The Rest Is History - 149. The Birth of Russia

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

In the second of two episodes on the Vikings in the East, Tom and Dominic investigate their role in the birth of Russia. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. The story goes that in the year 860, the Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichians and the Vests, people who live in what we now know as Russia, had fallen out among themselves, needed somebody to rule them. So they turned to the Vikings. Our land is great and rich, they supposedly said, but there is no order in it.

Come to rule and reign over us. And the person who accepted that offer was a man called Rurik, one of three brothers, Rurik, Sineas, and Truvor. Very close to Trevor, weirdly, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor. Very close to Trevor, weirdly. Rurik. You couldn't take a Viking chieftain. Seriously, Trevor. Rurik established himself in a place which we now know as Novgorod

and his successors later moved to Kiev. And it's from that story that the countries of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine all trace their history. Tom, we did the origins of the Vikings in the East yesterday. Do you think there's any truth to this story at all? Well, I think the obvious parallel with this, if you are in Britain, is with the Dukes of Norm normandy which likewise has a kind of almost mythic origin story so it's rollo uh who is given this land by uh by the frankish king and all kinds of myths surround this figure i mean he he probably existed but he probably wasn't called rollo though was he no um tom shippy in his book

about the vikings calls him ganga rolf which i think is a much better name uh yes um and all kinds of so there are all kinds of stories about how he he founds normandy and about how the original normans are not just vikings but they're people from you know all kinds of different backgrounds um and he establishes this duchy. And the question of whether, you know, William the Conqueror, the most famous of the Dukes of Normandy, is he a Viking? Is he French? You know, what is he exactly?

I think that that sheds a kind of really interesting light on the process of state formation in Novgorod, but even more particularly in Kiev. And obviously the background to this, as in the West, so in the East, it's about the way that the Vikings are moving into strange lands, establishing Viking polities that nevertheless take on the lineaments of the lands and the cultures and the peoples that they're settling among. Well, that's a very controversial subject though, isn't it? Because how much that's the case has been bitterly contested by academics.

How Viking are they? For those people who didn't listen to yesterday, I can't believe there was anybody who didn't listen to yesterday's podcast. But we did the sort of first hundred years. So the Vikings have been – I mean, Vikings is actually the wrong word because they're not really – The Rus. Yeah, the not really – The Rus. Yeah, the raiding.

The Rus. The rowers. Have been coming largely from Sweden down the rivers from the Baltic and establishing this trading network, which is going to start to take on, as Tom said, it's not just the lineaments of the culture around it, but the lineaments of a state. And how quickly it does that is is again debatable so the sort of origin story that's told is that the which is very flattering by the way to the

scandinavian self-esteem it's you could say as a kind of slightly colonial story is that the surrounding peoples are so shambolic and kind of disorganized and backward they are falling out among themselves and they have to ask the vikings the roost to come in and rule them and there might be some element of truth in that don't you think tom that they that they might you know appeal to these armed guys in their trading posts to come and help them against a rival clan or a rival tribe and and that's how it starts do you think well i think it's it's failing the kind of the brute process by which i think pretty clearly what happens is that you you

as we said in the early episode you know these to begin with are trading ventures and so you have to have transit posts you have to have places where you can not just um do deals not just store things ready for when the rivers become navigable, but also to kind of pick up information. You can't survive without that. And we drew the parallel yesterday with trading posts in, say, Canada in the 18th century. But it's pretty clear that before long, these transit posts become forts. Yeah, wooden forts and once they've become forts then you can do what the vikings are doing in in um in the west as well

which is basically to kind of set up protection rackets so what's been a cartel becomes a kind of mafia style operation yeah uh and you're charging protection money uh and if rurik existed and there is a kind of historically tested Rurik at around this time, I think, tested in Scandinavia, but whether it's the same person or not is debated. But if he existed, I think you could imagine him

as the kind of equivalent of a mafia boss. And then, you know, again, as happens in the West, Normandy being the obvious example, a protection racket becomes a state. Well, so we know so little about Rurik. We know that he established himself in Novgorod, which we talked about yesterday, and there's a statue of him to this day.

