, the planks, etc. Both the iron used on the ship and the iron for tools would have required a smith and access to a forge.

Ropes were used for stays, for reefing the sail, and to secure cargo on the Viking ship. Around AD 1000, most rope is believed to have been constructed from hemp. We again assume that hemp was grown several places in Norway, though it was probably imported in even greater quantities. Seal and walrus rope has also been found. While seal and walrus rope would have required a hunt, hemp required arable land as well as time to harvest, treat, and manufacture the hemp into rope. That is, unless a lord purchased it instead.

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And then, of course, there were the people who built the Viking ships. I do not say “manpower” because everyone was involved in the construction of a ship. Specialized shipbuilders would have chosen the trees and overseen the laying of the keel, posts, and other important areas of the ship. He would have had assistants, along with the lord’s men and slaves to handle the more menial tasks. A smith would be needed for the forge work, while women would have woven the sails, dyed the wool, and may have created the ropes.

This website gives a good approximation of the person-power and time required to create the Sea Stallion. By the author’s estimate, it would have taken roughly 35 men nearly four months just for the construction time of the ship, not including the sail, ropes, stays, etc. In other words, it would have been a massive investment of time and money.

What does it all mean?

The first recorded Viking raid was in 789 in Dorset and involved three Viking ships. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year AD 840 says that Æthelwulf of Wessex was killed by a Viking force that arrived in 35 ships. In March AD 845, a fleet of 120 Viking ships sailed up the Seine. The Battle of Niså in 1062 saw Harald Hardrada’s ~300 ships fight King Sweyn II of Denmark’s fleet of ~300.

These numbers, of course, were probably exaggerated, and not every ship was a 30m-long longship that required the same amount of raw material for production. Still, as fleet sizes increased, and Viking raids shifted from small raids for plunder to full-fledged invasions, you begin to see the need for an almost industrialized way to produce ship quantities. This, in turn, may have been a reflection of, or a result of, political shifts occurring in the land. Minor kingdoms with limited resources eventually succumbed to centralized power with the means to command the production of greater quantities of materials, from wood to wool to tar and more.

The increase in fleet sizes is reflected in other areas of Viking society, mostly notably in the Danevirke and in the circle forts found in Denmark. Each in their own right is a magnificent piece of construction, and each speaks to the resources needed and the centralized power required for their development.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2020-8-5-viking-ship-economics/

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The debate about shieldmaidens

This is an oversimplification, but in 1878, archaeologists digging near Birka, Sweden, uncovered a 10th-century burial tomb believed to hold the remains of a great warrior. Given the grave goods and weapons in the tomb, researchers concluded that the corpse was a male warrior of some prominence. However, recent bone analysis of the skeleton shows the lack of a Y chromosome, i.e. the corpse is female. So the debate has turned from whether she was male or female to whether she could have been a warrior. Which raised the larger question of whether female warriors existed at all. I am not a scientist or archaeologist, so I am not here to make any conclusions on the subject. But I would like to point out several data points (murky though they are) that make the existence of female warriors among the Vikings plausible.

Women warriors in the Viking Age

The concept of the women warrior is not unique to Northern European culture. Countries around the world have stories of women who trained for and fought in battles, including the Britain warrior queen Boudica, the soldier Hua Mulan whose name you might recognize from the current Disney movie, and the empress Zenobia from Syria.

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Women in the Viking Age enjoyed some independence. While most stories from the sagas suggest their roles were largely domestic, e.g. women ran the household, raised the children, cared for the elderly, etc., they had some say over their lives. For instance, they could divorce their spouse, become clergy, or run their own businesses. Could they have also picked up a weapon and shield and fought beside their male counterparts?

To clarify, I do not mean women who picked up a weapon to protect their home or family from a thief. Or women who followed their spouses to a new home in a dangerous land. There are plenty of examples of women who did this. I mean warriors by profession, who donned armor, hefted a shield and spear, served a lord, and fought beside men in a shield wall. I mean, shield-maidens. Did they exist?

What we know of shieldmaidens

In medieval literature, we find several examples of what I will call Viking shieldmaidens.

First, there are the Valkyrie. These were a group of maidens who served the god Odin and were sent by him to battlefields to choose the slain who were worthy of a place in the hall of heroes, Valhalla. Not only did they ride to battle with shield and armor and possess names such as Skögul (“shaker”), Gunnr (“war”), Hildr (“battle”), but Odin trusted them to identify heroes. If women were not warriors, or had little knowledge of battle, why make them responsible for this task? Could it be because they knew as much of battle as the men?

Among mortals, albeit those shrouded by the mists of time, we find shield-maidens in several sagas. Among them are names you might recognize, such as Brynhildr, a female warrior from Germanic and Norse legend, and Hervor, a female character or set of characters, mentioned in the Poetic Edda.

Perhaps more convincing accounts of female warriors come from descriptions of the Battle of Brávellir. The battle took place in ca. AD 750 (the date is now being debated) between Sigurd Hring, king of Sweden and the Geats of Västergötland, and his uncle Harald Wartooth, king of Denmark and the Geats of Östergötland. Saxo Grammaticus gives one of the more detailed accounts of the battle in his Gesta Danorum. Written in the early 13th-century (centuries after the battle occurred), Saxo claimed 300 shield-maidens fought for the Danes. Given the distance of time between the event and his writing, who knows what actually happened. However, it is not beyond reason to think that at least some women fought on the field, or else why mention them?

