Real Vikings - 6. Greek Fire: Across the Mediterranean

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

After sailing into the Mediterranean, a Viking leader plays dead - lulling the enemy into a false sense of security. Mounting ships on wheels, eastern Vikings launch an audacious land-borne attack on Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor establishes the fabled Varangian Guard, made up of elite Norse warriors. From Spain to Persia, the legend of the Vikings is spreading…A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Iain Glen.Featuring Eleanor Barraclough, Stefan Brink, Lars Brownworth, Elizabeth Rowe.Written by Roger Morris and Jeff Dawson | Executive Producer: Joel Duddell | Research by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow | Fact check by Grant Jones | Sound Supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Additional editing by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley | Recording Engineer: Tom Rouse at Jungle Studios.Get every episode of Real Vikings two weeks early and ad-free by joining Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's summer in the year 860 AD. We're in Luna, a coastal town in northwest Italy. More precisely, we're in the chapel of its ducal court. Here, Bishop Chicado presides over a solemn Latin mass. Today, the ritual is unusual. Shuffling up the aisle, amid the nobles and dignitaries, comes a party of Viking warriors. On their shoulders they carry a stretcher, and on it lies a dying man.

They stop before the altar and lower him tenderly. Amidst the finery of the congregation, the men make for an incongruous spectacle. Filthy, bearded, leather-clad, long-haired, and despite the waft of incense, unpleasantly aromatic. What's more, they are the enemy. A Viking army has been camped outside the walls for days, laying siege to the beleaguered town. Lunas patricians thought they had brokered a peace. According to a growing custom, they had paid the attackers a vast sum of money to go away.

But in what seems a gross act of dishonor, the Northmen have refused to budge. There are mitigating circumstances. Their leader, their, yarl, is gravely ill. Too fragile to travel, to which end they have a special plea. The Yarl is a recent convert to Christianity. He seeks benediction. If Bishop Chekado will grant him his final wish to have a mass conducted for his soul, he will take his chances on the high seas.

They will load up their longboats and go. Impressed by the notion of spiritual redemption, the bishop has agreed to their request. For this is no ordinary Vikings seeking God's mercy, the stricken man is Bjorn Ragnerson, eldest son of the legendary Ragnar Lothbrog. His nickname Yarnsida, Ironside, has been bestowed for Bjorn's seeming indestructibility in battle, though it is a plain old fever which is now hastening his end. The Lord would indeed appear to be moving in mysterious ways, as the bishop makes the

sign of the cross, the comatose bjorn seems to rise effortlessly, miraculously, from the near dead. The bad news is that he is brandishing a sword, one that has been tucked in the folds of his cloak, and that his Viking compadres are now doing the same. Prayers are no match for nor steel. The house of God is turned into a slaughterhouse, the bishop himself among the slain. soon to become a Christian martyr. The Vikings hacked their way to the city gates and throw them open. Fellow warriors charge in. In the kingdom of Italy, they never understood why the Vikings had become so fixated upon Luna.

Today's Lunis, in Luguria, then, like now, is a modest commune, best known for its cheese. But such things are lost on Bjorn Ironside. His father may have stormed Paris, but he has gone one better. In a case of mistaken identity, Bjorn believes he has taken the most important city, the greatest prize in Western Christendom, Rome. I'm Ian Glenn. And from the Noiser podcast network, this is Real Vikings. Part six.

When Ragnar Lothbrock sat Paris back in 845, it was not the end point of the Vikings. in Frankia. Overwintering regularly now, Vikings have established settlements, bases, at strategic points right across the country's river network. By way of the River Loire, Vikings have accessed the Bay of Biscay of the Atlantic coast of modern-day France. Edging down, they have been up to their usual tricks, raiding along the shores of Aquitaine. From there, they have moved west along northern Spain, looting their way across the kingdoms of Navarre, Asturias and Galicia. But here they discover the Western world runs out. It is the limit, the final frontier of Christendom. On the other side of the Cantabrian Mountains lies the ever-expanding Islamic Empire,