And this is the second half of the 9th century. Yeah, this is 860, I think it is, is it is it yeah about 860 to 862 are the dates given and so by the way we haven't really talked about sources this is coming from an incredible source called the russian primary chronicle which is as is so often the way written in the 12th century yeah exactly written at least 200 300 years later um by a monk called Nestor, I think, and is written in very different kind of political and cultural circumstances. So as with so much of early medieval history,

we just don't know whether these are legends, whether there is a grain of truth in them, whether it's retrospective kind of legitimizing. I think there must be a grain of truth in them, whether it's retrospective kind of legitimizing. I think there must be a grain of truth because I think that the, the idea of, of a kind of dynastic descent from Rurik becomes quite important. So, you know,

if Rurik didn't exist, someone of the same name must have. But yeah, well, someone of the same, but, but the whole thing, Rurik and two brothers,

I mean, all that sort of stuff. But there's clearly a dynasty established itself in Novgorod. Yeah. That will then expand. Yeah. So there's clearly a a dynasty establishing itself in novgorod yeah that will then expand yeah so there's two guys who are it says in the russian primary chronicle two men who do not belong to rurik's kin but were boyars that's the kind of russian they're basically um captains i don't know what the word is uh they're not nobles i mean nobles is the wrong word but they're sort of they're they're they're members of the gang, would you say?

Soldiers, I guess is what Mafia knows and they basically go off they're called, the Russian primary chronicle has them as Askuld and Deer and as with so many of these names almost all the names we're talking about they're Slavicised versions of originally

Norse names aren't they because I think they were huskulda and dury uh with the original my beautiful yeah absolutely impeccable old norse pronunciation there tom i hope you noticed they go off down the dnieper and they come to what they the chronicle says is a city on a hill again a little bit too kind of folk tale stroke biblical i think for anyway this place is kiev and it already exists uh been set up by somebody called key um hence the name yeah and askle and deer supposedly settle in kiev and say this is a great place i mean obviously it's a good place because it's

further down the river further towards constantinople so it's kind of makes sense that they've established another fort stroke trading station that becomes their own little polity. And so the question of whether Kiev is Viking, which Putin's been worrying about this, so it's a topical question. But again, would you think that maybe there'd be a parallel perhaps with York? Jorvik. Jorvik.

You know, it's a pre-existing settlement, gets taken over by the Vikings, gets a Viking name. The Vikings rule it, and then they gradually get absorbed into the fabric of what, you know, returns to being an English city. But perhaps there's, I mean, the parallels are never exact, but there's something there of what's happening in the East as well as the West.

Your parallel with Normandy was a really good one i think to people at the time sort of ninth tenth century people our attempts to fix labels on them would seem weird wouldn't they they would say well who cares i mean what what what's it to you what ethnicity that the concept wouldn't make an enormous amount of sense to them so the question of you know are they slavs are they scandinavian are they russians ukrainians i mean in a sense that they're it's a very very anachronistic question i mean what matters to them is who's who's got the weapons the power the money what they are is lads yeah absolute lads and they are but i don't think they're little bullingdon lads tom i think much more. No, they're much more predatory and brutal.

Because they, so Asgald and Deer, these pair of kind of Viking adventurers, the kin of Rurik, his descent, you know, his heirs, if they exist, they're moving in. Yeah. And they're like the kind of, you know, the bigger crime family moving in. And they take like the kind of, you know, the bigger crime family moving in. And they take over Kiev.

And Kiev opens up the access to the Black Sea. And beyond the Black Sea lies Miklagard, Constantinople. Yeah, which we haven't talked about at all, which is enjoying some Renaissance, isn't it? Are we not in the Macedonian Renaissance at this point, Tom? So things are looking up for the Byzantines. Yeah, so they still think of themselves as Romans, don't they? They still call themselves the Roman way. They

absolutely think we are Rome, and they have this massive city, they have tons of money, they're a very rich and sophisticated culture, and then one day, in the year 860, they kind of look out of the window and these, as you said, these lads have turned up in their ships. And the patriarch, the archbishop of nation of no account a nation ranked among slaves

unknown which has won a name from their expedition against us so basically well the shocking thing for the people of constantinople is that these utter nobodies who they regard as so far beneath them turn up and and um besiege their city and they keep doing this don't they and they they they seem to have very good intelligence because they invariably turn up when the imperial fleet is away. Yeah, or the emperor's off campaigning against somebody else.

So the walls of Constantinople are a great wonder. They are impregnable. But there are obviously all kinds of churches and monasteries, you know, as in England, that are kind of lying exposed. And the Vikings have all kinds of fun with them, don't they? They use monks as for archery practice. They nail hats on to the heads of priests and all kinds of badinage.

