Authors: Neil Oliver
My favourite was an object that might have appeared, at first glance, as no more than a stick of wood, about a foot long. It was in fact a distaff, the tool used to hold woollen fibres ready for spinning into thread. What made the Staraya Ladoga distaff especially evocative were the finely incised runes etched by hand into a carefully created facet on one side. Onto a smooth surface just two or three inches long and a quarter of an inch high, a Viking woman had expressed some fragment of the outpouring of her poetic heart. The translation of Viking runes is more art than science. Rather than just a case of sitting down
with a dictionary of runes, it demands a degree of interpretation – even intuition – on the part of those who would make sense of such inscriptions after all this time. Despite our best efforts, their world is not our world and their sense of themselves, and their place in the scheme of things, is quite beyond our reach. A leap of faith, however, gives the following meaning to those particular marks:
Drawn from above, the spindle is spinning. Starry-eyed maiden will have a long and thin thread. Neflaug possessed this distaff.
Artefacts turned up on archaeological digs beg many questions. Who made it . . . owned it . . . lost it . . . and so on. But in the case of the distaff from Staraya Ladoga we are actually granted the owner’s name – Neflaug. But knowing who owned and used it only makes it more tantalising. Whatever Neflaug meant, whatever the truth of her runes, it is the discovery of a real person’s real thoughts – made permanent a thousand and more years ago – that makes the object irreplaceable.
Neflaug would have had many chances throughout her day to watch travellers moving up and down the Volkhov River that passed by her home. In winter when the water froze, many feet thick, it would have been people on skis or sledges. They would have used the icebound river as a convenient roadway to transport slaves, furs, amber and oils into the south and east, and silks and silver into the north and west. For the rest of the year it would have been navigable by boats.
The craft that plied up and down Russia’s rivers, however, were different from those used by Vikings for journeys across the open sea. No doubt the traders set out from their homes in Sweden and elsewhere aboard dragon ships and merchant vessels designed to cope with big waves and the rest of the
dangers likely to be encountered out of sight of land. But travel up rivers was a different matter and required specialised craft. For one thing they had to have a shallow draught to cope with stretches of river that might only be a couple of feet deep. For another they had to be small and light enough to be lifted out of the water for manoeuvring around obstacles like impassable rapids and sand bars. Furthermore, once the Vikings had set their sights on destinations east as far as the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Caspian Sea and even beyond – to Baghdad and the source of the silver dirhams – then they had to be able to switch between rivers. None went as far south or east, in one continuous stretch, as the Vikings wanted to go. So their vessels had to be suitable for the technique called portage, whereby a boat is lifted out of the water and either carried or rolled on logs overland until it can be put into the next waterway. Using this technique the Swedes would have been able to transfer their boats to the Dnieper, a river leading directly to the Black Sea itself. Although the journey was possible, it was a challenge to boatmanship, since the sailors would have had to navigate a way through dangerous rapids en route. An alternative route to the same destination was provided by portage between the Vistula and Dnestr rivers.
It was close by Staraya Ladoga that I had arranged to meet a group of Viking re-enactors – those who dress and behave (at least within reason) like their historical heroes. So it was that I found myself joining a seven-man crew and helping them to manhandle their boat – based, they assured me, upon traditional Viking lines – between a row of burial mounds high above the Volkhov. We made a strange-looking team, I in modern clothes, the rest of them in faithfully recreated Viking garb of leather tunics, fur and woollen trousers. Among their number were a maker of wooden furniture (who had helped craft the boat), a geology student, a factory manager and an accountant. All but
one of them lived in St Petersburg, some two hours’ drive south, but they were unanimous in their reasons for spending as much of their spare time as possible in the wilds of Russia, dressing and acting like their ancestors. A few had recently taken part in a river journey of 2,000 miles. ‘There are not so many chances to behave like . . . men,’ said one of them, during one of numerous breaks for cigarettes. ‘We like drinking, we like women and we like . . . fighting!’
