Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Olga of Kiev: The Patron Saint of Vengeance

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ Princess Olga of Kiev was a 10th-century woman who was born to a royal family and married to Igor, Prince of Kiev.  She led a fairly unnoteworthy life until her husband was murdered by a neighboring tribe. After that, her life took a turn and she became the patron saint……of vengeance. Learn more about Olga of Kiev, how she brought Christianity to Russia, and how she wreaked vengeance upon her enemies, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EEDailyPodcast/ Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Princess Olga of Kiev was the 10th century woman who was born to a royal family and married to Igor, Prince of Kiev. She led a fairly unnoteworthy life until her husband was murdered by a neighboring tribe. And after that, her life took a turn, and she became the patron saint of vengeance. Learn more about Olga of Kiev, how she brought Christianity to Russia, and how she wreaked vengeance upon her enemies on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow. That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens.

Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing.

You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The woman who had become known as Olga of Kiev was born sometime around the year 900. The estimates range anywhere is from the year 890 to 925. She was born in the town of Paskov, which is in modern-day Russia, not far from the border of Estonia. Little is known about her early life until her marriage to Prince Igor, the heir apparent of the Kivan Rus.

If the word of Rus' sounds familiar, it's because the Rus people were the ancestors of the people who'd become the Russians. Olga was married young, probably at the age of 15. Igor's father was Rurik, who founded the Rurik dynasty. When he died, Igor ascended to the throne, but he was underage, and the regent was a man named Oleg, who united many of the tribes in the area now known as Belarus, Ukraine, and Western Russia.

One of the nearby tribes was called the Dreblians. The Dreblians fought with the Kiven Russe against the Bissens. and they also gave tribute to the Kievan Rus while Oleg was in power. When Oleg died, Igor took power in his own name. The Dreblians thought he was a pushover, so they stopped paying him tribute. Igor, needing to show the Drevlians, who was boss, went over with a full army and demanded payment. Given the threat of an army, the Drevelyans paid up, and Igor left. However, Igor wasn't quite satisfied.

He went back to the Dreveleans to demand more money. However, this time, he went with only a small escort of personal guards. and this time the Dreblians weren't going to pay. Instead, they captured everyone and killed them. And they didn't just kill Igor. They killed him in a pretty gruesome fashion. They tied each of his legs to two birch trees that had bent over. They then released the trees, and as they snapped back into place, they ripped Igor in two.

So, yeah, it was pretty nasty, and I had never thought of using trees in this fashion until now. With the death of Igor, his young son, Svetislav took the third. throne, and his mother Olga became the regent and ruled on her son's behalf. And it's Olga that this episode is about. Having just killed Igor, the Dreblians thought this would be a great opening to try and take control of the Kivan Russe. They proposed that Olga marry the leader of the Drevlians and the man responsible for the murder of her husband, Prince Mahl. They assumed that Olga would just be a pushover. Oh, how they were going to find out just how wrong they were. The Drebelyan sent 20 men via boats up the Nipa River to Kiev, where they told Olga about the murder of her husband and delivered to her the message of marrying Prince Mal.

Upon hearing the news of her husband's death, and hearing the proposal of marriage, she supposedly said the following. Quote, Your proposal is pleasing to me. Indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead, but I desire to honor you tomorrow in the presence of my people. Return now to your boat and remain there with an aspect of arrogance. I shall send for you on the morrow, and you shall say, We will not ride horses nor go on foot, carry us in our boat, and you shall be carried in your boat." So, the Drevlians went back to their boat so they could formally seal the deal the next day. Olga had something very different in mind. That night, while the Drevelyans were on their boat, Olga had a long trench dug. The next day when the Drevelyans showed up and waited outside the doors,

Olga gave the word, and the people of Kiev mobbed the Drevelyans, dragging them to the ditch where they were buried alive. supposedly she got down to the edge of the trench as they were being buried and asked them if they found the honor to their taste. Burying 20 people alive and then taunting them is pretty stone cold. However, Olga was just getting started. I'd say she was about to go medieval on the Dreblians, but it was the medieval area, so that's what everyone did. She was about to go on a rampage of revenge that would do Quentin Tarantino proud. Having buried the 20 messengers, she then sent word back to the Drevlians that she was.

She agreed to the proposal, but she wanted an honor procession to take her to her new prince. Prince Mall, thinking his plan was going pretty well, sent all the chieflands of the Dreblyan tribe to Kiev to escort Olga back to him. When the chieftains arrived in Kiev, Olga and the people of Kiev greeted them with an outpouring of support. She then invited the chiefs to bathe before meeting with her, so they were all escorted to a bathhouse. While inside, the doors were locked and the building was set ablaze, burning them all to death. She had now eliminated the top tier of Dreblian society, but she was nowhere near done yet. Her next ploy was to send word to the Dravlians that she was going to visit the place where her husband was murdered and hold a funeral feast at the site. Her message said, quote,