Ladgerda (aka Lagertha) is also brought to life by the sagas and Saxo. When Ragnar Lothbrok comes to Norway to avenge the death of his grandfather Siward and the humiliation of his wives and kinfolk at the hands of Frø, the king of Sweden, he is greeted by a host of shieldmaidens who volunteer to help him. Saxo writes, “…among them was Ladgerda, a skilled female warrior who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All marveled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman.” Could there be a modicum of truth to the tale?

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There are also queens such as Sigrid the Haughty, Unn the Deep-Minded and Olga of Kyiv, each formidable in their own right. In that same vein, one could point to the Lady of Mercia, Aethelflaed, who protected Mercia from Vikings. While they may not have fought in the shield wall alongside their male counterparts, some were certainly on the battlefield and all possessed the heart of a warrior.

Perhaps the best proof we have of women fighting alongside men during the Viking Age comes from the Rus. In researching details for my novel, Sigurd’s Swords, I came across a contemporary military recounting of the Siege of Dorostolon, a former Roman (then Bulgarian) fortress on the Danube that is today the city of Silistra in Bulgaria.

At that site, the Byzantines laid siege to the Rus army in the summer of AD 971. After the eventual defeat of the Rus, the Byzantine war chronicler Leo the Deacon (who was at the battle) was astonished to find armed female warriors among the fallen. In that instance, it seems shieldmaidens did fight in the shield wall, though whether this was an isolated case, we may never know. We also don’t know whether they belonged to the Rus or were part of the mercenaries who fought alongside the Rus in that battle, namely the Pechenegs, the Bulgars, and the Magyars.

My hope is that one day, archaeologists may unearth irrefutable evidence so that we can lay this debate aside. Until then, it is fun to imagine what might have been and to introduce those thoughts into fiction as I have with Turid.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2020-9-10-did-viking-shieldmaidens-exist/

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For the most part, researching the setting revealed very straightforward findings. Staraya Lagado was Aldeigjuborg, Konugard was Kiev. But one town differed: Novgorod. This blog post investigates the town and why it presented more questions than answers for a humble writer like me.

I hope that this post provides a small glimpse into the world of reconciling history with fiction.

The existence of Novgorod

When I began researching Holmgard and Novgorod, I ran across a research paper written by Evgenij N. Nosov from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1987). In it, I found this:

Scandinavians in general were well acquainted with the geography of Eastern Europe. Excavations in Ladoga, at the lower Volkhov date their first appearance to the second half of the 8th century. In all probability, they reached the upper reaches of the Volkov at approximately the same time. They were not familiar with the name “Novgorod” and called the Northern Russian capital “Holmgard.”

The name “Novgorod” means “new town.” It is mentioned in the Sofia First Chronicle as existing in AD 859. The Novgorod First Chronicle (aka The Chronicle of Novgorod) mentions it as first existing in the AD 860s. The Russian Primary Chronicle states that in 860-862, the Slavs invited the Rus to rule them and that “The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod;…”

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By all accounts, it seemed that Novgorod existed at the time of my story, which takes place in the late 900s. But something wasn’t adding up…

Holmgard vs. Novgorod

The name Holmgard (Old Norse: Holmgarðr) means “island compound” or “island settlement.” The name makes sense, especially to early Scandinavians who traveled to Gardariki in the spring after the ice melted and when heightened water levels made ship travel easier. Due to the Volkhov flood plain in the Novgorod area, settlements would have presented themselves as a series of islands, hence “island settlement” or the plural, “island settlements.” Was Novgorod one of these island settlements?

Another question arose because of the date of the chronicles mentioning Novgorod. Those chronicles were written long after the 9th century. It is easy to imagine that they might have been off by years in their reckoning of Novgorod’s first appearance.

Finally, and most troubling, archeological studies in the area of the Novgorod city center have found no evidence of settlement during the 8th or 9th centuries when Rus were beginning to arrive in the area. Instead, archaeology suggests that the settlement was closer to the latter half of the 10th century.

So early Scandinavians were arriving in the area and calling someplace Holmgard, but that place wasn’t Novgorod. So what was it?

Gorodische

2km closer to Lake Ilmen and on the opposite side of the Volkhov River from Novgord we find Gorodische. Gorodische is a hillfort around which lay a settlement. Based on finds in the area, this hillfort was in existence during the 8th and 9th centuries and is believed to have been the fortress of the princes of that area. In fact, archeological finds in the area suggest that early on Gorodishche was a military-administrative, trading, and handicrafts center situated on the banks of the Volkhov. Could this have been Holmgard? It seems to fit the description.

Putting it all together

Olaf Tryggvason sought refuge with his uncle in Gardariki in the latter half of the 10th century. Novgorod could very well have been in existence at that time. Heimskringla says he dwelt in Novgorod.

A further clue here is helpful. The name Nygard, which means “new settlement” in Old Norse, is found in the 10th-century policy manual De Administrando Imperio written by Byzantine emperor Constantine VII between AD 948 and AD 952. If this Nygard is Novgorod, then we can be more certain that Novgorod was in existence when Olaf was there.

Given all of the information above, here is what I imagined for the setting of Sigurd’s Swords: there is a hillfort on the site that is now called Rurikovo Gorodische. Around it is an older town that thrives in the limited amount of real estate it can use, given the flood plains that encircle it. The Rus called this place Holmgard. Downriver 2K is the “new town,” which has sprung in the decades before Olaf’s arrival on the scene. Olaf and his Rus comrades would have called this place “Nygard.”

Does it matter?