Very cool. So we have a question from, would you believe, Tom, we've got a question from Neville Chamberlain. Neville Chamberlain says, were there any attempts by the Vikings toings to take over byzantium in the same way they tried with england and ireland neville of course his reaction would no doubt be to to um to a piece far away country yeah which we know nothing um and my answer to that would be it's completely implausible they would ever take over constantinople there's one

of them isn't there who nails his shield to the gates of Constantinople as a kind of gesture of contempt because he obviously sees the walls as a kind of cheat. Yeah. But he knows that they're never going to break in. I mean, it's like saying, you know, will Paraguay ever defeat the United States and conquer its territory? I mean, it's just not a plausible matchup. So, Miklagar, the great city, it's not a plausible matchup um i think so so micklegard the great city it's it's

constantinople comes to kind of shimmer in the imaginings of all the vikings so much that essentially the the asgard the city of the gods comes to be equated with it yeah so that when they imagine what odin's halls look like they imagine it looking very like the golden city of caesar don't they don't they also tom um there are some people who think that when they talk about asgard or they talk about valhalla that images of hagia sophia the church of the holy wisdom um this incredible building the biggest building in the western world i guess at this point um which will come to yeah plays an important part in this story. The gold, the mosaics, just the sort of,

that creates a lot of the images of, because the images that we have of Valhalla or Asgard all come later, don't they? They're all centuries after this. And they seem to kind of echo Constantinople. And I think the other difference, so there's no prospect of them capturing Constantinople. But I think also what the Byzantine Empire can exert, which England or Ireland or even the Frankish Empire can't do,

is to kind of generate this incredible cultural cringe. Because they, you know, every so often they're allowed, you know, it's actually with Constantine VII, isn't it? Who we mentioned in the previous episode, the emperor who describes this, the rapids that the Rus have to behave when they come and they're kind of bringing in their walrus tusks and their narwhal tusks and their amber and their beeswax and all kinds of stuff um and they're also providing for uh what becomes very famous uh a guard of what are called varangians yeah and and the varangian avar is a vow it's kind of the oath tak English. The oath takers, would that be? The oath takers.

And so they come to provide the emperor with his guard. And so the links, but essentially the Kievan Rus' start to be absorbed into the kind of the cultural tractor beam of Byzantine culture. Well, that's where I would say, Tom, I'm sure you, I don't think this is a controversial view at all. That's the point at which they stop being the Scandinavians who are known as the Rus, and they start becoming the ancestors of Russia. Yeah, of Ukraine and Russia.

Yeah, because they're brought into the world of orthodoxy, of Byzantine church architecture, of all those kinds. They're beginning to kind of contract marriage alliances and trade deals and all this sort of stuff. And that brings them, you know, what do they care about what's going on in Norway? I mean- Yeah, yeah.

And so by the mid 10th century, you get the first ruler of Kiev. I'm going to have a go at this, Sviatslav. So he's the first ruler to have- Sl'm going to have a go at this Sviatslav uh so he's the first ruler to have um Slavic name Slavic name but before him you've had various rulers who have more obviously Norse names so we had uh we had um uh Golden Deer with the guys who'd seized Kiev but then that gets seized from them by um a guy called Oleg that's right who is the guardian of Rurik's son Igor yeah so Rurik is definitely Scandinavian and Oleg is also definitely Scandinavian because Oleg that's right who is the guardian of Rurik's son Igor yeah so Rurik is definitely Scandinavian

and Oleg is also definitely Scandinavian because Oleg which we always think of as a Russian name is actually Helgi I think yeah just like Olga is is Helga so Helgi or as we call him Oleg he's the guardian that's right he's the guardian of Igor and Oleg is a very impressive man generally he takes over Kiev he seizes it from Asgode and Deir. He leads another siege of Constantinople and gets a ton of money from sort of – so this is your parallel with the West, actually. He gets basically dangled from the sort of Byzantine authorities in 904. But he has a most – they have very good deaths, the Grand Princes of Kiev. So he has a most they have very good deaths the um the grand princes of Kiev so he

has a very interesting death he has he's been told Oleg that um his favorite horse will be the cause of his death so do you know what um do you know what Oleg does Tom tell me he sends the horse away he says you know I don't want to to kill it because it's my favorite horse, but send it away and look after it, and I'll never have any dealings with it again. And after four years, in the year 914, he goes to visit the horse because he misses it so badly. It's so sad. He goes to visit the horse at the stables, and he's told by the stable hands,

well, the horse is dead. And he says, ha, ha, he says you know cheated fate those astrologers were absolute muppets you know i i've cheated death exactly and he says um bring to show my contempt for these these soothsayers bring me the skull of the horse so they bring him the horse's skull and he stamps on it. He's shouting, the horse is dead, but I am still alive. I was supposed to receive my death from this skull. And he stamps on the horse, on the horse's skull. And at that point, a snake crawls out from the horse's skull, bites him and he dies. There you go.

