The Making of the Eastern Vikings: Rus’ and Varangians in the Middle Ages

The editors assembled a group of both seasoned and young scholars, specializing in the ties between the Varangians and the Rus’. (Those having no knowledge of the relevant terms should keep in mind that the Rus’, with the definite article, means “the Vikings, the Varangians, medieval Scandinavians,” as opposed to Rus’, a historical or poetical synonym for Russia.) The problem with this collection is that graduate students and other beginners know relatively little beyond the subject of their first topic of research, while the veterans who agree to contribute to such miscellanies tend to offer variations on what they have said before (sometimes more than once). Consequently, The Making of the Eastern Vikings . . . will be mainly of use to nonspecialists, interested in familiarizing themselves with the subject and the state of the art. Considering the proliferation of articles and monographs on every period of medieval history, this audience should not be ignored, and one should hope that the present miscellany will find its audience. Even forgetting about the essays, the bibliography appended to the volume is of great value. The book is also an impressive exhibit of the activities of the medievalists at the University of Iceland. One additional general remark is perhaps in order. Most contributors are not native speakers of English, and the texts were either translated or edited by several people. Though the unnamed editors did their work extremely well, every now and then, foreignisms do turn up, and it is easy to guess the original behind the English sentence.One of the complicated problems of medieval historiography is the use of ethnonyms. Chronicles and individual authors use the terms that may or may not coincide with those current today. Even the seemingly transparent term Varangians often needs clarification. Several papers address this problem and trace the use of ethnic names in the sources: Arabic, Medieval Russian, and others. Compare the titles of such essays as “Varangians in Arabic Sources,” “The West on the North in the East: Western Images of the Norse and the Rus’, 800–1250,” and especially “Variagi, Nemtsy, Svei, and Urmane: Scandinavians in the Chronicle Writings of Medieval Rus’.” Of interest is the statistical table on p. 72 summarizing the data in five sources, from the earliest Annales Bertiniani (compiled between 830 and 882) to Saxo. As the sources move chronologically, “the diversity of terms for the Norse increases, the number of the mentions of the Rus’ increase[s], and total mentions of all groups increase[]” (p. 73). (I have added a missing s and deleted the wrong one.) With time, the differentiation of the two groups in the eyes of the Westerners seems to have diminished.As could be expected, the historicity of the Varangian Guard occupies a prominent place in the book. Though the sagas provide a good deal of information on this subject, we confront the perennial question about the historicity of the Icelandic sagas. Their truthfulness has been the bone of contention for more than a century. The composers of so-called lying sagas wrote long prefaces to defend themselves from accusations of producing fiction, while the truthfulness of the family sagas was taken for granted by their contemporaries and much later. The paper titled “Deconstructing Værigjasaga: Byzantine and Old Norse Perspective on the Varangians and on Haraldr Sugurðarson” makes an impassioned case for the absence of the Varangian Guard between 1043 and 1081. The author's argumentation is fully convincing, but I don't quite understand why correcting old mistakes should be called deconstruction. Even though all scholarship is based on refuting some views of the past, I wonder: Can we now sound persuasive only by using trendy and catchy words? A somewhat similar theme and a similar approach (without any allusions to Derrida) informs the paper “Remembering the Varangians: Cultural Memory and Lost Identities.” As the author states, “the Varangian became an exemplary character of honour and noble behaviour, but also disconnected from Icelandic society and its mundane quarrels” (p. 150).Two more papers are polemical. One is “The Concept of ‘Varangian Christianity’ Revisited’.” It has been suggested that the Varangians practiced a distinctive form of Christianity. The paper denies this suggestion, and special attention is called to the ambiguous meaning of the term Christianity. The other polemical, even belligerent, paper (it is based on the author's Ph.D dissertation) opens the collection and is titled “Rus's Women in Islamicate Geography? Approaching a Study of Gender.” It is a feminist manifesto of the type that dominated the humanities fifty and forty years ago, rather than a research paper. Allegedly, “colonial undertones” inform historical accounts of suttee, and discussion of race has been neglected in the study of the Islamicate geographical sources on the Rus’. The paper is short, but the dissertation probably has shown the way to the misguided historians. In any case, it does not set the tone for the style of the entire miscellany.The paper, titled “The Byzantine ‘Charm Defensive’ and the Rus’,” which deals with “the long ninth century,” is aptly summarized in the conclusive statement: “The unique position of the Rus’, sharing faith but not a border with Byzantium, ultimately encouraged the development of constructive, if not intensive, exchange over the long term.” Religious issues are the at the center of the paper “Stories of Nordic Missionaries in the Eastern Way.” It deals with “Icelandic accounts from the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, which emphasizes the connection in time and the persons involved in the Christianization of Norway and Iceland and . . . of Rus’.” The paper “In Search of Haraldr harðráði's Treasures” is much broader than what this title promises. It offers a sketch of Haraldr's uneasy life, which was full of ups and downs. Both historians and archeologists will read this essay with interest. The volume closes with the paper “Origin Stories: The Kievan Rus’ in Ukrainian Historiography.” It has relatively little to say about the Varangians but given today's political situation, will certainly not be missed. The tug of war between the different views on the origins of Ukraine and Rus’ is sure to survive the war of the twenty-one-twenties.