the Caliphate. The Muslim realm is vast, spreading from its Arabian source. It extends, by the time of the Viking Age, from the Indian Ocean to the shores of the Atlantic. In 711, Berber armies had crossed from what the Romans called Mauritania, carrying Islam into Iberia, the land they call Alandulus. The Muslim Empire has since undergone a revolution. It is run now by the Abbasid dynasty from far away Baghdad. Under this leadership, the caliphate has been. entered a golden age. Alandoulouse has developed into an autonomous, sophisticated Moorish state,

known as the Emirate of Corduba. It has earned a reputation as a centre of science, medicine, and philosophy, powerful and wealthy. It's a red rag to a bull for those who make their living from Larsenie, a tantalizing prospect to the Vikings of yet more riches, exotic ones, to be plundered. According to the legend, it is Bjorn Ironside who will embark on the mission to seize what he can, in one of the most famous of all Viking adventures. The eldest son of Ragnar, Bjorn is young, ambitious, headstrong, perhaps too much so, to which end he has been paired with a seasoned old pro, a grizzled but steady hand.

His name is Haston, and he is King Ragnar's most trusted lieutenant. In the early summer of 859, frothing at the prospect of fresh booty, the pair sail out of the Loire with a fleet of 62 ships and two and a half thousand men. Their aim to enter the Mediterranean, passing through its narrow entrance between what the ancients called the pillars of Hercules, onto the Caliphate shores. And with a bonus, turn north and they can attack Christendom from a new angle, hitting it in its soft underbelly. For there, halfway up the Italian peninsula, or so Bjorn understands, sits the jewel in the crown.

Rome. Bjorn is not the first Viking to strike at Al-Andalus. Viking raiders have already sacked down its Atlantic coast, besieging today's La Corunia and Lisbon. In October 844, a Viking force even sailed up the Guadalcavier-Ros. river and occupied the city of Isbilia, Seville. But Bjorn and Hasten are going to surpass all previous achievements, becoming the first to enter the great inland sea of the Mediterranean. They are under no allusion as to the perils that lay ahead, not just the deadly currents that surged through the straits. Word has filtered back that the defenders of the Muslim lands, the Saracens,

to use the vernacular of the day, are a different proposition to the local militias encountered in the Christian world. According to legend, the emmer of Cordoba, Abdar Rachman II, had 400 Viking captives strung up from palm trees, and his successor, Muhammad I, has been strengthening the Emirates' defences. After grappling with the storms of the Atlantic, sailing into the Met passes without incident. But as Bjorn's men begin ravaging along the Andalusian coast, the warnings bear fruit.

The defenders are professional, disciplined. The caliphate can call on a standing army of slave soldiers known as Mama Luchs. Plus, they have a navy. Being challenged at sea is a brand new experience for the Vikings. Their conquests thus far have been based on total maritime supremacy. Not anymore. Bjorn's Vikings managed to briefly occupy Nacour on the coast of what is now Morocco,

but they are soon chased away by purpose-built caliphate warships called Dhromans. By the winter of 859, Bjorn and Haston have sailed beyond the Caliphate's reach preceding north across the Mediterranean. After raids on the Balearic Islands and Narpon in southern Francia, they lay too at the mouth of the Rome, In spring 860, the pair continue.

They sack Niem and Arl, then push up river as far as Valence, before proceeding along today's Riviera to the northwest coast of the Italian peninsula. And thereon to Luna, which Bjorn believes, mistakenly, to be the holy city itself. The story of Bjorn on his stretcher, the one we encountered at the start of this episode, is most likely apocryphal. His Trojan Horsack recurs in other tales from the era, featuring different locations and personnel. In some versions, it is Hasten rather than Bjorn who springs up, sword in hand.

