They round the tip of a great sand spit and row into the well-protected harbor, beaching their boats before a busy trading town backed by a forested bluff. The fortifications that circle Kyiv’s hilltops, though built in the same style as those at Birka, with earthen ramparts and a wooden stockade topped by guard towers, dwarf any she has ever seen before.
In cap and kaftan, to make an impression, and fully armed, Hervor leads her crew up the long, tree-lined road through the town toward the massive fortress. She tries not to look like a newcomer. She notes the buildings’ straw-thatched roofs—a fire hazard, she thinks, though the houses are rather far apart and their yards are large. Each one seems to contain a turf-roofed sauna and a tall dovecote.
The air is filled with a constant humming and buzzing, now loud, now soft. She tries not to crane her neck to find the source of the noise. Finally she locates it: In the kitchen garden of a simple house sits a strange wooden box, riddled with holes through which bees swarm in and out. Honey and wax will be cheap in Kyiv’s market, she reckons, if ordinary housewives keep bees like chickens. And the mead will flow freely in the hall.
A shout draws her attention back to the road. Her steersman shoves her into a doorway just in time to keep them both from getting jostled by a great herd of pigs being chased by a boy and a dog down the lane. Once she has dusted herself off, Hervor lingers a bit longer in the doorway—from deep within the house comes the sweet sound of an eight-stringed lute and a set of panpipes.
At the main gate of the fortress they are met—as Hervor has come to expect by now—by a Birka warrior, with a falcon sword-chape on the tip of his sword’s scabbard. And here, at last, her gerzkr cap with its silver filigreed cone gets an appreciative glance—the same she gives to his Magyar closed quiver, its bronze lid beautifully decorated with a floral motif.
Escorting them past a temple and several sizable wooden houses to their lodgings within the garrison, the warrior politely asks Hervor where she comes from.
Birka, most recently, she replies. Before that Dublin, Orkney, York, Kaupang—you could say I’ve been around.
Queen Olga will want to speak with you of your travels, he says.
The queen’s palace is the great wooden house at the crest of the hill, itself walled within the fortress’s walls, and surrounded by burial mounds—one of which, the warrior points out, contains the twenty noble Derevlians who were buried alive in revenge for the murder of Olga’s husband, King Igor.
He says it nonchalantly, as if sure Hervor knows the story. Only her warrior training keeps the shock from showing on her face. Inwardly she thanks him for alerting her to the character of the queen she is about to meet. Queen Olga and Queen Gunnhild would make excellent allies, she thinks—if not deadly enemies instead. And each would, no doubt, be gratified to know of the other’s existence as a ruling queen in a Viking kingdom. Hervor certainly has a tale she can tell to the queen of Gardariki.
Her opportunity comes a few days later, when she is among the Birka merchants invited to the palace for an archery demonstration. The archers ride from one end of the small courtyard to the other at full gallop, shooting at targets to left and right, above and below, and if any of them miss what they are aiming at, she doesn’t notice it. Then the whole troop attacks an army of straw dummies, circling them like a whirlwind, shooting constantly—Hervor swears some of them are shooting an arrow from each finger. It is a marvelous display.
As their leader approaches the queen’s viewing stand, Hervor leaps in front of him. Where did you learn that? she cries. Can you teach me? Can I join you?
Let me guess, he says. You’re the Dubliner my mother wants to speak with?
She should have recognized him: It’s Prince Sviatoslav. But he is so ordinary looking to have such a reputation for bravery and daring—though he does, as they say, step light as a leopard. He is an inch or two shorter than she and has shaved his head, all but one long lock that hangs down on one side. He has bristly eyebrows over bright gray eyes, a snub nose, and splendid long mustaches. In one ear he wears a gold hoop, set with jewels.
I’ll take you to her, he offers with a grin.