They all laughed, but I could tell they meant what they said, that they envied the freedoms and uncertain destinies of the men they claimed as their forefathers. Who among us is free now – free like the first Vikings were? We have democracy and the rule of law, we live behind walls raised by governments and manned by troops to keep us safe from enemies known and unknown. But most of us are in thrall nonetheless – to mortgages and bills and the jobs to feed them . . . to the taxman and the petty tyrannies of PAYE, CCTV and the sulky diktats of local authority. Not for us the magnetic draw of uncharted territory or the promise of wealth and glory beyond the horizon. Most of us are slaves by any other name, and we have forged our own shackles.
As it turned out, the presence of ice floes on the river, drifting downstream, meant it had been judged too dangerous to put their boat into the water. I was as relieved as they were. They even went so far as to pour beer into a drinking horn and then toast the river for carrying ice that day and so sparing them the risk of a freezing dunking. I wondered briefly if real Vikings would have been so easily turned back. Even just the task of moving their 30-foot-long boat was an education in itself. Rough-hewn logs were used as rollers, laboriously lifted up one by one as they appeared from beneath the stern and then carried around to be placed in front of the bow. At all times the boat seemed heavy enough to cause real injury. Progress was
slow, no more than a few feet at a time. All at once the Black Sea felt like a very long way away indeed.
The Swedish Vikings who helped settle Staraya Ladoga were also the people referred to by others – Arabic writers like Ibn Fadlan in particular – as the Rusiyyah, or more commonly, the
Rus.
The tenth-century Persian writer Ahmad Ibn Rustah wrote of a ‘city’ of the Rus he visited within the territory of the Slavs: ‘The Rusiyya [sic] live on an island surrounded by a lake. The island which they inhabit extends for three days’ march through forests and marshes . . . when a man places his foot on the ground, the ground wobbles because it is so damp.’ Ibn Rustah also recorded how the Rusiyyah were in the habit of rounding up the local Slavs and carrying them off to use and sell as slaves. On the subject of their general livelihood he added:
They have no arable lands, but merely eat what they bring back from the land of the [Slavs]. When a son is born to one of them, he presents the child with an unsheathed sword and casts it before him saying, ‘I shall not leave you property to inherit. You have nothing but what you can acquire for yourself with this sword of yours.’ They have no estates, villages or arable lands; their sole occupation is trading in martens, squirrels and other furs. They sell them to their purchasers and take for the price coins which they tie up in their belts.
In stark contrast to Ibn Fadlan, who encountered his Rusiyyah among the Bulghars of the Volga and found them to have disgusting personal habits, the Persian offered a quite different view:
Their clothes are clean, and their menfolk wear gold bracelets. They are considerate to their slaves, and are fastidious in
their clothing because they are engaged in trade . . . They are generous to themselves and honour their guests, considerate to those strangers who seek refuge with them: they do not permit any of their number to oppress or maltreat those who visit them regularly; they assist and defend those who come to them because of some insult or wrong.
The Rus, the Swedish Vikings, were hardly the only people moving across the landscape of eastern Europe at that time. Writers like Ibn Fadlan and Ibn Rustah must have had all manner of tribes to consider when it came to making their surveys of the populations likely to be encountered. Clearly the ways of the Rus – with their physiques like palm trees, their sometimes questionable approach to personal grooming – were notable enough to catch the eyes of those taking the trouble to record the many comings and goings. But in keeping with the savage reputation of Vikings elsewhere, there is often an undercurrent of horror.
Ibn Fadlan’s account of a funeral ceremony for a great leader of the Rus is worth repeating in full, because the traditions he so carefully describes would have worked themselves deeply into the memories of any who witnessed them.
When their chieftain dies, his family asks his slave-girls and slave-boys, ‘Who among you will die with him?’ and some of them reply, ‘I shall.’ Having said this, it becomes incumbent upon the person and it is impossible ever to turn back. Should that person try to, he is not permitted to do so. It is usually slave-girls who make this offer.