As a historical writer, I always ask myself: does it matter to the reader? I don’t always get an affirmative response from my brain or my gut, but in this case, I did. Accuracy matters. To the casual reader, it matters because they might pick up a bit of history that they didn’t know before. To the historical reader who loves history as much as I do, an inaccuracy can toss the reader out of the story or worse, hurt the writer’s credibility. So I endeavor to get it right, or at least make it plausible, even if the research acts as a small backdrop in a grand tale and never really sees the light of day.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2021-3-1-novgorod-holmgard-and-the-rus/

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From the feedback I’ve received, it’s clear that more is known of the Vikings in England, France and Ireland, and that fewer readers know about this place called Kievan Rus’ or Gardariki, or the important role it played in the Viking story and in the history of Eastern Europe. Hopefully this post will help shine a bit more light on that bygone kingdom.

What was Kievan Rus?

There is evidence that raiders and traders from what is now called Sweden headed east on the Austvegr, or the East Way, in the early to mid 700s, battling with tribes along the Baltic coastline and founding a trading center in Lake Lagoda in the 750s (decades before Danes and Norwegians headed west for plunder). From there, their exploits took them farther into the land of the Slavic tribes and down the riverways of what is today Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine.

The Russian Primary Chronicle tells it this way. In AD 859, the “Varangians from beyond the sea imposed tribute upon the Chuds, the Slavs, the Merians, the Ves’, and the Krivichians.” The following year, “the tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves.”

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Sometime in AD 861 or 862, the Varangians were back, this time at the invitation of the same Slavic tribes. “There was no law among [the tribes], but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against another. They said to themselves, ‘Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the Law.’ They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Russes. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichians, and the Ves’ then said to the people of Rus’, ‘Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.’ They thus selected three brothers, with their kinsfolk, who took with them all the Russes and migrated. The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod;…”

A kingdom of mystery

Historians have long doubted that the Slavs did indeed invite the Rus back to rule over them. Since the Russian Primary Chronicle was written centuries after these events occurred, it is believed the tale was constructed to provide some legitimacy to the outsiders who came to rule the Slavic tribes. In addition, there is some evidence that Rus people existed in the east before Rurik came to rule. The Annals of St. Bertin (Annales Bertiniani) relate that Emperor Louis the Pious’ court at Ingelheim, in AD 839, was visited by a delegation from the Byzantine emperor. In this delegation there were two men who called themselves Rhos.

That is only one of the many anecdotes shrouded in the mists of time. For instance, we still don’t know why they were called Rus, though it is believed the name is derived from the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (Ruotsi), which in turn may be descended from an Old Norse term for “the men who row” (rods-). Nor do we know how the Rus name relates to the name Varangians, which is another word used to describe the newcomers. We don’t even know what language they spoke for the first century or so of their rule. Was it Old East Slavic? Was it Old Norse? Was it a combination of the two?

About all we know is that a man named Rurik established himself as the Grand Prince and that he and his followers (who we will call the Rus) were in control of the Volkhov River from Lake Lagoda to Lake Ilmen by AD 862 (or thereabouts), and that the Rus did not stop there. The land was rich in furs, honey, beeswax, and slaves, and the Scandinavians were hungry to see what else they could find. Over the subsequent decades, Rurik and his descendants pushed east and south, into present-day Ukraine and Russia, and eventually reached the Black and Caspian Seas. They battled with tribes in and beyond their borders, subjugating some and driving others away. They erected settlements that eventually grew into great towns, such as Novgorod and Kyiv. By the late 900s, their trading empire stretched from Lake Lagoda in the north to the great walled city of Constantinople in the south.

But that is where their expansion stopped.

The decline of Kievan Rus’

Through the first two centuries of their rule, the Rus continued to expand and consolidate their power, organize themselves within their borders, and grow wealthy off of trade with their southern neighbors. However, their thirst for power outstretched their abilities. They failed to break the might of Constantinople, which used a combination of statecraft, bribery, marriages, and proxy wars to keep the Rus at bay. In AD 971, the Rus army under Grand Prince Sviatoslav overran the Bulgarian Empire, only to be destroyed at the Siege of Drastar by the Byzantines, who took exception to a conquering Rus army on their northern border.

By the 1100s, internal power struggles among the ruling class and the decline of Constantinople as a trading power further weakened the state. At the end of the 12th century, Kievan Rus’ fragmented even further, into roughly twelve different principalities. The power of the Rus dissolved and the formation of smaller nation-states began.

The allure of Kievan Rus’ in fiction

I have long been fascinated by Kievan Rus’. In many ways, it feels like an untapped story just waiting to be discovered and told. As in other lands, the Rus’ presented a real threat to the local populations, but in Kievan Rus’, those populations were war-like and ever-shifting. Add to that the vastness of the kingdom and its forests, the cold winters, the dangerous waterways, the power-hungry leaders and so much more, and it becomes (in my mind, at least) a powder keg of ever-present danger for anyone who dared seek their fortune and fame within its borders.

My novel, Sigurd’s Swords, takes place in the 900s, which was a particularly tumultuous time in that kingdom – a time of expansion and wealth and warring, as well as a time still shrouded in mystery. It is into that setting that I ventured with my characters Olaf and his friends Torgil and Turid, and one that I feel richer for exploring.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2021-7-27-kievan-rus-and-the-vikings/

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The fall of the Roman Empire brought with it great upheavals across Europe. Tribes warred and fought each other for land. In Northern Europe, many of the Jute and Angle tribes moved to the island that is today England. So, too, did many Saxons. Those tribes that remained – the Danes on Zealand and Funen – and the Saxons in Northern Germany, soon warred for territory. It was during this period that the construction of the earthwork wall known as the Danevirke began. Though some modern scholars now believe it was originally designed as a shipping channel to connect the Baltic to the North Sea, its defensive utility cannot be ignored.

