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The Far North in the Eyes of Adam of Bremen and the Anonymous Author of the Historia Norwegie
- Edited by Carol Symes
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- The Global North
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 January 2022
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- 31 December 2021, pp 77-90
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IN THE TWELFTH to fourteenth centuries, a genre of specialized geographical literature began to emerge in Scandinavia: a series of descriptions of the inhabited world, or its parts, based on a continental European chorographic tradition—pri-marily the Etymologiae by Isidorus of Seville and Honorius of Autun's encyclopaedia Imago mundi—but also on local knowledge of the topography of northern and eastern Europe. Alongside these Old Norse writings, geographical descriptions also occur in Old Norse chronicles and sagas. Studying the geographical descriptions in twelfth-cen-tury Scandinavian Latin texts, Lars Boje Mortensen concludes that the medieval geo-graphical imagination had been based on older textual predecessors, rather than on personal acquaintance with the territories in question. Indeed, the influence of ancient authors predominated even in the descriptions of lands that had not been familiar to them, as manifested in the structure and presentation of geographical and ethnographic material in these later works. Northern geography was thus subsumed into the learned discourse. At the same time, Mortensen rightly emphasizes that, by the twelfth century, the geography of northern territories was well known in practice, so that the need arose “to explain the region in writing,” mainly in Latin, within the framework of the centuries-old Latin written culture, because the historians who sought to chronicle the northern periphery of Europe aimed at including their region into the common Christian space, and could not do so without the basis of written geography.
The twelfth-century northern scholars who were the first to write in Latin were the anonymous author of the Historia Norwegie (History of Norway); a Norwegian known as Theodoricus the Monk, author of the Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium (The Ancient History of the Norwegian Kings); a Dane, Saxo Grammaticus, the author of the Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes); Ælnoth, an Anglo-Saxon monk who, as a Danish transplant, authored the Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius (Deeds of Sweyn the Great and His Sons); and the Norwegian author of the introduction to Passio Olaui (Passion of Saint Olaf, that is, Olaf II Haraldson, king of Norway from 1015 to 1028). All of them faced the task of creating a textual map of the northern regions, and all had to rely on ancient texts even though ancient authors either did not know anything about the North, or were not at all interested in it.
Chapter 3 - Austmarr, “the Eastern Sea,” the Baltic Sea
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 33-42
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THIS CHAPTER IS dedicated to the sea separating the northern and eastern parts of the world, that is, the Baltic Sea, which bore the name of “the Eastern Sea” in Old Norse literature. Travel in various forms and to increasingly remote and challenging destinations is taken for granted in contemporary society. In the Middle Ages it too was an indispensable (sine qua non) condition of life. Travel was a substantial part of medieval life. It is undoubtedly true that a great many people may have been born, lived, and died in the same place. However, there were groups of people who did travel, and given the conditions of the time, they travelled most adventurously and sometimes very far. Traders, warriors, fortune hunters, missionaries, messengers, and many others moved from one place to another trading, harrying, carrying out their missions of different kinds. These people served as vital links, connecting distant corners of the world and spreading both fables and news.
Baltic traffic in the Viking age and the Early Middle Ages was at the core of life within one of the European subcontinents— namely within the vast territories of northern and northeastern Europe around the Baltic Sea. The peoples who lived there belonged to different families of languages: they were of Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, and Finno-Ugric origin, but there had always been manifold economic, social, political, and cultural connections among them, and the Baltic Sea played the role of means of communication. In the eighth and the ninth centuries people living in this subcontinent witnessed the period of formation of a network of international routes that connected typologically similar trade centres. The exchange of goods, the so-called “Baltic trade,” increased on the basis of common currencies— this currency first being glass beads, then Arab silver, and later German and English silver coinage. Proto-urban centres of the Baltic Sea region (such as Kaupang, Birka, Hedeby, Ladoga, and others) developed the “Baltic urban culture” which was quite uniform. This “community” of towns, peoples, and countries of the Baltic region in the eighth through the eleventh centuries is referred to in Russian research literature as the “Baltic subcontinental civilization” (Lebedev 1985).
Frontmatter
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp i-iv
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Chapter 6 - Garðar/ Garðaríki as a Designation of Old Rus’
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 65-70
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IN THE STUDY of Old Norse names for Old Rus’ two toponyms, Garðar and Garðaríki— that were considered to have been interchangeable variants of one sole name— have rarely been distinguished. The majority of scholars, however, studied only the place-name Garðaríki, which is younger than Garðar and is more widespread in the Old Norse texts.