So the very act of defying the prophecy is what kills him. But. Yeah. So he was guardian for eagle yeah so eagle then is um so eagle takes over eagle has an even better death he yeah he has a very unfortunate death doesn't he so so eagle is eagle is the guy who negotiates the treaty with constantine the seventh because he's attacked them and being seen off with greek fire hasn't he yes that way at first yeah greek fire yeah which is what which is he? Yes, he has. That way he first used Greek fire. Yeah. Which is what?

Well, he does besiege Constantinople. He doesn't just attack with ships. He actually tries to take the city twice. Yeah. And basically, he's a very, very kind of expansionist guy. So he's also, it's in his reign that they all go off and plunder all the kind of Muslim cities on the Caspian Sea. Oh, yes, that's right. They go to Azerbaijan, don't they?

They go to Azerbaijan. So he's all over the place. I mean, he's very keen on kicking sand in people's face. Yeah. And one of the people that he kicks sand in the face of is a people called the Drevlians, or Slavic people, and they capture him. They pull down two birch trees, and they tie him

to the ends of these two trees, and then they let the two birch trees go, so he goes, and he gets split in two, and that's the end of him. However, this is not a sensible thing to have done. Now, coming coming sent dominic it's not true that's dominic now center stage comes possibly the most interesting of all the rulers of kiev

who is um the the wife of igor and the mother of sviatslav as he'll become. He will become this ruler. But she is ruling as regent. Olga, Helga. Yeah. You've got a bit of a torn dress for Olga, I think. I really have. I really have. She's kind of the Athelflad of the East. But she's much more...

She's very robust in her approach to the Drevlians. So they're basically... They're Slavs, aren't they? They're the tree people because Derevo is tree in Russian. So presumably that's where the story of the birch trees. But also apparently the chronicler was ripping off… Theseus. Yeah, Diodorus or some Greek chronicler.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. But who cares? So like a lot of these stories stories like basically everything in this podcast possibly didn't happen so so so the drevlians are obviously a bit nervous whether um you know olga is going to be you know what's her reaction going to be so they send um an embassy to her and uh she puts them on a ship and buries them alive.

Yeah. Well, they've, you know what? They send the embassy saying, would you like to marry our leader, Prince Mal? Which is an extraordinary thing to do, the way they've treated

her previous husband. Yeah, she throws, she buries them alive, doesn't she? On a ship. So a bit like the, we had Ibn Fadlan's account of the uh

the ship burial yeah she seems to have done that but they were alive um and i think she kind of taunts them as the soil is being flooded then that's just the first of because she yes she is she has three revenges doesn't she so another they then send another embassy because the first embassy hasn't returned yeah i'm so stupid what happened to those guys we'll send another one so so olga burns them alive that's right in the bathhouse she says go and have a wash yeah so obviously their standards of hygiene have improved by this point yeah clearly um and then she goes and besieges the city where eagle was killed and the story is is that she besieges them for a year and finally she

she accepts that she's not going to capture it. So she negotiates a treaty with them and demands a kind of, you know, a very small tribute just as a kind of sign of their submission. And she demands three sparrows and Dominic, three pigeons. And you've been mocking the idea that we're going to be doing a podcast on pigeons. But this is a kind of interesting example of how pigeons have played an important role in world history. I think you're underestimating the number of sparrows she asks for.

I think she asks for three sparrows from each household. Yeah, so each household have to give her a tribute. Not from the city, generally. No, no, yes. So each household has to give a tribute of three sparrows and three pigeons. And they do this and she then sets them on fire. They dive bomb the city.

It bursts into flames. She bursts in and kills everybody. It's a great story. Do you think that happened, Dom? I mean, do you think that's a plausible? Well, there's a story that this happened during the war of Simon de Montfort against Henry III. The whole sparrow carry on again. It was a cock.

Right. That they set fire to London. I think. With a burning cock. I think, obviously, this is all from the Russian Primary Chronicle, isn't it? Which I think is so clearly based on previous models. But I think it's a good story. So let's not question it.