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Franks conquer the Saxons

In the late 700s AD, Charlemagne of the Franks brought war to the Saxons, and by the late 700s, the Franks replaced the Saxons on the southern border of the Danes. Charlemagne’s war against the Saxons had two main objectives: to unify Europe under one king and to turn it into a Christian realm. It was a long, bloody conflict that greatly unnerved the Danes, who practiced the Norse religion and who did not want such a powerful southern neighbor.

In AD 804, Gudfred became king of the Danes. He reinforced the Danevirke, and in true Viking form, he went on the offensive and attacked Frankish Saxony. Though he achieved little besides angering Charlemagne, he did destroy several Slavic settlements and moved their traders to Hedeby so that he could control more trade in the region. The Franks responded with a campaign of their own, taking back the land lost to the Danes but stopping short of attacking the now-reinforced Danevirke. 

The Franks created a garrison along their northern border to prevent further attacks. It is alleged that, in retaliation, Gudfred attacked Frisia with 200 ships, prompting the Frankish historian Einhard to write: ”…he did not see Frisia and Saxony as anything else but his provinces.”

The Danes and Franks continued to war. In AD 815, Louis the Pious invaded Denmark to place a Christian claimant on the throne, but was defeated by Gudfred’s sons. Adam of Bremen tells us that in the years AD 836-837, “…the Normans [Northmen] ravaged everywhere with pirate raids and made the Frisians to pay taxes to them. At that time, they sailed up the Rhine and besieged Cologne, and up the Elbe and set fire to Hamburg.” Hamburg was sacked again by a different Danish king in AD 845.

The return of the Saxons

When Otto I (the Great) became king in AD 936, he set about re-unifying the German kingdom, which had fractured since Charlemagne’s demise. The process stirred resentment among his nobles (partially because Otto I was of Saxon origin) and caused what amounted to a civil war – a war that many of his neighbors took advantage of. Magyars and Bohemians attacked from the east. In the north, the Slavs rose up with the support of the Danes. Sometime around AD 950, Otto’s forces defeated the joint Slav-Danish forces and Otto I laid claim to their kingdoms and brought Christianity to their realms, though he allowed them to rule themselves as vassal states.

When Gorm’s son Harald became king in AD 958, he set about conquering most of what is today Denmark and expanded the control of his kingdom into Norway. It is believed that he also expanded the Danevirke and built circle forts throughout his kingdom. You can read more about Bluetooth’s industriousness on my blog here.

In the summer of AD 973 or 974, Otto I died. Harald saw his opportunity to rid himself of Ottonian pressure and with the support of his new Norwegian allies, crossed the Danish border into Saxony. Young Otto II was newly crowned at the time of the invasion. Before he could counter the Danes, he was called away to deal with a revolt led by his cousin. It took a year to put down the uprising, after which he attacked Harald’s forces on his northern border. The joint Danish-Norwegian army was driven back but repelled the Saxons at the Danevirke. According to the sagas, the Saxons then circumvented the Danish wall and attacked Jutland by sea, though just where and when they attacked is not clear. Regardless, the Saxons eventually defeated King Harald and forced him and his lords to convert to Christianity.

This time, the Slavic tribes had not allied themselves with the Danes, perhaps because they remembered the outcome of their last failed rebellion or perhaps because the Danes felt secure enough with Norwegians beside them. Or, perhaps the Slavs had better relations with Otto’s kingdom at that time. Whatever the case, they marched with the Saxon/Frank army.

Olaf Tryggvason, the Saxons, and the Danes

It is in this storm of war that the subject of my latest series, Olaf Tryggvason, finds himself. It is believed that Olaf, who had become the new son-in-law of a Slavic prince Burislaf, marched with that Slavic prince in support of Otto II. 

My latest book, Wolves of Wagria, tells Olaf’s tale during his time in Slavic lands and places him square in the center of a conflict that had raged for centuries between the Saxons (and Franks) and the Danes. It would rage for centuries more.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/the-war-between-danes-and-saxons/

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The Wends

As I mentioned in my last blog post, the West Slavs emerged from obscurity in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, when the Huns (and later Avars and Bulgars) moved into their lands.  The Slavs moved westward into the land between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line; southward into Bohemia, Moravia, much of present-day Austria, the Pannonian Plain and the Balkans; and northward along the upper Dnieper river.

Those “Western Slavs” who settled in what is approximately eastern Germany were Polabian Slavs (also known as Elbe Slavs or Wends). For the purposes of this article, I will call them Wends because that is how they were referred to in the sagas.

The Obrodite Confederacy

The Wends soon divided into a variety of smaller tribes, though they shared a common language (the now extinct Polabian Slavic language), as well as similar religious practices and political structures. One large grouping of Wends living in the northwest Slavic regions was known as the Obrodite confederacy.

As with other Polabian Slavs, their leader was a prince, who ruled over a group of governors, each responsible for keeping order and levying taxes in their respective areas.

The majority of Polabian Slavs were peasants in small villages who engaged in agriculture (primarily grains and flax) and animal husbandry (e.g. poultry and cattle). Some villagers were fishermen, beekeepers, or trappers. Farmland was divided into a unit called a kuritz, for which peasants paid grain taxes to the governors.

