River Kings

by Cat Jarman

  COMMODITIES

  The primary role of sites like Gnezdovo and Vypovzyv would have been to control movement along the rivers and thereby to oversee and manage the expansion of the Kyivan state. These weren’t so much permanent settlements or towns, more like staging grounds or transit hubs created to move and administer people. By doing so, they could control trade and taxation, which was a vital part of what happened here. When the Rus’ newcomers arrived, the Slavs had already been paying tribute to the Khazars and the new overlords merely took over this profitable enterprise. In addition, they promised to protect those who paid their dues. In other words, this was a protection racket, not too different from what the Vikings did in the west.

  Another profitable part of the operation was obtaining and selling slaves. Here the success of the venture was so great that the very name of the people captured – the Slavs – has given rise to the word slave. Enslavement here was seasonal and certain times of year were used to go out to the hinterland and capture people who could be sold when moving along the Volga and Dnieper to markets in the south or north. This could mean that slaves would have to be held for weeks or even months at settlements like Vypovzyv, much as would surely have been the case in the western Viking camps. It may well be that having a number of slaves to hand made the movement of boats along the rivers and portages far more straightforward. Yet those slaves have again left no trace.

  That slaves were an important part of these eastern societies is shown in numerous sources. In Ibn Fadlan’s description of the Khazars, for instance, he explained that the king had sixty slave girls as concubines (in addition to his twenty-five wives) and each had a eunuch to protect her at all times. In Hungary, a twelfth-century account by the Andalusian traveller Abu Hamid Al-Gharnati explained that a beautiful slave girl was cheap: she could be bought for ten dinars most of the year, but during raiding season – when, presumably, the supply was high – a fine slave girl or a Greek boy may have set you back no more than three dinars. For comparison, he described that twenty sheep cost one dinar.

  In the ninth century, there was such a high demand for slaves in the Islamic caliphate that a slave’s price rose greatly, one source suggesting that prices reached as high as six hundred thousand dirhams. A century later, however, there appears to have been so much of a surplus that slaves would sell for no more than twenty or thirty dirhams each. Clearly, the ninth century was the heyday of the slave trader, and that is why it became such a popular business venture for the Vikings.

  Slaves were, of course, just one of many commodities that these settlements and trading posts profited from: next on the list was the fur trade, a lucrative business the Vikings did well to get in on. Furs from the north were luxury items among the elite in Baghdad, just as beads and other exotic objects were luxuries in the north. While some furs would have come all the way from Scandinavia, many could be obtained throughout eastern Europe, which meant that those travelling the rivers could easily acquire them along the way. Different places offered their own specialities, such as the furs you could obtain from the Finns: stunning white and highly desirable winter coats of stoats, known as minivers. There were many different types used for different purposes, and some could be acquired only in certain regions and at certain times of the year. Take the ermine, or stoat, for example: it moults twice a year and in the winter grows a dense and silky coat that in northern latitudes is completely white. Such white furs have been popular throughout history and are often associated with high status even now. The traditional ceremonial robes of members of the UK House of Lords were trimmed with white ermine, as are the hood and trimmings on the cape of the University of Cambridge’s vice-chancellor. The ermine is even the symbol of the flag of the Duchy of Brittany. That the fur was popular in the Viking Age is shown in a grave from Stavanger in western Norway: along with weapons, riding gear and other personal equipment, the man buried was found to have worn clothing with traces of ermine pelts. It is likely that this could have been one of the white furs referred to by the tenth-century Arab historian al-Masudi when he described the eastern fur trade in 956 as having red, white and black furs available of varying types, qualities and prices.

  Al-Masudi also explained that the furs were traded from the Volga region, both southwards to the Islamic caliphate and north and west, even as far as Frankia and al-Andalus, i.e. Muslim Iberia. The rulers of non-Arab peoples, he wrote, delighted in wearing these furs and, in particular, the most prized and precious of them all, the black furs. They made them into garments like sleeveless tunics and bonnets: maybe this was a reference to the sort of hat worn by the Birka woman, Bj.581?

  Just how prized such furs were is shown by al-Masudi’s account of what the eighth-century caliph al-Mahdi did on a journey to Rayy, in modern-day Iran on the southern fringe of the Caspian Sea. These territories could grow bitterly cold during the winter and, far from being mere status symbols, black furs were clearly prized for their superior heat retention qualities, which the caliph tested with an experiment: during a particularly severe winter that brought intense cold and deep snow, he asked for several flagons of water to be brought to him. Every flagon was stoppered using a tuft of fur, each of a different kind. After leaving them overnight outside in the freezing cold, in the morning the Caliph asked to inspect each one. He found that all were frozen solid apart from one bottle, namely the one stoppered by the fur from a black fox – this, then, was the type of fur to provide him with the best heat and water protection. Al-Masudi explained just how well thought of these furs were: they kept you warm and dry, retaining more heat than that of any other animal, he said, while ‘the humours it contains resemble those of fire’. Furthermore, he wrote, they were a perfect choice of garment for those of delicate health or the elderly.