In others it is from a coffin that they leap, not a stretcher, but the subject having feigned his own death. But who knows? In any case, there are reports of further raids in the region, including on Sicily. accounts of the Vikings pitching up in Greece and Alexandria are also contemporaneous with Bjorn's expedition. Though the problem, as ever, is that these events are not documented till much, much later,

the official saga which details Bjorn's adventures, the tale of Ragnar's sons, is an Icelandic tract from the 13th century. Even the accounts of Bjorn's raids in southern Francia actually date from the 1000s. Professor Elizabeth Rowe. So we do know that there were Vikings attacking the south coast of France at exactly this time, but the particular additional detail that the Vikings went on to attack Italy,

that's the result of a mistake. The actual chronicles of the time mention the Viking attack of the Northman in France, and then those contemporary chronicles go on to say that the sermons, since attacked Pisa and Luna. And it really looks as though one of the Norman historians, Dudo of San Quentin, when he was writing a history of the Normans and referring to their Danish ancestors, that he got them confused. Was the Bjorn of the Mediterranean the Bjorn?

There is even a suggestion that his nickname, Ironside, may have been retrofitted long after his death. A century or so later it was in vogue. There were a lot of leaders given this moniker, most notably the English warrior king Edmund Ironside. It really looks as though the nickname Ironside could not have been applied to some character named Bjorn until after 1016. So the development of a figure of legend in saga

named Bjorn Ironside is not something that we can trace back to the mid-ninth century, but rather it's a product of the 11th century development of the story of Ragnar and his sons. As is often the case with the Vikings, with Bjorn we are treading a fine line between history and myth. On the way back to Frankea in 851, it is believed the expedition takes a time out to raid the Basque lands. There the Vikings kidnapped the king of Pamplona, ransoming him back for a whooping 60,000 pieces of gold. Bjorn, it is said, becomes so staggeringly wealthy from the expedition that it affords him a cushy

semi-retirement in southern Scandinavia. There he founds a new royal dynasty, the Swedish house of Munso. Despite the evident plunder, their mission has taken a head. heavy toll. The fact that only 20 of the 62 ships make it back means that the Mediterranean adventure will never be followed by any concerted attempt at conquest, not until the later rage of the Normans. We can certainly say that the raids on southern France were serious enough for the victims, but in general the Vikings were not much of a threat in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean was a zone of conflict between the Islamic realm to the south and the Christian kingdoms to the north. The further the Vikings got away from Scandinavia, the weaker their position was.

So the Vikings continued to raid along the Atlantic coast of France and Spain, but they didn't get very far in the Mediterranean and the lack of success. I think discouraged subsequent expeditions there. Old Rome may not have fallen to the Vikings, regardless of what Bjorn may have believed, but no matter. For there is a new Rome rising in the east. The year is 907. An army of Russe warriors and their Slav allies is camped on the southern shore of the Black Sea. A hive of industry has sprung up around its fleet.

The long ships hauled up onto the beach. The men work eagerly at the timber that has been felled in the sea. local forests, splitting planks, soaking and bending the logs into circular hoops secured with rivets. Struts of wood are hammered inside the rings forming spokes. The more the activity proceeds, it becomes clear that what they are manufacturing are cradles, axles, wheels. Their leader, Oleg, Prince of Keeve, regards the labours with satisfaction, then turns to view

the ultimate object of his ambition. the one to which this ingenuity will be put to task. A place the Norse call Micklegaard, but which is better known in Christendom by another name, Constantinople. There, in the distance, the great capital of the Byzantine Empire rises up. Dr. Eleanor Baraklough.

That glittering, gorgeous empire that the Norse were so keen to reach. Its golden domes glinting in the sunlight, its palaces and fabulously decorated churches, famous throughout the known world. As with Paris, as with Rome, its mere existence is a provocation. Though for Oleg this is not just about treasure, he's here to prove a point. By taking Constantinople, he aims to show that the Rus, by extension the Vikings, are a match for anyone. With work on the boats finished, Oleg orders the crews to climb on board, even though the ships have been hauled up onto dry land.