The queen is taller and more substantial than her son, with extremely broad shoulders. She wears a long-sleeved green dress, decorated with bands of silk thickly embroidered with gold thread. A light cloak lined in golden silk is tossed over her shoulders; a silk band studded with gold ornaments holds back her braided hair; a necklace of beads and golden discs lies like a bright collar around her neck. The wide belt at her waist is cinched with a gilded bronze buckle shaped like a griffin, and from it hangs a small bag of dark leather with silver edgings. On the bag’s flap is a cross intricately worked in silver filigree.
Here’s the Dubliner, Mother, Sviatoslav says. She’s joining my warband.
Queen Olga glances at him, then turns back to Hervor. She can’t, she says. She shoots with her fingers, not her thumb. Look at her hands. Really, Son, you need to learn to look before you act.
Queen Olga had obviously examined Hervor as carefully as Hervor examined her.
I can learn, Hervor insists.
I’m sure you can. And when you do, then you can apply to join my son’s warband. Now, come with me into the palace and tell me about Dublin and the West. Who was your father?
I never knew my father, Hervor answers. I was raised by Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings. Let me tell you about her.
* * *
Exotic and eye-catching in Birka, outlandish in Kaupang, Dublin, or York, Hervor’s silver-spiked silk gerzkr cap would not have drawn much attention in cosmopolitan Kyiv.
As big as York—some eight to fifteen thousand people—Kyiv was first settled in the 600s by the Khazars, whose name derives from “wanderer.” Nomads who dominated a vast territory of forests and steppes from Kyiv east into the Caucasus, the Khazars then dominated every route that later became known as the Vikings’ East Way. Known for their horses, their wine, their wax and honey, the silver or bronze ornaments on their belts, their kaftans and balloon-legged trousers, and the silks, spices, pigments, precious stones, incense, and perfumes traded through their territory from the Silk Roads, the Khazars had, by the 900s, given up their shamanistic religion (their totem ancestor being the wolf) and become, variously, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish.
Their King Joseph was Jewish and carried on a correspondence with Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, the Jewish vizier of the caliph of Islamic Spain. As King Joseph wrote in about 950:
I live at the mouth of the Volga River, and with God’s help I guard its entrance and prevent the Rus who arrive in ships from entering into the Caspian Sea for the purpose of making their way to the Muslims.… Were I to let them pass through even one time, they would destroy the whole land of the Muslims as far as Baghdad.
Like the Rus, the Khazars were not only multireligious; they were multiethnic. One Arab traveler described them as having black hair. Another found them to be fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with reddish hair. To the Rus, what was of most interest were their weapons. The Khazars fought with morning stars: heavy balls of iron, bronze, lead, bone, or stone attached by a chain or leather strap to a long handle. Some of the balls were round, some oblong, some spiked. The Khazars fought, as well, with two-headed axes: These had a long, narrow blade on one side and a hammer, a second blade, or a spike on the other. They fought with straight, single-edged broadswords and with sabers: curved and single-edged until the tip, which was sharp on both sides.
None of these weapons was apparently the equal of the Vikings’ two-edged swords. Before he died in 1030, Persian writer Miskawayh wrote about a Rus raid on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 943. After the Rus victors had buried their dead and left, he said, “the Muslims dug up the graves and found a number of swords, which are in great demand to this day for their sharpness and excellence.”
By the time Hervor reached Kyiv, Khazaria had shrunk and its westernmost lands had been taken over, first by the Magyars, with their excellent horn bows, an
d then by the Rus, who were harassed themselves by a new nomadic tribe moving in from the east, the Pechenegs, from whom the Rus bought horses, cattle, and sheep, and with whom they contested for the rights to tribute along the Dniepr, or Deep River, south to the Black Sea and the silk sellers of Constantinople.
Kyiv, in the Turkic language spoken by the Khazars, means “the settlement on the river bank.” The Rus knew it as Konugard, or King’s Fort. It lay at the confluence of the Dniepr and a tributary stream, the Pochaina (now under the city), and was backed by a steep escarpment, on top of which sat a small fortress. In about the year 900, the fortress began to grow; by 950 it was enormous. But it and the houses it protected were still built out of wood. Not until the time of Queen Allogia did the Kyivans begin building with stone and decorating their stone churches and palaces with frescoes, carved marble, and slate tiles. In Hervor’s day, Kyiv looked like a much bigger Birka.