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, unquote. So she and her army go to attend the funeral, and they have an actual funeral and a feast. the Drevlians joined in and started drinking heavily. And while they were getting good and drunk, Olga gave the word, and the ruse started slaughtering the Dreblians in attendance. And of course, like before, she got very personal with the whole affair,

and quote, went about herself Egy and Hunter retinue to the massacre of the Drevelyans, end quote. According to the records, about 5,000 Drevelyans were killed, taking a page from the treachery of the long knives, doing the old,

get your enemies drunk and kill them routine. Now at this point, you might think that Olga's thirst for revenge had been quenched. But you would be wrong. She still had more in store for the Dreblians. Having pretty much incapacitated the Dreblians, she and her army then went to every Dreblian town and village demanding tribute. Given the news of what she did before,

everywhere she went, they gladly turned over gifts of honey, fur, and other valuables because no one wanted to mess with Olga of Kiev. That was, however, until she got to the Dreblian capital city of Skorosan, the place where the drunken massacre originally took place. They refused to give her tribute, and she laid seeds to the city for a year. Eventually, after a year, she sent them a message, saying, Why do you persist in holding out? All your cities have surrendered to me and have submitted to tribute,

so that the inhabitants now cultivate their fields and their lands in peace. But you had rather tied of hunger without submitting to tribute, end quote. They responded by basically saying they were still worried that she was sore about the whole splitting her husband and two-thing, and she still wanted more revenge. But she was like, nah, the burying people alive and the burning people alive and the drunken massacre of 5,000 people was enough for me. I'm good. In fact, I tell you what, you don't have to give me an expensive tribute. Just gather three pigeons and three sparrows from each house and bring them to me.

And we'll call it even. The Dreblians were ecstatic that they were getting let off the hook with such a small tribute, so they gathered up the birds and delivered them. That night, Olga's army attached strings to the legs of all the birds. birds and tied small bits of cloth and sulfur to them. Then, when the command was given, the cloth and the sulfur were lit on fire and the birds were released. They all flew back to their nests in the city, subsequently setting the entire city on fire all at the same time. As the city burned, residents fled through the city gates. Those who fled were either killed or captured and turned

into slaves, leaving only a small population behind to continue to pay tribute. However, this isn't the end of the Olga saga. Today, Olga is best known as Saint Olga. You might be wondering how it is that someone who conducted her own Russian Dark Ages version of Kill Bill managed to become a saint. It would take a lot of Hail Mary's to make up for the stuff she did. Well, Olga and everyone else in this part of the world at this time was still pagan. Sometime, in about five to ten years after the death of her husband,

Olga traveled to Constantinople to meet with the Byzantine Emperor Constantine 7th. While she was there, she converted to Christianity at the urging of the emperor and the patriarch and was baptized. When she returned to Kiev, she tried to spread Christianity, but ultimately wasn't successful. Her son never converted to Christianity, but did agree not to persecute those who did. Ultimately, her grandson, Vladimir the Great, did convert to Christianity and Christianize the Kivan Russe. Today, Vladimir and Olga are considered the founders of the Russian Orthodox Church for their role in bringing Christianity to Russia. She is honored in the Eastern Orthodox Church with the Greek title of Is Apostalos, which means equal to the apostles. She is one of only five women in history to have been bestowed that title.

In hindsight, it's hard to find a plan that had backfired so catastrophically than the Dreblian plan to kill Prince Igor and marry Olga of Kiev. And it was all because they had vastly underestimated the woman who was perhaps the one saint you never wanted to mess with. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Fun Bobby 1976 at Apple Podcasts in the U.S. They write, The Best Podcast, Bar None. I've been formulating this review in my head for about a year now, and after the accounting episode, I'm finally pulling the trigger.

Having been a CPA for 20 years, I sometimes question what is important about my job, and frankly, it's a bit depressing. The best way to kill a party conversation is when someone asks me what I do for a living. After listening to 10 minutes of Gary's wisdom, I now not only realize how important accounting is, but I can tell people that we accountants are responsible for the rise of civilization as we know it. This is what Gary brings to any topic. Whether it's disseminating information on a topic so complex I never thought I could hope to understand, i.e. nuclear physics, taking a topic that seems mind-umingly dull in bringing it to life, i.e. accounting, or expanding my knowledge on a topic that I thought I already knew about. Hello, internal combustion engines. Gary's clear and concise delivery may

makes every episode something to look forward to. Not only that, but I found his content to be almost completely fact-based and devoid of personal opinion which is hard to come by in this extremely polarized world we live in. Even if it's a controversial subject such as the Electoral College, his content is just the facts. Informative and non-controversial. The times he does drop in a personal opinion, it's having to do with the terribleness of the Chicago Bears, which, if you have any doubts, one needs to look no further than a YouTube video of the Super Bowl shuffle, which is sure to offend any rational human being sensibilities. Finally, I love humor. Not overt and in-your-face humor, but clever humor that is subtly

dropped in at the most unexpected moment. Gary is an absolute master at dropping in a gem in a calm deadpan delivery when I least expect it. I almost shot coffee all over my windshield at the end of the James Garfield episode. I stumbled on to Gary's podcast while doing searches for podcasts about microstates and island nations, a personal obsession of mine. Not a did I get some great content on virtually every island nation, still looking forward to plow, but I've opened myself up to a world of knowledge I never knew I cared about. Thanks for making me look forward to my commute every day, Gary. Every commuter should do themselves a favor and make this podcast part of your daily drive. But brace yourself for the end of the Garfield episode.

Wow, thanks, fun, Bobby. I confess that is the longest podcast review I have ever read. Not just for my show, but for any show. I honestly didn't even think you could leave a review that long. I figured there must have been a character limit or something. And Fun Bobby, 1976, I am happy to inform you that you have earned a place in the Review Hall of Fame. Remember, if you leave a review or send in a question, you two can have it read on the show.