Let's assume it definitely happened. Okay. So Olga, robust in her approach to the murderers of her husband. But also a saint. A saint. Yes. So she, and it's, again, a sign of the growing influence of Byzantine culture and civilization, that she converts to Christianity and gets the baptismal name of Helena,

which was the name of the mother of Constantine, who'd founded Constantinople. And her son doesn't convert, but she's allowed to serve as a patron of Christianity in Kiev. So she goes to Constantinople, does she, to talk to Constantine VII, the guy who wrote the manual, Porphyrogenitus. And there's some talk of them marrying but

and they don't marry but she converts and she comes back with a load of vases it said in the chronicle which is nice yeah um but yeah but it's interesting because and this is one of those things that kind of makes a mockery of our attempts to fix labels on on these people because she is as you say a christian but her son sviatoslav he is still a rampaging pagan a pagan she has a scandinavian name helga he has a slavic name um but there's no sense that this is a kind of contradiction or that this is some problem that needs to be resolved it's just you know the the sort of the flux and a mess of how things are yep and and he um he like like his dad is a great conqueror so he knocks out the khazars well he's one of the first he's the first of these people we have a physical description of a genuine physical

description made by um who is it by one of the byzantines uh leo the deacon he says he's a moderate height he's got a snub nose uh he's got a sort of bushy mustache and a shaved head but a lock of hair that hangs down on one side that's right yes kind of hanging down the side isn't it he had a rather angry and savage appearance. You're telling me. He's got a gold earring with two pearls and a red gemstone. His clothing was white, no different from that of his companions, except in cleanliness. So he's well turned out, despite his savage appearance.

And yeah, sorry, Tom, I interrupted you. He wipes the floor with the Khazars, doesn't he? Yes, he does. And is he the father of, well, Vladimir is is russian vladimir i gather if you're ukrainian he is yeah um but but again a name that people think possibly has sort of norse germanic roots and it could have been valde valdemar um some kind of norse name but yeah he so he attacks the bulgars. He attacks the Khazars. I mean, you're saying that Igor

is expansionist. Sviatoslav is very expansionist. He fights absolutely. Vladimir. Yeah. No, Sviatoslav. Oh,

yes, yes. He's very expansionist, but he has an interesting death too, Tom. None of them die safely quietly in their bed. Do you know what happens to him?

Tell me. He has gone and attacked Constantinople again. As you do. As you do. I mean, presumably, I think they're attacking Constantinople again. As you do. As you do. I mean, presumably, I think they're attacking Constantinople to get better trade. They're like Lord Frost, who's obviously listening to the show

and presumably listening to the show an awful lot now that he's left his Brexit. Got more time. I'm disappointed he hasn't been sending in more of those excellent Danish-themed questions. But yeah, they're presumably doing it to get tribute and to get you know money and better trade negotiations and stuff but he's gone and attacked the constantinople it didn't really work out he comes back and he ends up being ambushed

at the rapids on the river dnieper by our old friends the Pechenegs. And do you know what they do to him? No, tell me. They cut his head off, they plate it with gold, and they use it as a drinking vessel. That's so predictable. That's kind of very, it's like, they're always doing that.

They're always doing that. Vulcan formulaic behaviour. I think tying to a tree and, you know and ripping them in half is much more creative. Okay, fair enough. Even if it didn't happen. Yeah, even if it didn't happen. So anyway, he has multiple sons. They all fight each other. And the winner is…

Volodymyr. Yeah. Volodymyr. Well, it's interesting, actually, Tom, because almost every book on this calls him Vladimir, which is Russian. But I've been told off by Ukrainians for calling him Vladimir. Agreed. So if you look at Sergei Plokhy's book on the history of Ukraine, he calls him Volodymyr. And it's a bit like we've talked about Kiev, you know, and in our minds, no doubt, because we're born in the 70s.

That word is spelt K-I-E-v not k-y-i-v so at this point we're getting more and more into the kind of territory where everything is contested between russian and ukrainian but what isn't contested is the absolute key significance of his reign because it's in his reign yeah that the ukrain, the Rus, become Christian. You call them Ukrainians? Well, yeah, the Rus. Please direct all your complaints to Tom Holland, not to me. The Rus, the Russians, the Ukrainians, whatever.

So, Tom, tell us, because his conversion to Christianity is a great tale in itself, isn't it? Well, we've been talking about how so much of this material has a kind of folkloric dimension to it yeah and in the previous episode we talked about the khazars about how um you know they they can't decide whether to become christian or jewish or muslim and there's a very similar story told about blodimir he's in a world surrounded by worshippers of a single god, which should he convert to? And so he sends emissaries to the Muslim world, to the caliphate, and they report back and say, well, you'd have to give up drink.

So that's an absolute no-no. And he sends them to the lands of the Franks, and they report back and say, yeah, it's all right, but cathedrals aren't great. And then he sends them to Constantinople and they go to Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral. And they come back and they report in odd terms. We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth for on earth,

there is no such splendor or such beauty. We only know that God dwells there among men. We cannot forget that beauty. And so this persuades Vladimir that he should go with Orthodox Christianity, the Christianity of Constantinople. Now, that story is obviously... Completely true. Not true.