He stands at the eagle-headed prow of his own boat, one arm raised, the north wind at his back. He drops it, giving the signal for the sails to be hoisted. The wind whips at the billowing canvasses, the ropes tighten, the masts take the strain. The ships riding on their newly attached wheels, begin to edge forward, at first, slowly, shakily, till they build momentum, racing towards the city, gliding across the flats like sand-yots. The men on board can barely contain their excitement. The air is filled with jubilant shouting. On the city walls the guards look on in disbelief, it quickly turns to panic. They have heard the prophecy of the Ezekiel, who foretold that a ruler would come from the north,

Gog, Prince of Ross. With his hordes he would devastate Israel, which according to their patriarch, their Christian primate, means the holy city of Constantinople itself. The cry goes up, the ruse are coming, the ruse are coming. Situated on the Bosphorus, Constantinople is a city of strategic importance. It controls the waterways between the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the defenses to prove it, great walls, ramparts and moats, towers studding the battlements, which themselves climbed to 250 feet high. It is a city of great wealth and power. When the Roman Empire began to collapse in the 4th century, its administrators split the territory into two halves, two spheres.

The Western Empire, centered on Rome, and the Eastern, or Byzantine, empire under Emperor Constantine. He renamed its capital, which had been Byzantium, Constantinople, after himself. The Western Empire fell in 476 AD, but for the eastern portion, it has been a different story. With Constantinople as its centerpiece, it has been fashioned as a continuity state, a culturally Greek successor to the dominion of Caesar, and emperors, a new Rome, and it has been thriving. The Viking world too divides between eastern west, between those who look to Britain and and Francia across the North Sea, and those who turn towards the Baltic.

The ruse, if you remember, of Arangians, as they are sometimes known, represent this eastern expansion of the Viking world. They've extended down through the river networks from the Baltic and Lake Ladoga, establishing a vast trading network right across the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe. Their name, Rus, means just that, river people or rowers, and in time they will give their name to a country. Lars Brownworth A guy by the name of Rorick goes and founds the first centralized state in what is now Russia

and is there for kind of the, I don't know what term to use, the spiritual and in a way of three countries, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In contrast to Bjorn Hineside's Mediterranean adventuring, going by sea all the way, the Rusk Vikings have reached eastern waters by a different method. They have used the Denepe River and its tributaries to enter via the Black Sea, rowing for much of the way, dragging their boats overland when necessary. Much of the ingenuity is Oleg of Kiev, doing. Free is one of the original Varangians, part of the foundational Rurikid dynasty,

fueled by the determination of his forebears. And his ambitions do not stop there. For a while now, his interest has been piqued by the tales of travellers and traders returning from the south. The Vikings called Constantinople Miklaghar, which means the big city. It was a place for ambitious go-getters from all corners of the known world, a really incredible metropolis. And it was packed with mercenaries and traders and travellers looking for adventure and employment and money-making. And of course, that's all things that really speak very closely to Norse culture, you know, this desire for adventure and excitement and profit.

From the brick-built aqueducts, the striking monuments, the marble statues to its state-of-the-art hippodrome. Nothing they've seen anywhere can come close to the scale of Constantinople's splendor. And the crowning glory is the magnificent stone cathedral of Hyosophia. Reports of its breathtaking interior make it back to the northern homelands, inspiring others with the desire to see it for themselves, or perhaps have a go at taking it. As the power of the ruse grows, relations between the two entities begin to sour.

The same year that Bjorn Ironside is assailing lunar, Roos warriors launched their first major strike upon the Byzantites. In June 860, the Rus' attack Constantinople for what appears to be the first time. And we have a chronicle written in Kyiv a bit later that says that they were led by two men called Asgold and Deer. As it was for many of the Viking raiders' early victims, the attack on Constantinople, comes as a boat from the blue. The city is completely unprepared. The emperor and his army were both away on a campaign and suddenly without warning the Bosphorus was full of ships and boats from across the sea. And at least according to the Chronicle, it was around 200 vessels, which would mean that there were many,

many thousands of attackers. From inside the great basilica of Aes Sophia, Patriarch Photius delivers a sermon and he's bewailing the city's terrible fate. He says, what is this? What is this grievous and heavy blow and rough? Why has this dreadful bolt fallen on us out of the furthest north? What clouds compacted of woes and condemnation have violently collided to force out this irresistible lightning upon us? Why has this thick, sudden hailstorm of barbarians burst forth?