When that man whom I mentioned earlier died, they said to his slave-girls, ‘Who will die with him?’ and one of them said, ‘I shall.’ So they placed two slave-girls in charge of her to take care of her and accompany her wherever she went, even
to the point of occasionally washing her feet with their own hands. They set about attending to the dead man, preparing his clothes for him and setting right all he needed. Every day the slave-girl would drink alcohol and would sing merrily and cheerfully.
On the day when he and the slave-girl were to be burnt I arrived at the river where his ship was. To my surprise I discovered that it had been beached and that four planks of birch and other types of wood had been erected for it. Around them wood had been placed in such a way as to resemble scaffolding. Then the ship was hauled and placed on top of this wood. They advanced, going to and fro around the boat uttering words that I did not understand, while he was still in his grave and had not been exhumed.
Then they produced a couch and placed it on the ship, covering it with quilts made of Byzantine silk brocade and cushions made of Byzantine silk brocade. Then a crone arrived whom they called the ‘Angel of Death’ and she spread on the couch the coverings we have mentioned. She is responsible for having his garments sewn up and putting him in order and it is she who kills the slave-girls. I myself saw her: a gloomy, corpulent woman, neither young nor old.
When they came to his grave, they removed the soil from the wood and then removed the wood, exhuming him still dressed in the izar in which he had died. I could see that he had turned black because of the coldness of the ground. They had also placed alcohol, fruit and a pandora beside him in the grave, all of which they took out. Surprisingly, he had not begun to stink and only his colour had deteriorated. They clothed him in trousers, leggings, boots, a qurtaq, and a silk caftan with golden buttons, and placed a silk fringed with sable on his head. They carried him inside the pavilion
on the ship and laid him to rest on the quilt, propping him with cushions. Then they brought alcohol, fruit and herbs and placed them beside him. Next they brought bread, meat and onions, which they cast in front of him, a dog, which they cut in two and which they threw onto the ship, and all of his weaponry, which they placed beside him. They then brought two mounts, made them gallop until they began to sweat, cut them up into pieces and threw the flesh onto the ship. They next fetched two cows, which they also cut up into pieces and threw on board, and a cock and a hen, which they slaughtered and cast onto it.
Meanwhile, the slave-girl who wished to be killed was coming and going, entering one pavilion after another. The owner of the pavilion would have intercourse with her and say to her, ‘Tell your master that I have done this purely out of love for you.’
At the time of the evening prayer on Friday they brought the slave-girl to a thing that they had constructed, like a door-frame. She placed her feet on the hands of the men and was raised above that door-frame. She said something and they brought her down. Then they lifted her up a second time and she did what she had done the first time. They brought her down and then lifted her up a third time and she did what she had done on the first two occasions. They next handed her a hen. She cut off its head and threw it away. They took the hen and threw it on board the ship.
I quizzed the interpreter about her actions and he said, ‘The first time they lifted her, she said, “Behold, I see my father and my mother.” The second time she said, “Behold, I see all of my dead kindred, seated.” The third time she said, “Behold, I see my master, seated in Paradise. Paradise is beautiful and verdant. He is accompanied by his men and his male-slaves. He summons me, so bring me to him.”’ So
they brought her to the ship and she removed two bracelets that she was wearing, handing them to the woman called the ‘Angel of Death’, the one who was to kill her. She also removed two anklets that she was wearing, handing them to the two slave-girls who had waited upon her: they were the daughters of the crone known as the Angel of Death’. Then they lifted her onto the ship but did not bring her into the pavilion. The men came with their shields and sticks and handed her a cup of alcohol over which she chanted and then drank. The interpreter said to me, ‘Thereby she bids her female companions farewell.’ She was handed another cup, which she took and chanted for a long time, while the crone urged her to drink it and to enter the pavilion in which her master lay. I saw that she was befuddled and wanted to enter the pavilion but she had only put her head into the pavilion while her body remained outside it. The crone grabbed hold of her head and dragged her into the pavilion, entering it at the same time. The men began to bang their shields with the sticks so that her screams could not be heard and so terrify the other slave-girls, who would not, then, seek to die with their masters.