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Wagria and the Wagrians

One of the tribes of the Obrodite confederacy was the Wagri, or Wagrians. Like other West Slavs, most of the Wagri lived in or near towns, which were centered on small earthworks arranged in circles or ovals. Their main town was called Starigard, which eventually became Oldenburg in Holstein. The Wagrian name for the town means “old settlement” in Slavic. The Vikings called it Brandehuse, or “the burned houses,” which gives you an idea of how often it was attacked.

The Wagri occupied what is today eastern Holstein in northern Germany and inhabited that area between the 9th to 12th centuries. It was a precarious area. To the north were the Danes. To the west lived the Germans (i.e. Saxons). To east was the sea, and to the south of Wagria were the lands of the Travnjane, another sub-tribe of the Obrodite confederacy. It was, in essence, hemmed in on two sides by enemies, and offered little room for expansion.

Were the Wagrians in the Sagas?

After leaving Kievan Rus’, the sagas tell us that Olaf Tryggvason raided Burgundaholm (present-day Bormholm) first and that, after the attack, he ran into a storm. After the storm, Olaf moors his ship on the shore of “Vendland.” Olaf is brought to the court of a king named “Boreslaw” (Burislaf), and there he meets Burislaf’s three daughters, including his eldest daughter Geira. Some have thought this Burislaf to be the son of the Polish king, Meiszko I, but for a number of timing reasons, that might not have been the case. In his article “On the Chronology of Olaf Tryggvason and Volodimer the Great: The Saga’s Relative Chronology as a Historical Source,” Omeljan Pritsak suggests that the Burislaf in question may have been a Slavic king ruling the realm of Wagria.

In May, AD 973, Otto I died. After this death, the Danes led by Harald Bluetooth invaded northern Germany. The Wagrians would have been in the path of Harald Bluetooth’s army when it invaded. The sagas state that Burislaf joined Otto II in his bid to retake the lands lost to the Danes and that Olaf (now Burislaf’s son-in-law after marrying Geira) accompanied him. It would have been far more plausible that this Burislaf was Wagrian and not Polish, as the Poles owed no such allegiance to Otto II, nor would they have cared much about Bluetooth’s attack.

The Wagrians and Germans

The Obrodite confederacy was primarily allied with the Germans against the Danes, who wished to rule the Baltic region. However, if the Wagrians / Obrodites supported the Germans against the Danes, it is clear their relationship with their neighbors was tenuous at best. This tension seemed to be centered around two things: religion and land. 

After defeating the Danes, the Germans pressed to convert their Slavic neighbors to Christianity. The Slavs, who had resisted German religious and political incursions for decades, fought back. In the “Slavic revolt of 983,” the West Slavic tribes attacked Germany and overthrew Ottonian rule, rejecting the attempts at Christianization, which had begun under Emperor Otto I or earlier.

While relations remained strained between Germany and Wagria, the final subjugation of Wagria did not happen until the mid-12th century. In AD 1140 to 1143, Holsatian nobles advanced into Wagria to permanently settle in the lands of the pagan Wagri. Four years later, in AD 1147, the Wendish Crusade forced baptisms upon the people, and finally secured Saxon control of Wagria.

It is a sad ending to a people who had struggled to exist for centuries.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/who-where-the-wagrians/

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From where did the Wends come?

Ancient Roman sources refer to the Early Slavic peoples as “Veneti,” who dwelt in a region of central Europe east of the Germanic tribe of Suebi, and west of the Iranian Sarmatians in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The Slavs emerged from obscurity in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, when the Huns, and later Avars and Bulgars) started the great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes. The Slavs moved westward into the land between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line; southward into Bohemia, Moravia, much of present-day Austria, the Pannonian Plain and the Balkans; and northward along the upper Dnieper river.

Their German neighbors called their new “West Slavic” neighbors “Wends” as they called the “Venedi” before them.

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Though they originally arrived largely as a homogeneous group, the Wends soon divided into a variety of small tribes (see above), with large strips of woodland or rivers separating one tribal settlement area from another. Their tribal names were derived from local place names. Settlements were secured by round burghs made of wood and clay, where either people could retreat in case of a raid from the neighboring tribe or used as military strongholds or outposts.

Contact between the Wends & Scandinavians

The earliest reference in the sagas to the Wends/Vends as a people comes from Hakon the Good’s Saga.

Afterwards King Hakon went east along the coast of Scania and harried everywhere; he took money and tribute from the land and slew all vikings where he found them, both Danes and Vends.”

Heimskringla

After this initial one, there are multiple references to “Vends” and “Vendland”. It is interesting to note that Hakon lived in the mid-900s AD, though the Vendish tribes had existed on the southern coast of the Baltic long before him. It is also interesting to note that the Vends in this particular reference are called “Vikings,” which would suggest that the name “Viking” did not just apply to raiders and pirates from early Scandinavia.

Unlike the Eastern Slavs, who, if the sagas are to be believed, invited the Scandinavians to rule over them, the relationship between Wends and Scandinavians seems to have been more acrimonious, at least at first. As stated above, Heimskringla mentions the Wends and Wendland dozens of times, mostly in reference to battles and raids. An example of this comes from what it today Holstein in Germany. Long into the Viking Age, Holstein was known as Wagria, an area ruled by the West Slavic tribe, the Wagrians (or Wagri). The old name for the town of Oldenburg in Holstein is Starigard, which means “old settlement” in Slavic. The Vikings had their own pet name for the settlement: Brandehuse, or “the burned houses.”