Just as happened with Linda's Farn, the raid on Constantinople has put these Vikings on the map. Not that there weren't warnings, ones that went unheeded. In the wake of the raid on Seville, emissaries from the caliphate had warned of this new thread. Of infidels from the north, warriors they refer to as al-Majus fire-worshippers. Despite the usual carnage, Ascult and Deer are unable, ultimately, to penetrate the city's imposing defenses. According to a later Christian legend, the defeat of the Vikings is down to divine intervention. Patriarch Photius dips a holy relic in the sea which causes a freak storm to scatter their pagan fleet.

Whatever the truth, the Byzantines are, from this point on, obliged to take the Vikings seriously. In the aftermath, a new relationship between the Byzantines and the Rus is forged, one based on trade. The Russe provide the Byzantines with produce from the northern forests of Scandinavia and the Baltic regions, fur, timber, wax, honey. In return, all manner of luxury goods flow in the other direction. The Russe merchants who are making their way to Byzantium or making their way back from Byzantium with silks and all kinds of lovely Mediterranean wares. And of course, the Vikings cash in on their most disreputable commodity.

slaves. We know from a 10th century document that what the Rus were trading with the Byzantines is exactly the same as what they are trading with the Hazars and the Arabic merchants down the Volga, so slaves and furs

and other northern products. Professor Stefan Brink So this brings us to why slavery was so important. It was the best word. way to accumulate wealth, and wealth this time was silver, and with silver you could build up your power base as well. As we know, this coveted precious metal is the currency of trade. For the Russe, it funds the commercial empire that spreads along the river networks right back

to Scandinavia. But the flood of wealth is also altering the balance of power within the Rus domain itself. While the Rurikids rule from the northern city of Novgorod, It is the Sutherley Keeve which is emerging as the new commercial hub. Those back in Novgorod are beginning to feel upstage by this upstart boomtown, the one from which Askhold and Deer had struck out. And, as you would expect, they're not going to stand by and watch. In 879, when Rurik dies, it is Oleg who succeeds him in Novgorod, initially as a regent on behalf of Rurik's young son, Igor.

and Oleg is going to seize his moment to put an end to these rebels down river. Taking the three-year-old Igor with him, Oleg sails a fleet south through the waterways. Outside the walls of Keeve, Oleg has his men hide in their boats while he stands on the shore with little eagle. He sends a messenger to its rulers within,

claiming to be a ruse merchant traveling to Greece. According to the rules of hospitality, He bids Ascolt and Deer come out to greet him. But no sooner have the unsuspecting duo come down from their hilltop fortification, then Oleg's men emerge from hiding. Oleg brandishes the infant in his arms. This is Igor, son of Rurik, he snarls, true prince of the ruse, and signals to his men.

As a liquidation of his rivals, it is a brisk affair. But it has done the job. The Rus are united under his room. rule, and Oleg will relocate as capital to Kiev accordingly. It is because of the value of the trade with Byzantium that Kiv comes to be the preeminent center of power for the Rus. Keev is located in a relatively secure position, so it's enough within the border forest region that horse-mounted attackers are not easily going to be able to get through the trees. So it's a different landscape.

from the open steps. And also, Keev is a village up on top of some bluffs above the river, so it has a bit of natural fortification as well. As the new Prince of Keev, Oleg the Wise, as he is now styled, he becomes the leader of what are also refashioned as the Keevan Rus. He is the man with whom the Byzantines must deal and must jostle with for regional supremacy. In his assault on Constantinople, a principal historical source, the Russian Primary Chronicle,

states that Oleg's fleet was made up of 2,000 ships. That would have meant an army of around 80,000 men, an unfeasibly large force, so perhaps we should take the numbers with a pinch of salt. But the story of Oleg attaching wheels to his boats and sailing them overland towards the city, As fantastic as it sounds, it's not an impossible scenario. Historians have argued that Norse warriors elsewhere had been known to use similar tactics. Unfortunately for Oleg, his campaign of 907 is, in military terms, a failure. The story has him nailing his shield to the city gate, a sign of victory, but not actually breaching it.