The interpretations of Garðaríki vary. Thus, the compilers of the Icelandic– English dictionary (first published in 1874), Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, believed that the name had been “derived from the castles or strongholds (gardar) which the Scandinavians erected among the Slavonic people” and that the word told “the same tale as the Roman ‘castle’ in England” (Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson 1957, 192). Vasiliy Tatishchev, the author of the first major work on Russian history (eighteenth century), understood Garðaríki as “the Great Town” (Tatishchev 1962, 283); however, in Russian historiography the translation “the Country of Towns” became traditional (Pogodin 1914, 31; Klyuchevskiy 1923, 157; Tikhomirov 1956, 9; Grekov 1959, 305). The position of Russian historians was formed, probably, not without some influence from Vilhelm Thomsen, who supposed that in those cases when the place-names were connected with Eastern Europe the Old Icelandic garðr came to mean exactly what the Old Russian городъ “town” meant (Thomsen 1879, 83). Elena Rydzevskaya, in a special paper dedicated to the analysis of this toponym, arrived at a conclusion that “Garðaríki was in fact ‘the Country of towns,’ as the Russian historians translated the term, but the word garðr in its structure did not have its usual Old Norse meaning, but was a kind of popular etymology, an attempt to adjust a foreign word to a similar word of one's own language” (Rydzevskaya 1978, 151). Undertaking the analysis of all East European place-names with the root garð-, Elena Melnikova concluded that “in the eleventh through the twelfth centuries, the toponym Garðar, that has completely lost its relation with the original semantics of the word garðr, is being transformed, according to the X-ríki pattern that serves for the designation of a state formation, into Garðaríki” (Melnikova 1977a, 206– 7).
Chapter 14 - Haraldr Sigurðarson
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 155-170
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ACCORDING TO THE sagas, Haraldr Sigurðarson, the future Norwegian king Haraldr inn harðráði (the Harsh Ruler), appeared in Garðaríki twice, with an interval of about ten years. The saga about him has been preserved in several redactions. Some chapters are dedicated to Haraldr in Ágrip af Noregskonunga sǫgum. In Morkinskinna we find Magnúss saga góða ok Haralds harðráða (see above, p. 145n2). Many chapters of Fagrskinna tell about Haraldr Sigurðarson. In Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar is a separate saga. Sagas of Haraldr are largely based on oral tradition. Among the informants one finds Halldórr Snorrason, the king's friend and bodyguard, who was with him all the time he was abroad, and who later told the saga of Haraldr at the Þing assemblies in Iceland; Þorgils Snorrason, a priest in Skarð in the west of Iceland (d. 1201); Guðríðr, the daughter of Guthormr, the son of Steigar-Þórir, that very bond who was the first to give Haraldr the king's name in Norway (d. 1095). King Haraldr himself was one of the informants in Morkinskinna: there are four references to him as a source of information. One might be sure that the saga of his travels beyond the seas was brought by the king himself, if not to Iceland, but to the Scandinavian north. The traditions about Haraldr seems to have blossomed more richly than about other rulers, and we may suspect that Haraldr had had a hand in this. He could have been the main patron of his own legend and could have supplied the narrative with information. There was a rich tradition concerning this Norwegian king in Iceland, and he was very popular among the Icelandic skalds. At least four of his skalds, Bǫlverkr Arnórsson, Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Stúfr inn blindi, and Valgarðr á Velli confirm the fact that Haraldr had been to Garðar.
Haraldr's mother Ásta Guðbrandsdóttir was married first to Haraldr inn grenski (the Greenlander), and then to Sigurðr sýr (Pig). Her sons from these two marriages, the famous Norwegian kings Óláfr Haraldsson (1014– 1028) and Haraldr Sigurðarson (1046– 1066), were uterine brothers, but they were related on the paternal line as well, since they were both great-grandsons of the founder of the dynasty of Norwegian kings, Haraldr the Fine-Haired, and were thus third cousins of one another.