Oh, Tom, don't say that. Because those are the most famous foundational lines. I know. At the centre of kind of Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian... But there are two obvious reasons why they're not true. Go on. The first is that they're very familiar with Constantinople. Yeah, because they've been...

They don't need to send emissaries out to report back on what Hagia Sophia is like. They've been there. They know that. And the other is that this is very geopolitically determined of course they're choosing a super bow right they're choosing a super power yeah but tom i'm gutted that you missed out um that they also went to visit the bulgars on the vulgar and you know what they said when they came back from the vulgar when we journeyed among the

bulgars we beheld how they worship in their temple called a mosque while they stand on girt the bulgar bow sits down looks hither and thither like one possessed and there is no happiness among them but instead only only sorrow and a dreadful stench that's not you wouldn't choose that religion would you no you wouldn't you wouldn't go for that one not the stench um so uh apologies to any uh well bulgarians and bulgarians um but you get you get you know i mean that great incense in i guess fear no stench there very beautiful so he's obviously choosing it as power politics isn't he um well and the byzantines are as well because they offer vladimir something that no barbarian leader has

ever been offered before by Byzantine emperor. And that is marriage into the imperial family in the form of the emperor's Basil II's sister, Anna. Yeah, she's not happy, is she? She's not happy at all. She apparently is very cross about it. And there's some sort of breakdown in negotiations because he has to actually attack the Crimea. Well, that's where it all happens, isn't it? Yeah.

I mean, so the Crimea, which is obviously very, you know, it's in the crosshairs of current politics. The Crimea matters to both Ukrainians and Russians today because it's where Vladimir is bapt baptized and then marries Anna. Yeah. And he has a weird thing where he has at the baptism, he has all the old idols cast down and he ties, there's an idol of somebody called Peron who was made of wood

and had a golden moustache. And he's tied to a horse's tail and dragged down a hill. And then Philodemir gets 12 men to beat him with cudgels as a sort of sign, you know, I'm rejecting the old gods and embracing a new one. But it's also, I mean, obviously it's a two-way process, isn't it? Because as you said, the Varangian guard, it's not Philodemir said the the varangian guard it's it's not vladimir who sends the varangian the big the big contingent that become the varangian guard to constantinople because because that's part of the treaty with uh with basil yeah yeah basil

what you would assume wouldn't you that they must have had varangian mercenaries in their army before they had the official guard. Harold Hardrada ends up being the commander. So Harold Hardrada is, I mean, in a way, he's the kind of the end of the story, the end point of the story, isn't he? He is. We'll take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk Harold Hardrada and really the end of the Viking Age. Okay. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

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That's therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are reaching the end of the Viking Age, which we've told entirely through a focus on the Vikings in the East. And the last and most famous Viking character, I think, certainly in England, to have been Eastward bound is Harold Hardrada, who we know as the man who lost the Battle of Stamford Bridge, but had the most extraordinary life and career before that, didn't he, Tom?

He really did. And we've been focusing on the first part of this episode on the princes part of this episode on the uh the princes of kiev um this kind of emergent russ state but all along up in scandinavia you've still got kind of viking adventurers who are treating these eastern lands as places that you can kind of retreat to if you need to yeah also places to make money basically and bring back tons of silver so harold um harold sigurdsson he's the the brother of of um olaf sigurdsson olaf the stout who will become uh saint olaf the patron saint of norway um and he he's he's briefly been king he messes up he gets killed uh and supposedly martyred the battle called stickler stad um which harold is at because harold is a teenager i think at that battle his knee is about 15 or so

yeah and he has to go into exile and and that his and he goes to novgorod and this is tom actually for those people who are who have found this all a bit sci-fi because it's lots of weird names and stuff um their big antagonist is Knute famous for wave to attempting or not attempting to turn back waves again something that didn't happen um end of the show an early faller in the rest is history world cup of kings kings but I think a very impressive king I mean a very formidable king indeed so king of a North Sea empire um he's basically taken over England after the end of Ethelred the Unready. He's married to Emma from Normandy.

So it all connects. Everything connects. So he's the great antagonist that basically, the young Harold Hardrider is terrified of Canute. He flees and he ends up- It is. I mean, it is a Western, isn't it? Yeah.

Or a mafia story or a science fiction story. I mean, you can see how the patterns of these stories, why it's such a kind of great setting for an epic. It is. Absolutely. He's been run out of town by the local cattle rustler. Yeah. But as a boy, as a teenager, got you know such a stuff of a kind of

children's story he goes off down the river like so many people have for what what is it now 250 years yeah and he ends up in kiev where the successor to vladimir i think it is um yaroslav the wise also known as the lame is now um he can well, he could be wise and lame, couldn't he? Yeah, well, he's lame to begin with, and then he's so wise that he gets promoted. Right, that's good. So he's upwardly mobile. Yeah. He'd beaten off his brother.