There was a psychological weapon, a medieval sciops, the boats on which, Wheel's trick is a devastating ploy. It plays into the Byzantine's fears of the Vikings as almost superhuman warriors, capable of anything. Plus, word is already out about the Norsemen's capacity for savagery. As the Russian primary chronicle also records, some they beheaded, some they tortured, some they shot. That's with arrows, by the way, and still others they cast into the sea.

When the terrified Byzantines do eventually sue for peace, Oleg demands payment, 12 coins for each man in his army. Just like Ragnar in Paris and Bjorn in Luna, Oleg is being paid to go away. In the wake of Oleg's expedition to Constantinople, a new treaty of friendship is ratified between the Rus and the Byzantines. The Byzantine response was remarkably diplomatic and very politically astute. So what they did when the siege was over was make favourable trading pact with their attackers, offering legitimate ruse merchants a six-month supply of bread and meat and fish and fruit

and perhaps most importantly, bars whenever they needed them. Not only that, the ruse will be exempt from any customs tariffs. It's a remarkably generous deal. After the signing ceremony, Oleg's envoys receive the full VIP treatment, gifts of gold and luxurious robes, and are shown the sights of Constantinople, the palatial interiors and ecclesiastical bling. They are also treated to a viewing of Constantinople's holiest relics, including the crown of thorns worn by Jesus at his crucifixion, as well as nails from the cross, and the purple robe placed over the Savior's body.

All this is designed to impress. The connection between worldly wealth and eternal salvation can hardly be accidental. For the Byzantites have another weapon to deploy against the ruse, quite a powerful one. God. In Western Europe, converting the heathens to Christianity has become baked into treaties and dealings. Viking leaders must be baptized. It has been a condition, for example, of Viking leader Guthrum's reconciliation with England's Alfred the Great. It's a proven way of bringing Viking leaders to heal, to initiate them into the greater European brotherhood.

The Byzantites are particularly zealous in this regard. In 861, the missionary Cyril, the man who gives his name to the Cyrillic script, had been sent out into the wilds of Eastern Europe to convert the Khazars, the Slavs. It inevitably brought him into contact with the Russe too. It kind of pulls the Russians into the Orthodox orbit, which of course has cultural connotations, which are very, very far-reaching. It's the beginning of a process that will culminate in the conversion of the entire Rus' nation. But not quite yet.

With the Rus' threat neutralized by favorably, trading terms, the Byzantines can focus on the other great challenge to their supremacy and to their Christianity, the Caliphate. And they will do so with the Rus as allies. In 910, the Empire launches a major maritime campaign against Arab interests in Crete, Cyprus, and along the coast of Syria. 700 Russe mercenaries serve alongside Byzantine troops. True to their Viking heritage, the ruse come with a formidable reputation, making them highly sought-after soldiers in any army. When Oleg dies at a grand old age, Igor formerly becomes Prince of Keeve.

Oleg had been appointed as his regent, the guardian of a boy king, but he had clung on to power till the very end. Igor, his child ward, is now 64. Prince Igor could easily have settled for a quiet retirement. But making up for lost time, he instead decides to make a late bid for glory and riches. As well as put one over on Oleg, the man who kept him down for so long, and that means having a pop at Constantinople all over again. It's late May, 941.

After raiding along the southern shore of the Black Sea, old Prince Igor needs to be. his fleet into the Bosphorus. He remembers the tales told by Oleg's envoys about the spectacular city, the palaces, the churches, the jewels, the tapestries, the marble. And as with Oleg before him, this is not just about blunder. For too long, 30 years, the Byzantines have arrogantly dictated the terms by which the ruse will be allowed to enter the city, telling them how long they can stay and where. Igor is here to take back control. With his fleet approaching the city,

one of Igor's men raises the alarm. Enemy ships ahead. Igor shields his eyes from the sun and scans the azure waters. Then he sees them. There can be no more than 15 Byzantine vessels approaching. They look like they've seen better days too. Is this the best the defenders can do?