Chapter 11 - Óláfr Tryggvason
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 117-130
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ACCORDING TO ICELANDIC sagas, the future Norwegian king Óláfr Tryggvason, the great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty of Norwegian kings, Haraldr inn hárfagri (the Fine-Haired), spent several years at the court of King Valdamarr (Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich) in Garðaríki (Old Rus’), or, to be more exact, in Hólmgarðr (Novgorod). Óláfr Tryggvason played an exceptional role in Norwegian history and is very popular in medieval literature, though the early historical tradition about him is scanty. Only contemporary English annals (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and Old Norse-Icelandic skaldic poetry describe some of his military exploits and allude to his Christianity. However, after Óláfr's death his exploits were included in works by the founding fathers of Scandinavian history: Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (ca. 1070) and Ari Þorgilsson's Íslendingabók (1122– 1132). In the late twelfth century an anonymous author wrote of him in the Historia Norwegie, as did Theodoricus monachus in his Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium. Ágrip af Noregskonunga sǫgum (ca. 1190) touched briefly upon his life. Two sagas were composed about him in Latin in the late twelfth century at the Benedictine Þingeyrar monastery in northern Iceland: by Oddr Snorrason, surviving only in early thirteenth-century Old Icelandic translation, and by Gunnlaugr Leifsson, surviving only in translation as interpolations into another saga. The great compendia of the Norwegian kings from the first half of the thirteenth century— namely, Fagrskinna and Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla— devote much space and attention to him. The encyclopaedic collection, called by scholars Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, was probably compiled around 1300 by an Icelander Bergr Sokkason, an abbot in Munkaþverá. Óláfr figures also in the Icelandic family sagas, those of them which refer to the conversion of Iceland in the year 999 or 1000.
Óláfr is mentioned in the Icelandic annals. The date of his birth is given as 968 or 969; his captivity in Eistland is dated to 971; he arrived at Garðaríki in 977 or 978 and departed in 986 or 987; his baptism on the Scilly islands is told to have happened in 993; the beginning of his reign in Norway is related to 995; and his last battle and death are dated to 999 or 1000 (IA 1888, 104– 5).
Chapter 13 - Magnús Óláfsson
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 145-154
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IN THE AUTUMN of 1029, a five-year-old boy, the future Norwegian (1035– 1047) and Danish (1042– 1047) king Magnús inn goði (the Good), was brought by his father Óláfr Haraldsson to Rus’, where he spent at least five years. Magnús was born in the spring of 1024. His mother was Álfhildr, the king's concubine, a beautiful woman of a noble family. She gave birth to a baby boy one night, and none of his men dared to wake up King Óláfr. The baby was so weak that they decided to baptize him immediately, and the name was given to him by the skald Sigvatr: he “hét hann eptir Karla-Magnúsi konungi” (“called him after King Karla-Magnús”), that is, in honour of the Emperor Charlemagne (Latin Carolus Magnus), since he thought “that he was the best man in the world”: “Þann vissa ek mann beztan í heimi,” says the skald (Hkr 1945, 209– 11; Hkr 2014, 139– 40). The saga of king Magnús the Good has been preserved in several interdependent redactions. Separate chapters are dedicated to Magnús in Ágrip af Noregskonunga sǫgum. In Morkinskinna there is Magnúss saga góða ok Haralds harðráða. Many chapters of Fagrskinna tell about Magnús the Good. In Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla Magnúss saga ins góða is a separate saga. The story of Magnús is also recounted in the Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium by Theodoricus monachus, in the Legendary Saga of St. Óláfr, in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, and in Orkneyinga saga.
We shall begin with a story of Magnús coming to Rus’. We shall consider in detail not the traditional version, according to which Óláfr Haraldsson took his young son with him to Rus’, and then left him at the court of Yaroslav the Wise and his wife Ingigerðr, but the version in Morkinskinna, according to which Yaroslav invites him to be brought up with him at the insistence of Ingigerðr. We shall also consider the embassy of the most noble Norwegians to Rus’ in order to take young Magnús back to Norway and bring him to power, as also described in Morkinskinna. We shall analyze those few data that are available in the sagas about the life of Magnús in Rus’. Finally, we shall discuss Magnús's return to his homeland and the date of this event.