He's upwardly mobile, but not kind of mobile. They've had kind of an amazing war with his brother, fratricidal war, where they're fighting across ice-covered rivers and amazing. Yeah. The first great Northern War. That's very good. But Harold Hardrada wasn't in that war, was he? No.

So by this point, Yaroslav is the kind of the wise king. And Hardrada, who's not yet Hardrada, he's just Harold Sigurdsson. The young Harold. So he pitches up and he becomes basically an enforcer for Yaroslav, doesn't he? He serves in his guard or whatever. Why does he end up going further down towards Constantinople, Tom? Well, I think he is looking to get back to Norway. That's the ultimate aim.

And, you know,iev's all very well but the place where you're really going to make money is constantinople so he's going down there with the aim of in his cash in his cash because when he so he goes down there he he makes a tremendous success of it uh and the the right you know the epic story still isn't an epic telling his adventures uh he fights with dragons he marries princesses he goes to the holy land he conquers sicily he is but he genuinely does some of these things doesn't he really does go to yeah he goes to he goes to sicily with the byzantine i'm something here that says he's a marine. He's a marine in the Byzantine fleet with a man called Georgios Maniarches. Do you know him? Is he a eunuch?

No, he's the brother of a eunuch, isn't he, or something like that? Of course. I knew everybody was the brother of a eunuch. And Harold plays a great trick on Maniarches when they're in Sicily. Do you know about this trick? Remind me. It's an excellent trick. So they're discussing about who's going to get the best campsite for them

and their part of the army. And they decide to draw lots. And Maniarchies marks his lot with a sort of a mark on it, his thing, whatever they're using. And Harold says, well, can I have a look at your lot so that I can mark mine in a different way? And Maniaki says, oh, yeah, yeah, of course. So they then put the both in a bag, and another man takes the lot out,

and Harold takes it, and he throws it in the sea and he says that was my lot i've won you know i get the best place for my for the for the that was good fooling i haven't finished the story he says that was and maniaka says how do i know that was yours i mean there's no way i can know that was yours and how it says we'll have a look in the bag. And Maniakis looks in the bag and he takes out the lot and it's got his mark on it. He says, oh, it must've been yours.

But of course, Harold made the same mark on his lot as on Maniakis'. The lesson of that story is that Maniakis is an absolute idiot. I think it's a lesson that Harold's an absolute japester. Right. Great one for the prank. Anyway, I mean,

you're portraying him as a sort of les dawson figure but actually it's dawson and he's a prankster isn't he i mean i don't know he's a joker no he's a great barrel yeah he's not a mother-in-law joke man no no he slapped you on the back but he so your your teeth go flying out he then gets drawn into he goes back to he goes all these campaigns goes to the holy land he goes to to, he does all these campaigns, goes to the Holy Land, he goes to Bulgaria, all sorts of campaigns. He's very, very highly rated by the Byzantines. They make him a spatharo candidatus. I'm very glad I read that out correctly.

He's a spatharo candidatus, which is a very high rank for a foreigner. And he's been given a pay rise and he's the commander of the palace guard and all this that and the other and then he gets drawn into the the power politics are you familiar with all these michaels it's very yes i mean it's almost impossible not to get drawn into it isn't it when you reach a certain level yeah well this is the thing so michael iv is the emperor i think well he's married to the Emperor Zoe, and they have all kinds of feuding. And at some point, basically, Harold is told by Zoe, get the guy who's been kicked out as emperor and gouge his eyes out, please. And he does.

He personally can't trust his men to do it. So he gouges them out. I mean, the sense you get of Harold is that he's very much the kind of guy who, you know, guy needs to have his eyes gouged out. He's going to do it. Yeah, he's hands on. And when an emperor dies, the tradition is that the Varangians get to strip the imperial palace of all his gold. So Harold does that. And Harold actually is there for so long long he gets to do that three times so he's by the time he heads back he's so rich he's incredibly rich the empress zoe who's in

her 60s quite fancies marrying him yeah but she has a bad habit of murdering her husbands and gouging their eyes out yeah so harold is not keen on that and and at some point he's locked up in a um a dungeon with a dragon i I think. Yeah, he escapes. He escapes from Constantinople. I mean, as with so much of this. You know, how much of this is true? A little bit, I think, with him, because we've got Byzantine sources. The stuff in the sagas, obviously, clearly quite, you know,

the same people who worked on the sagas worked on the TV series Vikings, basically. I mean, the two things that are clearly true is that he comes back from Constantinople with a formidable fighting record. Yeah. You know, he is the hard rider, the hard ruler. And also that he's unbelievably rich. Yeah. I'm conscious that we've told his story in a quite shambolic way. Yeah, we have.