There are, however, some references to marriages and political interactions. One of the more famous stories of this comes from the saga of Olaf Tryggvason, the future king of Norway. Long before he was a king, he was a raider. On one of his first raiding adventures, a storm drove him aground on the coastline of Wendland. There, he met the local king, Bureslaw, as well as his three daughters. Smitten by the oldest of these, whose name was Geira, Olaf married her and became one of the chiefs of Bureslaw’s warriors.

What happened to the Wends?

After AD 983, the Wends came under increasing pressure from Germans, Danes and Poles. The Poles invaded Pomerania several times. The Danes often raided the Baltic shores. In 1147, the Germans launched a crusade against the Wends in what is today north-eastern Germany. A long period of re-population followed from the 12th to 14th century, in which large numbers of Germans transformed the area’s culture from a Slavic to a Germanic one. Though hints and clues of the old Slavic culture remain, much has been lost to time.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/the-vikings-and-the-wends/

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Kiev’s history of warfare

As we watch current events unfold in Ukraine, we are reminded of other historical events in and around Ukraine and Kiev (Kyiv) from earlier times. During World War II, the First Battle of Kiev in 1941 saw German troops encircle Soviet troops in the vicinity of Kiev in what is considered the largest encirclement of an army in the history of warfare. War again came to Kiev in 1943 as part of the Soviet offensive on the Dnieper. Much earlier, the Mongols sieged and took Kiev in AD 1240 and destroyed most of it. But earlier still we read of the Pechenegs and their siege of the city in AD 968 when it belonged to the Rus’.

Lead up to the siege

According to legend, Eastern Slavs founded Kiev in the 5th century. Others postulate that it was founded by Khazars or Magyars at about that time. Whatever the case, two Rus’ leaders (Scandinavians and probably Swedes) came in ca. AD 840 and ruled the town until the Rus’ prince Oleg of Novgorod (of the Rurik dynasty) conquered the city in AD 882 (though modern historians are still debating that).

Kiev functioned as the capital of Kievan Rus’ for centuries afterward. In my novel, Sigurd’s Swords, Kiev is ruled by Grand Prince Sviatoslav I, the son of Igor and Olga of Kiev, and the grandson of one of Kievan Rus’s founding fathers, Rurik. In AD 967 or 968, the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros persuaded Sviatoslav to assist the Byzantines in a war against Bulgaria. After paying Sviatoslav 15,000 pounds of gold, the grand prince set sail with an army of 60,000 men, including thousands of mercenaries. Sviatoslav defeated the Bulgarian ruler Boris II and proceeded to occupy the whole of northern Bulgaria. Wary now of growing Rus’ power, the Byzantines then bribed a nomadic tribe called the Pechenegs to attack and besiege Kiev, where Sviatoslav’s mother Olga lived with Sviatoslav’s three sons.

Who were the Pechenegs?

The Pechenegs were semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia. They originally belonged to the Turkic Khaganate, but when that collapsed in AD 744, the tribes warred among themselves. The Pechenegs who left their homeland during those confrontations settled between the Ural and Volga rivers but they were eventually driven farther west by the Khazars and Ouzes sometime in the early 9th century AD. In AD 889, the Pechenegs attacked the nomadic Magyars living between the Don River and the Dnipro River and forced them farther west. Later they drove the Magyars across the Danube River and themselves occupied the steppe between the Don River and the Danube River in eight distinct tribes, each with a prince at its head.

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Like most steppe warriors, Pechenegs primarily fought on horseback, and usually with a bow, though they used spears and swords as well. The rank and file warriors may also have used knives, clubs, and lassos. They were known for their vicious, lightning attacks, which makes one wonder how sound these mobile warriors were at siege warfare.

The Pechenegs’ existed not just as warriors, but as traders. Their main trading partners were Rus’, who bought their cattle, sheep, and horses, and the Byzantines, who bought their hides and wax.

To retain their mediating role among their neighbors, the Pechenegs entered into coalitions with their neighbors, usually against former allies. In the 10th century, we see them allied with the Rus’ during Sviatoslav’s campaign with the Byzantines against the Bulgarians. Shortly thereafter, the Byzantines employ them to attack Kiev in a ploy that is designed to drive the Rus’ from northern Bulgaria. That campaign leads to the Siege of Kiev in AD 968.

The siege of Kiev in AD 968

Grand Prince Sviatoslav’s mother, Olga, ruled Kiev in her son’s long absences, taking care of his young sons Yaropolk, Oleg, and Vladimir. When the Pechenegs laid siege to the city, the Kievan people, led by Olga, suffered mightily. Exactly how long the siege lasted or how many thousands fought in the Pecheneg army is not known.

At some point in the siege, Sviatoslav’s general – a general by the name of Pretich – arrived with his personal guard and set up camp on the opposite (left) bank of the Dnieper, though he didn’t cross the river because of the superior size of the Pecheneg force.

Reduced to extremes, Olga let it be known to her people in the city that she was contemplating surrender if Pretich did not relieve the siege within one day. As the legend goes, a boy fluent in the Pecheneg language volunteered to venture from the city and urge Pretich to attack. Pretending to be a Pecheneg, he went about their camp, as if searching for a lost horse. When he attempted to swim across the Dnieper, the Pechenegs discovered his subterfuge and started shooting at him, but to no avail.