Chapter 5 - East European Rivers
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 53-64
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THE EAST EUROPEAN river system was an ideal road for international long-distance trade and, beyond any doubt, it was well known to the Scandinavian Vikings not only as a concept, but in great detail. Scandinavian sources name eight East European rivers: the Northern Dvina (Vína), the Western Dvina (Dýna, Seimgol-Dýna), the Dnieper (Nepr, Danpr), the Neva (Nyia), the Don (Tanais, Dún), the Volga (Olkoga, Olga/ Alkoga), the Kama (Kuma), and a river not far from Polotsk named Dröfn. These names occur from time to time in the sagas, but in aggregate they are known to us from two lists: from the anonymous þula known under the title Á heiti (“River names”) and the geographical treatise enumerating great rivers (in AM 544 4o and AM 194 8o). Only the Northern Dvina obviously belongs to the early layer of the ethno-geographical nomenclature (see above, p. 25), as it is mentioned already in skaldic poetry.
The Northern Dvina
The river Vína is known from a large number of sources: skaldic verses, sagas of various sub-genres, geographical treatises. The majority of scholars are prone to think that Vína was nothing but a designation of the Northern Dvina, the most serious argument in support of this view still being the existence of consonant names of this river in the Old Icelandic (Vína), Finnish (Viena), and Russian (Двина) languages. Out of the numerous interpretations of the hydronym (Northern) Dvina the most acceptable seems to be the one— not taken into account by Max Vasmer in his Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, but added to the dictionary entry in the Russian translation by O. N. Trubachev— that explains this name as related to the Russian word 𝝏ва “two” (Vasmer 1986, 1:488). Likewise, in Sigismund von Herberstein's Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (“Notes on Muscovite Affairs,” 1549): “The province and the river Dvina took their name from the confluence of the rivers Yug and Sukhona, for Dvina signifies two or double in Russian” (Herberstein 1988, 155).
Part 1 - Eastern Europe in the Old Norse Weltbild
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 19-20
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Oh, East is East and West is West,
and never the twain shall meet.
(Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West)Þan tima var vegr oystra
um Ryzaland ok Grikland fara til Ierusalem
[At that time the route eastwards
was to cross through Rus’
and Byzantine empire to Jerusalem]
(Guta saga)Physical space, in the process of land development, turned into geographical space (reflected on mental maps, in périples, itineraries, etc.), while the latter was then “conceptually transformed” into a set of categories and turned into social space, i.e., space that had been named, which was comprehensible to a certain group of people (a socium) and which was common to the representatives of one and the same culture. Space took on meanings that could be “understood by reference to particular social categories, rather than by reference to purely physical [and geographical] properties” (Hastrup 1985, 50). The individual perception of space was thus dependent on those social categories that had been the products of, and inherent to, a particular society or culture.
To give an example of different cultures using different “languages” in the “dialogue” between them, we can look at the modern (1951) edition of Heimskringla written by the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson ca. 1230. Speaking about Sigurðr Jórsalafari (the Crusader, 1103– 1130) and his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Snorri tells how he comes to Lisbon (“til Lizibónar”), now in Portugal but then a large city in Spain (“borg mikil á Spáni”), where heathen Spain is separated from Christian Spain (“skilr Spán kristna ok Spán heiðna”). “Eru þau herǫð heiðin ǫll, er vestr liggja þaðan” (Hkr 1951, 242) (“All the districts west of that are heathen”), writes the medieval Icelander, and he has grounds for this statement, since this is how the people of his time envisaged the world (to be discussed in more detail below). Meanwhile, the modern Icelander, the editor of Heimskringla Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, comments on this usage in the following way: “Rétt væri: suðr” (“suðr [south] would be correct”), and he proceeds: “Áin Tajo greindi lengi sundur lönd kristinna manna og Múhameðstrúarmanna” (“For a long time the River Tagus separated the lands of Christians and Muslims”) (Hkr 1951, n1).