The similarity was more than coincidental: Birka warriors were members of Kyiv’s garrison at the time, as I’ve suggested in the scene at the beginning of this chapter. Sometime before 950, a warrior about two inches taller than Hervor, at five foot nine, was buried beside Kyiv’s fortress in a chamber grave very much like Bj581 in Birka. When archaeologists unearthed this warrior—he is assumed to be male—in the 1970s, they found him lying on a leather-covered wooden bier. His belt was buckled with a Byzantine bronze griffin; his kaftan or cap was decorated with silver filigreed buttons. His leather purse held four Byzantine copper coins, the oldest from 867, the youngest minted in 920. Beside him were the remains of a Magyar bow and twenty-six arrows in a closed quiver, its lid decorated with a bronze floral motif. His sword, in its wood-and-leather scabbard, lay at his hip. At the tip of the scabbard was a falcon sword-chape identical to those found at Birka.
* * *
When Hervor visited, Queen Olga had ruled Kyiv for about ten years; her son would take control around 957. Olga (in Swedish, Helga) had been widowed in 945 when her husband, King Igor (or Ingvar), let his greed outweigh his battle sense.
It was Igor who watched his warriors writhe and twist and leap overboard to drown, while simultaneously burning to death, when his ships were set alight by unquenchable Greek fire. It was Igor who made a pact with his enemies, the nomadic Pechenegs, and returned to Constantinople for revenge—earning significant trade concessions from the Byzantine emperor, including the right to buy five times as much silk as anyone else.
Igor funded his wars by exacting tribute from the Slavic tribes that lived in the vicinity of Kyiv, including the Derevlians. Returning from one tax-collecting trip, Igor made the mistake of sending his main force home with the loot—furs, mostly, but also honey, wax, and mead. King Igor took only a few Rus warriors with him to the town of Iskorosten, intending to collect an additional tax, and the Derevlians in the city slaughtered him.
Too late did they ponder the repercussions of killing the Rus king. “So they sent their best men, twenty in number, to Olga by boat,” says the Russian Primary Chronicle. She welcomed them and inquired politely “as to the reason of their coming.” They formally took responsibility for the killing of her husband and offered her blood money. They invited her to marry their own prince instead.
Olga, who is always presented in the chronicle in a courtly manner, replied, “Your proposal is pleasing to me; indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead.” She said she would consider the matter, and told them to send word to Iskorosten to increase the size of their embassy, so she would know they were serious about their offer.
The first ambassadors should return to their ship, Olga said, for she wished to honor them in an appropriate way. “I shall send for you on the morrow,” she told them, “and you shall say, ‘We will not ride on horses nor go on foot; carry us in our boat.’ And you shall be carried in your boat.”
That night, she had a great pit dug in the center of Kyiv’s fortress. In the morning, the Derevlians arrived, in their boat, sitting on the thwarts “in great robes, puffed up with pride.” Olga’s people ceremoniously carried the boat to the pit and dropped it in. Olga walked to the edge of the pit. She “bent over and inquired whether they found the honor to be to their taste,” records the chronicle. Despite the Derevlians’ screams for mercy, she “commanded that they should be buried alive,” in a parody of a royal Viking ship burial.
Somehow their fate remained a secret, and when the Derevlians’ second delegation came to Kyiv, they did not question Olga’s courteous offer to refresh themselves before dinner by bathing in the royal sauna. Olga sealed it and set it on fire.
She sent word to the people of Iskorosten: “I am now coming to you, so prepare great quantities of mead in the city where you killed my husband, that I may weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him.” Weep she did, feast she did, and “when the Derevlians were drunk, she bade her followers fall upon them, and went about herself egging on her retinue.”
Then Olga went to war. Returning to Kyiv, she gathered an army and attacked the Derevlian lands.