  Merchants and tradesmen also moved other commodities, like walrus tusks, from the far north, perhaps through this route. When Ohthere visited Alfred in England, he took with him ‘walrus teeth’ to give the king either as a gift or to sell, and it is possible that Ohthere himself had collected them: he stated, in fact, that he had killed sixty walruses or small whales on his journey around the North Cape in the far north of Norway. Clearly, it is possible that some of these commodities were not simply passed from person to person but actually travelled with the hunter, or maybe the organiser of the hunt, themselves.

  At Vypovzyv, if you walk up the sandy path to the top of the hillfort and look out over the floodplain, you can understand how the plains, the rivers and the abundant resources available would have been desirable to an incoming group, especially one that could so easily place itself in a position of power to exploit the local communities. Yet there were likely benefits to those communities too, to those who were happy to trade and to take advantage of opportunities to develop their own entrepreneurship, supplying the demands that the incomers created. These settlements didn’t grow in the way that towns often do, through increasing stability in response to a growing population, but rather from the specific need to establish trading posts and to control the most important routes of communication: the rivers. This also meant that while the towns didn’t grow out of areas with hinterlands that could support them, they arose in areas that were strategically and topographically important, which may then have generated a rural economy. Maybe a similar situation can be seen in England, where, for example, the camp at Torksey acted as a catalyst for a pottery industry and subsequent settlement.

  This also meant that locally procured commodities could sometimes become important, and a product that was essential to the maritime success of the Vikings has provided us with such an example: tar. It is clear that Viking ships needed extensive repair and maintenance, and the evidence for ironworking at the winter camps in the west demonstrates that they were places where this would happen outside the raiding season. But wood and iron weren’t the only things needed to keep the fleets on the water: ships needed waterproofing too, which is precisely what tar would have been used for. It can be extracted
relatively simply from most types of trees and used to treat and seal wood; on a sizable clinker-built ship, it has been estimated that around five hundred litres of tar would have been needed. It might also have been used for treating sails and ropes, to make them better able to withstand the difficult conditions at sea.

  Something of a neglected commodity for a long time, it was only recently that a study showed precisely how large a part tar played in the Viking expansion. Research in Sweden has shown a large increase in tar production in the eighth century, through the use of special tar pits for extracting the resin. This coincided perfectly with the use of new shipbuilding techniques and with the intensification of maritime activities at the start of the Viking Age. Tar pits have also been found at Gnezdovo and evidence for tar or pitch[fn1] production was discovered at Vypovzyv too around the port zone, in the shape of pots with a small hole in the base, as well as ceramics showing traces of tar. In any case, the juxtaposition of craft, commerce, ports and fortification has strong parallels with sites like Birka (and maybe even with Great Army sites in England) and this is something that gives us vital clues to their functions.

  WARRIOR STATES

  One notable aspect of many of the important Rus’ settlements is a very strong military component, which gives rise to an understanding of them as having been controlled by a warrior elite. Among the most commonly found artefact types in the east with clear Scandinavian origins or forms are weapons and military equipment. An obvious parallel to these is the military garrison at Birka, which emerged in its full form during the tenth century. There, a clearly separate part of the town was more heavily defended with ramparts and palisades. The garrison contained buildings and graves, both with extensive weaponry, including in a prominent location, the grave of Bj.581. The stronghold had evidently been home to a militarised unit, as a central hall had hundreds of knives incorporated into its fabric and weapons stored in wooden chests and hanging on the walls: spears, arrows and shields.

  Intriguingly, there is also evidence at Birka of eastern fighters among the graves, in particular the Magyars.[2] The most spectacular indications of contact with these tribal nomads who established themselves in the steppes of what is now Hungary have been found in the graves that contain archery equipment: composite bows and quivers filled with distinct arrows, as well as personal equipment like belts and other insignia known to have been used by the Magyars. This could mean two things: either that Birka was home to migrant archers or that even deeper contacts existed between the two regions, likely via the Rus’.

  The implication of having what seems like a professional, organised military entity as part of the settlement is that they must have been there to defend and support a ruler or ruling elite, to make sure that order was maintained and that trade could carry on in peace – in the way that the ruling group wanted to. These groups may have included the druzhina, an elite retinue surrounding a leader: in the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Rus’ian prince had precisely such a military unit with him when out collecting tribute or when he was at war. The high-status warrior graves found in the Desna region are thought to have belonged to members of a druzhina and this is often taken to mean one of the Kyivan princes, descendent from Rurik. This may be stretching the evidence a little too far, as it is likely that there were many more protagonists than we know about from the records. Attachment to a ruler was important, though, and this is why when the burial of the chieftain described by Ibn Fadlan was complete, a marker post was inserted into the mound: this was inscribed with both the name of the deceased and the name of the king.