When the boy reached the opposite bank and informed Pretich about the desperate condition of the Kievans, the general decided to make a sally in order to evacuate Sviatoslav’s family from the city, for fear of his sovereign’s anger. Early the following morning, Pretich and his troops rowed across the Dnieper, making a great racket with their trumpets and shields. The Pechenegs, thinking that Sviatoslav was returning with his great army, lifted the siege.

The Pecheneg leader met with Pretich and asked him whether he was Sviatoslav. Pretich admitted that he was only a general but warned the Pecheneg ruler that his troops were the vanguard of Sviatoslav’s approaching army. The Pecheneg ruler believed him and exchanged his own horse, sword and arrows for Pretich’s armor. And so ended the Siege of Kiev in AD 968.

The aftermath

As soon as the Pechenegs retreated, Olga sent a letter to Sviatoslav, admonishing him for neglecting his family and people. Upon receiving the message, Sviatoslav returned to Kiev and thoroughly defeated the Pechenegs.

The reprisal against the Pechenegs may have ultimately led to the treatment of Sviatoslav at the end of his life. It is believed that Sviatoslav met his end en route to Kiev a few years after the siege, the victim of a Pecheneg ambush alongside the Dnieper rapids. Legend tells us that the Pecheneg Khan Kurya had been paid by the Byzantine’s to kill Sviatoslav and that the khan, having successfully concluded his gory business, had Sviatoslav’s skull made into a drinking cup.I hope you enjoyed this post. As always, please leave any comments below.

If you would like to see how I fictionalized the Siege of Kiev, please check out my novel Sigurd’s Swords.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2022-1-22-the-siege-of-kiev-in-968/

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Sviatoslav’s early life

Grand Prince Sviatoslav is the son of Igor and Olga of Kiev and the grandson of one of Kievan Rus’s founding fathers, Rurik. Little is known of his upbringing save that he was tutored by a “Varangian” (a Scandinavian warrior). Modern researchers believe that the name Sviatoslav is a translation of the Old Norse name, Sveinald or Sveneld. Sviatoslav’s father, Igor, was killed by the East Slavic tribe known as the Drevlians around AD 945 while collecting tribute from them. His mother, Olga, avenged her husband in the most gruesome fashion, then ruled as regent in Kiev (Old Norse: Kønugarðr) until Sviatoslav reached adulthood (ca. AD 963).

Sviatoslav’s appearance and personality

With most characters, I try to glean what I can from historical texts, but in Grand Prince Sviatoslav’s case, he is described in detail by a contemporary, Leo the Deacon, who attended a meeting between Sviatoslav and John I Tzimiskes outside the walls of Drastar, an old Roman fortress on the Danube. According to Leo, Sviatoslav was a bright-eyed man of average height but of stalwart build, with a bald head and a wispy beard, a thick mustache and a sidelock to show his nobility. He preferred to dress in white, and wore a single large gold earring bearing a carbuncle and two pearls.

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According to the Primary Chronicle, he carried neither wagons nor kettles on his expeditions, and he ate strips of horseflesh, game, or beef by roasting it on coals and hot rocks. He spurned the use of a tent, preferring to sleep on a blanket with a saddle under his head.

Sviatoslav’s campaigns

As a ruler, Grand Prince Sviatoslav did not seem to have the patience for administration. He preferred the company of his warriors and spent much of his life in warfare expanding his wealth and his kingdom.

His greatest success was the conquest of Khazaria, which for centuries had been one of the strongest states in the region. It is believed Sviatoslav had an interest in removing the Khazar hold on the Volga trade route because the Khazars collected duties from the goods transported via that river. Sviatoslav destroyed the Khazar city of Sarkel around AD 965, then subsequently sacked the Khazar capital of Atil. The destruction of Khazar imperial power paved the way for Kievan Rus’ to dominate north-south trade routes through the steppe and across the Black Sea, routes that formerly had been a major source of revenue for the Khazars.

In AD 967 or 968, the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros persuaded Sviatoslav to assist the Byzantines in a war against Bulgaria. After paying Sviatoslav 15,000 pounds of gold, the grand prince set sail with an army of 60,000 men, including thousands of Pecheneg mercenaries. Sviatoslav defeated the Bulgarian ruler Boris II and proceeded to occupy the whole of northern Bulgaria. Wary of growing Rus power, the Byzantines then bribed the Pechenegs to attack and besiege Kiev, where Olga stayed with Sviatoslav’s three sons.

Enter Olaf Tryggvason, the main subject of my second series. Nothing is known of Olaf Tryggvason at this time except that he may have been in Kievan Rus’. It is plausible therefore that he could have been at the Seige of Kiev. Be that as it may, one of Sviatoslav’s generals rescued the besieged city, and Sviatoslav refused to relinquish his grip on northern Bulgaria. His relationship with the Byzantines subsequently crumbled.

Sviatoslav overreaches

Confident in his growing power and kingdom, Grand Prince Sviatoslav marched into Bulgaria again in AD 969 or 970. Before he left, he divided his kingdom into three parts, each under the rule of one of his sons. His youngest son, Vladimir, was given Novgorod and the northern area around it.

At the head of a massive army that included Pecheneg and Magyar auxiliary troops, Sviatoslav invaded Bulgaria and then marched (perhaps foolishly?) on Constantinople. The Byzantines retaliated in force, driving the Rus back over the mountains at Adrianople and defeating them again in the Battle of Arcadiopolis. The Rus retreated to the old Roman fort and town, Dorostolon (Old Bulgarian: Drastar), where the Byzantines (supported by angry Bulgarians) besieged them for 65 days. After a final defeat at a battle outside of Dorostolon’s walls, Sviatoslav took the remainder of his beleaguered army and sailed back to Kievan Rus’.