Chapter 7 - Hólmgarðr (Novgorod) and Kænugarðr (Kiev)
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 71-84
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OLD NORSE SOURCES have preserved the names of twelve towns that were considered by medieval authors, as well as by their modern editors, to have been Old Russian towns. These are Hólmgarðr, Aldeigjuborg, Kænugarðr, Súrdalar, Pallteskia, Smaleskia, Móramar, Rostofa, Sýrnes, Gaðar, Álaborg, and Danparstaðir. The first eight of them are in effect unanimously identified with Novgorod, Ladoga, Kiev, Suzdal’, Polotsk, Smolensk, Murom, and Rostov. Firstly, these are the oldest, and as well the largest, Old Russian towns: seven of them are among the ten towns named by the Russian Primary Chronicle in the entries under the ninth century. Secondly, what is very important about them is that they are connected with the main trade routes of the late first and early second millennium. Polotsk, Smolensk, Suzdal’, Murom, and Rostov belong to the water route of the Western Dvina— the Dnieper— the Oka— the Volga; Ladoga, Novgorod, Smolensk, and Kiev are stopping places on “the route from the Varangians to the Greeks” (the Volkhov— the Lovat’— the Dnieper). This fact helps explain why, on the one hand, Scandinavians were familiar with these towns and, on the other hand, the names of these towns have been preserved in Old Norse literature. Information about Russian towns in the Old Norse sources is diverse, from laconic mentions of their names and stereotypical ideas to concrete details verified by other sources, and sometimes really unique material. In this chapter we shall deal with two of them— Hólmgarðr and Kænugarðr— whose names are formed with the same root (garð- ) as the designation of the whole state, Garðaríki.
Novgorod
The Old Norse place-name Hólmgarðr has traditionally been considered to be the designation of Novgorod. In one of the redactions of Göngu-Hrólfs saga this identity is voiced: “Hólmgarðaborg […] þat er nú kallat Nógarðar” (“Hólmgarðaborg […] which now has the name of Nógarðar”) (Göngu-Hrólfs saga 1830, 362). The earliest occurrence of Hólmgarðr is in a runic inscription on Esta rock (Sö 171), of the first half of the eleventh century, and there are two cases more (G 220; U 687). The skalds are not familiar with the name. Still the name is popular in Old Norse literature, where it occurs more than hundred times, in all other types of sources.
Chapter 8 - Aldeigja/ Aldeigjuborg (Old Ladoga)
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- 30 April 2019, pp 85-92
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THE ALDEIGJUBORG OF the sagas is considered to be a designation of Ladoga (Old Ladoga). The earliest source where this place-name occurs is Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar by Oddr Snorrason (ca. 1190). However, the presence of Aldeigja in Bandadrápa by Eyjólfr dáðaskáld (ca. 1010) points to Aldeigja as the original form of this name. All in all, Aldeigja/ Aldeigjuborg is mentioned about forty times in skaldic poetry and sagas (though it does not occur in runic inscriptions and geographical treatises). The compound Aldeigjuborg was formed with the help of a geographical term borg “town, fortification” that served in constructing town names in Western Europe, but was not typical for the names of Old Rus’ towns. The reason for this lies in the fact that Scandinavians moved along “the route from the Varangians to the Greeks” stage by stage, and Ladoga, located at the initial stage of this route, was, according to archaeological materials, opened up by them about a century earlier than the remaining part of this route. Scandinavians who settled in Ladoga and are likely to have constituted there “a relatively independent political organization” (Lebedev 1975, 41) created— on the local basis (which will be discussed below)— the name Aldeigja, and then changed it into Aldeigjuborg following the toponymic pattern X-borg that was familiar to them.
Ladoga and Aldeigja
Scholars are unanimous in recognizing the genetic relation of the place-names Aldeigja and Ладога (Ladoga); however, their origin and correlation have been interpreted in different ways. Eugene Helimski has labelled all attempts of deriving Aldeigja (together with Ladoga) from a Finno-Ugric source as fruitless and suggested his understanding of the problem: in his opinion, “the name can either directly result from the Old Norse / Old Germanic name giving, or (if we do not want to shift the chronology of Proto-Germanic presence in the Eastern Baltic area back into mid-2nd millennium Bc) be an exact translation of the corresponding name from the same old Indo-European language the speakers of which witnessed the birth of Neva” (Helimski 2008).
Chapter 2 - Austrvegr and Other Aust-Place-Names
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- 30 April 2019, pp 25-32
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PLACE-NAMES WITH THE root aust- had never attracted particular attention, and, from a cursory glance, it was decided that these toponyms had no common meaning in different sources (or groups of sources). They were even considered to have been vague in their meaning, inaccurate, and uncertain (Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson 1957, 35– 36; Sverdlov 1973, 49; Melnikova 1977b, 198– 99). I have tried to show elsewhere that the “inconstancy” of the place-names with the root aust- reflects their real historical development (Jackson 1988). If we turn to all the texts pertaining to the history of Eastern Europe (from runic inscriptions to the late sagas), we shall be able to see the development of the Old Norse place-names with the root aust- in dynamics.