A gaggle of barely seaworthy tub against his mighty ruse navy. It's an insult, another sign of Byzantine arrogance. It's time to teach them a lesson. He'll capture the crews and slaughter them in front of the walls. Igor gives the order. His fleet surrounds the enemy ships. But as the ruse boats close in,

the sailors can see the faces of their enemies. They seem strangely unconcerned, excited even. The Rousse Orsmans shift uneasily on their benches. Something about this doesn't add up. And what's that acrid smell wafting towards them? Then it begins. Long bronze pipes appear over the sides of the Byzantine ships,

and from them, narrow jets of fire shoot out. By the time the Rus' sailors realize what's happening, it's too late. The front-line boats are hemmed in by those behind. The flames leap through the air and ignite the timbers and sails. The very surface of the water seems to be catching fire. The flames spread quickly from ship to ship. Men throw themselves overboard, preferring to drown them, burn to death. Igor retreats, his fleet in disarray.

The secret incendiary weapon that the Byzantines unleash on Igor's ships is called Greek fire. Veterans of the attacks on Al-Andalus had spoken of something. similar, of fireballs launched at them by catapults from harbour defences, some mysterious armament of the Orient that has spread along the Met. To this day, we don't know for sure what Greek fire was. One likely theory is that its ignited crude oil pumped at high pressure through narrow tubes, like a proto-flamethrower. But what we do know is that it was deadly in its effect. The medieval equivalent of Napalm, impossible to extinguish. Igor's ravaged navy limps back to Kiev. In time, Igor will lead a second expedition against Constantinople. On this occasion,

with a force so huge that the Byzantine emperor has no appetite for a fight, in 945, a new treaty is agreed, but there has been a subtle change to the wording. In 911, Oleg's envoys had sworn to uphold the treaty as pagans. But in 945, it allows the Russe to swear their oath either as pagans or Christians, a sign that the Byzantine policy of integration through conversion is paying off. The growing influence of Constantinople shows in other ways too. The Roos state employs Byzantine clerks as its first civil servants. It adopts Byzantine literacy. After Igor's death, the trend to Christianity gathers pace. In the 1950s, Igor's widow Olga travels to Constantinople to be baptized at the Byzantine court. You may remember Olga of Kiev from an earlier

episode as the woman who wrecked terrible revenge on her husband's murderers. On her death in 969, Olga receives a Christian funeral. But the time her grandson Vladimir becomes Prince of Kiev in 1978, he is sending 6,000 Kiev-N-Roo soldiers to the new emperor, Basil II, to help Gosha Rebellion. There's a dynastic alliance between the Prince of Kiev and the Byzantine Emperor, and as part of the alliance, there's a marriage between Vladimir and, and the emperor's sister. And part of the arrangement is that Christianity will happen,

and Vladimir becomes Christian, and the Byzantine Empire sends priests to teach Vladimir's subjects the Eastern form of Christianity. A peaceful union is finally achieved. And Vladimir's conversion, his baptism by the patriarch of Constantinople, marks the founding of what we know as the Russian Orthodox Church. were in the upper gallery of the Church of Haya Sophia in Constantinople, an area reserved for the imperial family and their entourage.

The date is, well, we can't be sure, but it's sometime after 988. Arched windows run around the base of the dome. Shafts of light pierce the hallowed gloom. Below are services underway. The divine liturgy of the Orthodoxy. Orthodox faith. The members of the imperial family are seated, but you must remain standing. Your calves begin to ache. You feel your eyelids drooping. To keep yourself from dozing off and falling over, you take the knife from your belt, concealing it under your cloak. And you use the tip of the blade to scratch something in the marble.