But I think he's not the subject of this podcast he's just but he's the last he's the last so we can be forgiven for that so we can talk we you know he he's he's got this money basically so that he can then get together a large army uh and go and get back the throne of norway which is what he does which is basically in the long run there's a lot of carry on with his brother is it magnus his half-brother they split the kingdom and magnus dies and harold becomes a very very fierce and ruthless king of norway hence the name hard rider hard ruler i mean the only thing about that is you know is that a career peak because would you rather be the captain of the guard in constantinople or the king of norway i'd rather be king of norway would you

yeah because in constantinople you're surrounded by predatory empresses and eunuchs eunuchs and yeah but i think in constant the weather is better the food's a hell of a lot better there's more money everything is nicer no but you're but you're not the whole thing is to have your own your own land yeah I suppose it is you're right but if you have you have a you have a slave's attitude to life whereas if you're you know

who are you French Rollerquizing there Harold Hardrada okay I have the spirit of a Viking right I think Harold

you have the spirit of a eunuch thanks I'll remember that I think Harold Hardrada I think the spirit of a Viking. Right. I think Harold, you should. You have the spirit of a eunuch. Thanks. I'll remember that. I think Harold Hardrada. I think the truth hurts. I think Harold Hardrada. Absolutely, you've betrayed yourself.

Well, let's see what happens to Harold Hardrada, Tom. Well, he dies. But, you know, hero's death. So that's the perfect thing, isn't it? That Harold Hardrada dies 1066, the year that basically, you know, traditionally it's, it's the kind of the quietest of the Viking age. And he is,

is a perfect figure to, to, to bring it to an end because he's a guy who dies in England, like so many Viking adventurers before him, but he's made his name. He's made his money in the East. Yeah. And also because his career kind of sums up all the he's he in some ways he's quite

a sort of out of time figure isn't he i mean he's these places are becoming kingdoms yeah you know they are becoming more settled uh slightly more ordered i suppose they are christian now rather than pagan and of course with 1066 the anglo-saxon nobility go off and replace the Scandinavians as the Varangians. They do. So actually the irony is that actually people who could have conceivably fought on opposite sides at the Battle of Stamford Bridge could well end up serving five years later in the same army for the Emperor constantinople i mean i think that's the part of the fascination of this whole subject of the vikings in the east is that sense of um oh vikings and romans you know yeah people out of time running up with one another or vikings you know in uh in the caspian sea um it does have that kind of slight element of fantasy about it well that's why for example

michael crichtonon wrote a book called The Death Eaters or something like that. I can't remember. The Eaters of Light or something like that. With Ibn Fadlan as the character. And that was later adapted for the cinema as The Thirteenth Warrior, I think. And Rosemary Sutcliffe has written about it.

And Henry Treese. Henry Treese, yeah, the writer of Mikl-Lagarde. It's a permanent... It's exactly as you say, it's got a slight science fiction quality to it in that it's Arabs, Romans, Vikings, all kind of... All mixed up. All mixed up, exactly. And I think that's one way, even now,

when we mention to people we could do this as a subject, you can see that people are kind of excited about it because it's the ultimate exotic adventure story, I think. Yeah. And as we said right at the beginning of the first episode, which seems a very long time ago, it's also very, very politically sensitive. And yet, I mean, Tom, obviously there is no answer to that Russian-Ukrainian question with this. I mean, it obviously forms, it's the foundational moment of both countries' history books. There are statues of these characters in Ukraine and in Russia, understandably. There's a statue of Vladimir in London.

Is there? Yeah. Why? Just down from Notting Hill. Is it outside a church or something? It must be something to do with that, yeah. I mean, you can completely understand why they both lay claim. And obviously I'm not going to

be mad to sort of pick sides in this sort of political debate. We're not a political podcast, but they both clearly do have different histories, Russia and Ukraine, but they come from the same place. I think that's fair to say.

Anyway, right, we're just wittering now. Great stuff. This has been a podcast devoted to people going to the sea, taking to the water, trading, stabbing each other in the back. And our next episode, by coincidence, is going to be on smuggling. Perfect link, Tom.

Well done. So we will see you then. Yeah, we'll see you for Smugglers next time bye-bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening and access to our chat community. Please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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