The analysis carried out in my other works (Jackson 1989, 1993) shows that the ethno-geographical nomenclature of the Old Norse sources was formed simultaneously with the Scandinavian infiltration into Eastern Europe. We may even speak of two different ethno-geographical traditions (those of skaldic poetry, runic inscriptions and early sagas, on the one hand, and of geographical treatises, þulur and late sagas, on the other) that reflect a concrete chronological sequence of Scandinavian penetration into Eastern Europe, a progression in which Scandinavians moved along “the route from the Varangians to the Greeks.” Accordingly, the chronology of written fixation of placenames reflects the sequence of their emergence into the language of early Scandinavians.
Place-names with aust-in Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Poetry
The earliest place-name, and also the one that has the widest meaning (= territories to the east of Scandinavia, from the Baltic Sea littoral to Byzantium), is a special geographical term austr “east.” It occurs in this sense in runic inscriptions and in skaldic poems of the tenth and eleventh centuries. There are only few cases when austr is used as a designation of a region within Scandinavia (Melnikova 1977b, 79); on the contrary, about twenty-five runic inscriptions, the earliest of which (Ög 8) is dated to the tenth century— stikuʀ.
Conclusion
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- 30 April 2019, pp 171-172
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THIS BOOK HAS investigated the Old Norse-Icelandic texts as a source for the history of Eastern Europe, and Old Rus’ in particular. These texts comprise skaldic poetry, runic inscriptions, sagas (Íslendinga-, konunga-, byskupa-, fornaldarsögur), chronicles, books of homilies, and lives of saints, geographical treatises, and annals. The book begins with an introduction to the first three (I would say, the main) groups of sources, while all the rest are discussed when necessary. The book continues with fourteen chapters grouped into two parts of completely different character, the first one dealing with the geographical image of Eastern Europe, the second one devoted to investigating a specific, important issue among those issues connected with the history of Old Rus’.
The character of historical information contained in the sources clearly indicates that they reflect the period preceding their recording, in any case not later than the midthirteenth century. Accordingly, the ethno-geographical nomenclature of the works of Old Norse literature is rather archaic. It is most logical to assume that it was formed via the acquaintance of Scandinavians with the territories in Eastern Europe. Although it is hardly possible to establish the exact time of its formation, still we have its upper chronological boundary, a terminus ante quem: this is the year 839 of Annales Bertiniani (Annals of Saint Bertin), under which we have the first evidence of the existence of Slavic– Scandinavian relations. On the basis of our analysis, we can speak of the existence in Scandinavia of two ethno-geographical traditions recorded in skaldic verses, runic inscriptions and early kings’ sagas, on the one hand, and in late kings’ sagas, geographical treatises, skaldic þulur, and sagas of ancient times, on the other, and reflecting a certain spatial and temporal sequence of Scandinavian penetration into Eastern Europe. An important result of the study of Old Norse place-names of Old Rus’ and Eastern Europe in general is the conclusion that in their formation there is a general tendency towards the obligatory reproduction of the phonetic appearance of local geographical names.
Bibliography
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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List of Illustrations
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Book:
- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp vi-vi
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Preface
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp vii-viii
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Summary
In 1968, the Soviet historian Vladimir Pashuto published his Foreign Policy of Old Rus’. This book, based on the broadest— Russian/ Soviet and foreign— historiography of the problem, became a landmark in the Soviet study of the Old Russian state. A year later, Pashuto became the head of a newly organized department at the Institute of History of the USSR concerned, mainly, with the publication of the serial edition “The Oldest Sources for the History of the Peoples of the USSR.” I had the honour and pleasure to be part of this project; my responsibility in it was the “Icelandic kings’ sagas as a source for the history of the European part of the USSR.” From the very beginning, the aim of my work was not only collecting passages containing stories and separate mentions of Old Rus’ scattered over the corpus of sagas, but also developing methods of analysis to test the reliability of sagas as a historical source. Working in this field for decades, along with a large number of articles and monographic studies, I prepared three separate volumes (published in different years) of the kings’ sagas’ data on Eastern Europe, and then, having reworked and expanded the material included, put it in one book (Jackson 2012).