H-A-L-F-D-A-N. H-A-N. H-A-N. H-A-F-A-D-N. H-F-A-D-D-N. H-H-F-A-D-D-D-H-F-A-D-N. Your name. Centuries from now, future generations will know that you were here. The graffiti scratched by an unknown soldier in the upper gallery of the higher sphere, visible to this day, is just one of several inscriptions testifying to the presence of Vikings in Constantinople. When Vladimir sent his Varangians to aid the emperor, he opened the door for Vikings to serve in the imperial army. They will be formally constituted as the most famous core of warriors within the Byzantine armed forces.

And eventually the Norse would come to form the core of the formidable fighting unit that served as the Byzantine Emperor's personal bodyguard. And this was an elite troop known as the Varanian Guard. He felt that warriors who were all foreigners and their only loyalty would be to him that this was the safest kind of protection he could have, rather than relying on fighters from his own empire who might have loyalties to other noblemen or other factions in Byzantium.

The Vikings are eminently qualified for this line of work. There's one particular Byzantine emperor. He's young and he's insecure on the throne, and he knows, you know, you imagine these hulking Viking warriors. He's very impressed by them. For the Vikings, a stint in the Varangian Guard, a Norse foreign legion, will come to represent a lucrative step in their military career, a way of professionalizing their warrior code and turning it to profit.

No one epitomizes this ethos more than a guy called Harold Hardrada. They was king of Norway from 1046 to 1066, and before becoming king, Harold spent three. 15 years in exile as a mercenary, and he became the chief of the Varangian god in Constantinople. Harold Hardrada will go on to play a pivotal role in the story of the Vikings, and will even feature in England in 1066. We will return to him in a future episode. The quest of Vikings in the east does not end there.

There are tales of Norsemen traveling through Mesopotamia, On to Persia, in classic Viking fashion, some go on as traders, some as violent raiders. Quite possibly, it's the same people doing both. Though the motive for their engagement with these far-flung lands will, over time, diminish. Over in the caliphate, those silver mines in Afghanistan have become emptied of silver, and the coins that had been so valuable when they were nearly pure silver, they've now been devalued and the coins are being minted from a combination of silver and less precious metals. As bullion, the new Durham are nearly worthless to the Scandinavians.

About 40 miles west of Stockholm stands Grip's home castle. It was, for most of its existence, a royal residence, occupied as it happens by the distant descendants of one Bjorn-Einside. though today it's a museum, housing the Swedish National Portrait Gallery. And by the side of the driveway that winds through its grounds, sits a carved lump of rock. It is one of 26 similar markers that are planted about eastern Sweden. They commemorate men who, at the height of the age, died in distant lands, those corners of a foreign field that will be forever Viking. They fell alongside an adventurer named Ingvar, Ingvar the Far travelled,

who had journeyed all the way to Armenia, Georgia and across the Caspian Sea. The inscription on this stone says, They travelled like men far for gold, and in the east their bodies fed the eagle. They died in the south of Serkland. Circlan being by some interpretations the land of silk, or along the Silk Road. The Vikings never did establish a permanent presence across the Mediterranean.

That would come later in the guise of the Normans. But Bjorn Ironside's expedition, too, comes with its own legend. Just as it was with the Varangians, it may be that some of his warriors ended up in local service. There were writings by Arab scholars to suggest that Norsemen settled in Al-Andalus becoming Muslim convert. Others may have acted as mercenaries for caliphate warlords. From the end of the 9th century, Viking influence had spread right across the region, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Caspian Sea, across the Mediterranean basin and beyond. The Viking Age had touched new continents, Africa and Asia.

In the next episode, lured by its religious treasures, Northmen set sail for Ireland, In Francia, meanwhile, an entire province is granted to a legendary Viking warrior, a man named Rolo. These settlements will yield new hybrid peoples, Norse Gales and Normans, and they will add a whole new dimension to the expanding Viking age. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Real Vikings right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noisa Plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed or head to noiser.com forward slash subscriptions to find out more.