  Military defences like those around Birka and sites like Vypovzyv were common across early medieval Europe and are well known from the Frankish and Ottoman empires too. They were particularly common in border zones where control of occupied territory had to be maintained. Conversely, they could be situated where forces threatening to occupy were kept out: the extensive building of burhs initiated by Alfred the Great in the ninth century to withstand the Vikings is a prime example. Another function of these sites, frequently found in western Europe among the Franks, was the collection of tribute. This provided a regular income for many economies, acting as a form of institutionalised plunder. Similar functions would clearly also have defined these eastern settlements and fortifications.

  Frustratingly, we have very few written records of these groups to shed light on their political organisation in the early ninth century. Possible clues may be taken from events in the neighbouring Byzantine Empire, though. In 839, Emperor Theophilus established a brand-new province in Crimea known as the Climata (meaning ‘the districts’), on a peninsula on the north coast of the Black Sea. This was clearly a strategic move because it was the part of Byzantine territory that lay closest to some of their key rivals, namely the Magyars (Hungarians) and the Khazars. The new province was obviously created for military reasons because it included a permanent garrison of considerable size, manned with a force of two thousand men. Theophilus must have felt under threat of losing Crimea, and it is possible that a new Rus’ state was the reason: after all, the province was created in precisely the same year that the Rus’ delegation was received by Louis the Pious in Frankia and we first hear of them by name.

  In that very same year, the Khazars themselves were evidently feeling under threat, because they sent ambassadors to Theophilus asking for help to improve the fortifications of their base, the city of Sarkel on the River Don in what is now southern Russia. Theophilus promptly agreed to do so, sending an expedition including builders and architects. Upon returning to the Byzantine capital Constantinople, the leader of that mission declared that Byzantine territories in Crimea were indeed under threat, from the same people who were also causing the Khazars concern. Nobody really knows who this threat refers to and although some later sources suggest that it was the Magyars, it seems more likely that the defences were built to withstand the advances and threats of an emerging Rus’ state.[3]

  The reference in the Annals of St Bertin to the Rus’ expedition to Frankia is also enlightening for what it tells us about political organisation. It’s apparent from the account that the group had been sent there by a leader referred to in the letter as a Khagan, a word used by the Khazars for a ruler. Why the Rus’ visited the Frankish kingdom is unclear, but it has been suggested that this diplomatic journey may have been made in order to announce the foundation of a new ruling power situated somewhere along the Dnieper.[4] In any case, it proves that a state of some sort, with a leader, was established in the 830s; one that was significant enough to be received by the leaders in both Constantinople and Frankia (regardless of what those leaders thought of them). At the same time, if Byzantium and the Khazars were both feeling threatened, perhaps there were a number of different groups and not just a single state. There’s also the possibility of considerable internal conflict between different groups of Rus’, which could, after all, explain why the settlement at Vypovzyv appears to have been extensively burned on more than one occasion. It has also been suggested that those who harried the Rus’ delegation so much in 839 on their way to Frankia could have been not a foreign tribe but another group of Vikings that we know nothing about. Such different groups acting in the same region would be familiar across the Viking world. A similar point was raised by my collaborators at Vypovzyv one night, around the campfire: the possibility that at one time this territory had been ruled by an independent army, one we don’t know about from the written sources; much like the Great Army in England, which the historical documents claim had a number of semi-independent leaders.

  It’s very likely that these eastern territories were ruled by chieftains and that the land of the Rus’ was divided into different political units that waged war against one another on a regular basis. At both Vypovzyv and neighbouring settlements there appears to be evidence for this in layers of burning: charred wood remains are testament to fires having swept across the workshops and houses, cutting short lives and livelihoods and reducin
g them to blackened layers in the sandy deposits discovered a millennium later. These layers of burning are often related to the historically attested chiefs and conflicts, but it seems very possible that the protagonists may have slipped through unnoticed. One potential elaboration of this theory can be found in a series of treaties between Byzantium and the Rus’ dating to the tenth century that deal with trading arrangements. In the treaties, numerous individuals described as envoys or their representatives are listed. There is no agreement on quite who those people were. Some believe they were members of the druzhina, the Kyivan prince’s retinue. However, others have convincingly argued that these people – twenty-five in total – represented semi-independent rulers or landowners from across the Rus’ territory. This may well be a very similar picture to the political situation in Scandinavia, where a series of local chieftains or ‘petty kings’ held sway.[5]

  We should also bear in mind later saga sources set in the tenth century that describe attacks on eastern territories by Vikings from Scandinavia, such as Snorri described in Heimskringla for the year 997. This year, Snorri says, an earl called Eirik travelled to Sweden where he was given land and freedom by the Swedish king. Gathering up a number of men and ships, he travelled to Gotland where he spent a summer observing merchant vessels and occasionally ravaging coastal territories. The next spring he travelled across the Baltic to ‘Valdemar’s dominions’, reaching and besieging Aldeigjuborg (Staraya Ladoga). Taking the castle, he killed a great many people before he ‘carried destruction all around far and wide in Gardarike’ for the next five years. Afterwards he travelled back to Scandinavia. Presumably, the purpose of the raid was one of obtaining loot rather than any form of settlement and there is no reason why similar raids – if real – wouldn’t have taken place further south too.