The death of Sviatoslav

It is believed that the grand prince met his end en route to Kiev, the victim of a Pecheneg ambush alongside the Dnieper rapids. Legend tells us that the Pecheneg Khan Kurya had been paid by the Byzantine’s to kill Sviatoslav and that the khan, having successfully concluded his gory business, had Sviatoslav’s skull made into a drinking cup. And so ends the tale of this arrogant, eccentric, brave, foolhardy prince of the Rus.

If you would like to see how I fictionalized Sviatoslav’s character, please check out my novel, Sigurd’s Swords.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2021-12-30-grand-prince-sviatoslav/

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Why is there a debate?

The Battle of Maldon was recorded in a number of sources, including the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a Latin version of the Life of St Oswald, the Liber Eliensis, and a lengthy fragment of an Old English poem. While the battle itself is not in dispute, the Vikings in attendance are, and it is one Viking in particular that I want to focus on in this post: “Anlaf” or Olaf.

None of the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) except Version A reference a Viking leader named Anlaf at the Battle of Maldon. However, Version A states:

AD 993: In this year Anlaf came with ninety-three [ships] to Folkstone and plundered the area and went thence to Sandwich, and then to Ipswich, which he laid waste; and so to Maldon. There ealdorman Byrhtnoth came against him with his force, and fought with him; and there they slew the ealdorman and gained the field of battle, whereupon peace was made with him [Anlaf].

Note that this entry references AD 993 rather than AD 991. Most historians believe this to be a mistake and that the chronicler was confused between Maldon and the events of AD 994 (see below), which could explain why no other ASC entry about Maldon mentions Anlaf.

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An entry from AD 994 states:

“This year Anlaf and Swein came to London on the Nativity of St. Mary with ninety-four ships” and “performed the greatest evil that ever any army could do, in burning and plundering and manslaughter,… They were given sixteen thousand pounds in return for peace.”

Moreover, two treatises of peace are referenced in the ASC, one following the Battle at Maldon and one following the attacks on London. Only one treaty has been found and it references Anlaf, Iustin, and Gudmund in the prologue. Yet it is unclear whether the treaty was created as a result of the Battle of Maldon or the attack on London.

So who was this Anlaf? Was he the famed Viking Olaf Tryggvason, or was he someone else? That is the crux of the debate.

The chronology of Olaf Tryggvason

I will begin by stating that it is plausible Olaf Tryggvason was at Maldon, but it seems equally plausible that he was not there. E. V. Gordon in his article “The Date of Æthelred’s Treaty with the Vikings: Olaf Tryggvason and the Battle of Maldon”, makes a compelling argument that Olaf was at London and not at Maldon, though his case partially relies on a travel schedule that places Olaf Tryggvason in and around England starting in AD 990 or 991. So was he?

I am not a historian, but for my historical fiction novels on Olaf Tryggvason, I have been poring over numerous accounts of the various places Olaf lived before returning to Norway. While there are several accounts of his historical itinerary, most do not perfectly add up.

Since there are plenty of questionable timelines of Olaf’s youth, I will start closer to his English adventures with his time in the court of the Wendish king, Borislav. There, Olaf falls in love with Borislav’s daughter and marries her. We believe this occurs around the time of Otto I’s death and Otto II’s rise because Olaf and his Wendish lord (and now father-in-law) march in support of Otto II in ca. AD 973 or 974 when the Danes attack northern Germany. While the identity of this Burislav is not yet known, we believe the battle happened in AD 974, so we will take that date as our first reference point.

The sagas relate that three years after arriving in Wendland (so ca. AD 976), Olaf’s wife dies and he goes a-viking. We are told by the sagas that he then spends nine years raiding Saxony, Frisia, and Flanders, and another six years raiding and living in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and France, which brings us to AD 991 if the sagas are to be believed.

Olaf Tryggvason and Maldon

At the end of the day, all we have are clues, and those clues suggest Olaf was in, near, or around England in the late 980s and early 990s. Given his chronology, his raiding successes, and his assumed growing fame, it is plausible that Olaf could raise ninety-three ships and that the Anlaf referenced in the peace treaty and in the raid on London is the Olaf we seek. It is also highly plausible that he was at Maldon.

I can understand man how a man like Olaf with his thirst for fame and wealth and power would not have missed a chance to seek more of it in an unstable England, especially if he was aware of a plan for a pitched campaign against the Saxons. However, Maldon was of no political or strategic value, and indeed, feels like a fluke. The tail end of a raiding voyage gone wrong. If the ancient poem is to be believed, then the Vikings actually tried to get out of fighting by asking for booty:

“They have sent me to you, the hardy sea-men—

they bid you be informed that you must quickly send

rings in exchange for protection, and it would be better

for you to buy off with tribute this storm of spears,

otherwise we should deal in such a hard battle.”

Were it not for the hubris of the Saxon ealdorman Byrhtnoth, who invited the Danes to attack, the battle might not have been fought. 

Ultimately, though, I will have to decide as a writer of historical novels whether Anlaf/Olaf was there at the “storm of spears,” and I cannot lie – it will be tempting to re-tell the battle that happened on this day so long ago.

What do you think?

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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing, commenting, or subscribing to History in Fiction. All new subscribers will get my ebook Forged by Iron for free.

Original source: https://www.ericschumacher.net/2021-8-3-was-olaf-tryggvason-at-the-battle-of-maldon/