Queen Olga was not, herself, a shield-maid. Her army was led, ostensibly, by her little son, Sviatoslav, who cast the first spear. Though it “barely cleared the horse’s ears,” his captain cried out: “The prince has already begun battle; press on, vassals, after the prince.”
Olga’s army routed the Derevlian troops and ravaged the Derevlian lands until only Iskorosten remained unconquered. She besieged the city for a year, says the chronicle, without success, until Olga “thought out this plan. She sent into the town the following message: ‘Why do you persist in holding out? All your cities have now surrendered to me and submitted to tribute, so that the inhabitants now cultivate their fields and their lands in peace. But you had rather die of hunger.’”
The Derevlians asked what tribute was required to buy peace. Olga scoffed. A city under siege could not be expected to have honey or furs at hand. She would accept a mere token: three pigeons and three sparrows per house. The townspeople agreed. They captured the required number of birds (it’s surprising they had not yet eaten them) and turned them over. “Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or sparrow, and ordered them to attach by a thread … a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth.” When night fell, the birds were released to fly home to their nests, and the army’s fire arrows ignited the whole town. “Thus the dovecotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows were set on fire. There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught fire at once. The people fled from the city, and Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them.” Some she killed; some she enslaved; the rest she left to pay tribute. Olga may not have been a shield-maid, but she was certainly a war leader—and a ruthless one.
* * *
The Russian Primary Chronicle is not a history book in the modern sense. It is a “tale of bygone years,” according to its subtitle. Like an Icelandic saga, it was written down in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, hundreds of years after the fact, and mingles truth with fiction, history with fantasy. Generations of scholars have pointed out that the “incendiary bird” motif is a common one. Snorri Sturluson credits a future king of Norway with just such a strategy in Sicily, where he fought as a mercenary; Saxo Grammaticus says the Vikings played a similar trick on Dublin. Each writer took the motif from a folktale, historians assume; so, by extension, Queen Olga’s revenge is labeled “picturesque” and “largely legendary.” In fact, to one translator of the chronicle, Olga’s entire reign consists of “empty years”: Faced with “scanty data,” the chroniclers filled their pages with “tradition.”
We have long underestimated the queen of Gardariki. According to a modern archaeologist, “Even such a fabulous description as Olga’s attack on Iskorosten, the city of the Derevlians, contains a core of historical truth.” Excavations in Iskorosten, the oldest part of modern Korosten, have revealed that a rich hillfort, littered with Scandinavian, Byzantine, and Slavic objects, was ind
eed burned down in Olga’s days.
Like Queen Asa in Norway’s Vestfold, Queen Olga ruled her kingdom until her son Sviatoslav came of age, at least ten years later. Like the sons of Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, Sviatoslav valued his mother’s advice and kept her by his side, deferring to most of her wishes until her death in 969, for she was known to be wise and politically astute.
The chronicle gives several examples of her intelligence and ability to rule. Queen Olga marked her boundaries and established fortified towns throughout her newly conquered province. She moved its political center from ruined Iskorosten to the hill town of Ovruc and began industrial-scale quarrying of the schist found there; spindle whorls of this light red stone became very popular in late-tenth-century Sweden. Olga sectioned off hunting grounds and honeying grounds, beekeeping being a particular Derevlian specialty, and controlled access to them. She established marketplaces and trading posts, set new levels of taxes and tributes, and standardized the laws.
Her influence was long lasting: As the chronicle’s medieval author noted several hundred years later, “Her hunting-grounds, boundary posts, towns, and trading posts still exist throughout the whole region.”
* * *
Sometime between 946 and 957—the date is disputed—Queen Olga visited Constantinople. The Russian Primary Chronicle provides the fullest account, but her visit is also described by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII, who charts the rigors of the trip.
Thirty miles past Kyiv, the Dniepr River (before it was dammed in modern times) cut through crystalline cliffs and seethed around slabs of stone. “There are sheer high rocks, which look like islands; when the water reaches them and dashes against them it causes a loud and terrifying tumult as it crashes down,” wrote the emperor.
The Real Valkyrie Page 30