The majority of my publications are in Russian. A kind invitation from Professor Christian F. Raffensperger to prepare a volume for the book series Beyond Medieval Europe gives me an opportunity to bring my scholarship to Anglophone academia. My studies are in two senses “beyond medieval Europe,” as both Old Rus’ (a territory in Eastern Europe that interests me mostly) and Iceland (a place where practically all my sources had originated) are two medieval regions lying beyond medieval Europe in the traditional sense of the term.
My research aims to investigate the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, chronicles, and other texts from the point of view of their validity as a historical source for scholars of the history of Eastern Europe, and Old Rus’ in particular. This is an issue that has not previously been studied comprehensively within the framework of Old Norse studies. Particular questions of East European and Russian history reflected in the sagas have been discussed in scattered scholarly works that will be indispensable to this book.
Chapter 9 - “Hǫfuð garðar” in Hauksbók, and Some Other Old Russian Towns
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Book:
- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 93-106
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IN THIS CHAPTER we shall deal with Pallteskia, Móramar, Rostofa, Súrdalar, and Smaleskia which can be certainly identified as Polotsk, Murom, Rostov, Suzdal’, and Smolensk, as well as with Sýrnes, Gaðar, Álaborg, and Danparstaðir that have various contradictory identifications.
The most complete list of Old Russian towns in Old Norse literature is found in the Icelandic geographical treatise Hversu lǫnd liggja í verǫldinni (Hb 1892– 96, 153– 56) which an Icelander Haukr Erlendsson incorporated into his compilation of Old Icelandic texts, Hauksbók, written in 1302– 1310 (see Sverrir Jakobsson 2007). However, the pages with this text are written not by Haukr himself, but by a Norwegian scribe (Hb 1892– 96, xv). Elena Melnikova suggests that these pages had been written earlier and independently of Hauksbók and dates this treatise to the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fourteenth century (Melnikova 1986, 59– 60), while the list of towns seems to be much older, and below I will argue that it might be dated to the last third of the tenth century. The list is as follows: “I þui riki er þat er Ruzcia heitir. þat kollum ver Garðariki. þar ero þessir hofuð garðar. Moramar. Rostofa. Surdalar. Holmgarðr. Syrnes. Gaðar. Palteskia. Koenugarðr” (“In that state there is a part called Ruzcia, we call it Garðaríki. There are these capital towns: Móramar, Rostofa, Súrdalar, Hólmgarðr, Sýrnes, Gaðar, Palteskia, Koenugarðr”) (Hb 1892– 96, 155).
The word combination hǫfuð garðar used in the text might be translated as “capital towns” only in the context of Old Rus’. In medieval Swedish sources the term huvud gård was used for the designation of “the main court” with the same meaning as that of curia and mansio of Swedish documents in Latin (see Svanidze 1984, 75). The toponyms Hólmgarðr and Kænugarðr have been discussed in previous chapters. Now we shall concentrate on all the rest, beginning with Pallteskja as a designation of an important station on the “route from the Varangians to the Greeks.”
Contents
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Book:
- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp v-vi
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Chapter 1 - Austrhálfa on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 21-24
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IN THIS CHAPTER I intend to demonstrate that the early Scandinavians (as well as all Germans and— more broadly— Indo-Europeans) imagined the oecumene as divided into four parts, and that Eastern Europe belonged, in their minds, to the eastern quarter of the world.
In the Latin medieval cosmography of Europe, the traditional division of the oecumene was tripartite. In those cases when a Scandinavian author grounded a “learned” introduction to his work on this tradition, the world was divided into thirds, as for instance in Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga (see below, p. 62). However, in describing certain geographical situations and sailings, in orienting in space, there came to the fore a natural and traditional for the early Scandinavians four-part division of the inhabited world (Jackson, Podossinov 1997). These ideas, as the Old Norse source material demonstrates (cf. Jackson 1994a, 1998), are as follows. The world consists of four quarters, according to the four cardinal directions. The set of lands in each segment of this mental map is invariable. The western quarter includes all the Atlantic lands, such as England, the Orkney and Shetland Islands, France, Spain, and even Africa. The eastern lands are the Baltic lands and the territories far beyond the Baltic Sea, such as Old Rus’ and Byzantium. The southern lands are Denmark and Saxony, Flanders and Rome. The northern quarter is formed by Norway itself, but also by Finnmark and, sometimes, by Bjarmaland. The latter is described as a territory lying on the borderline of the easterly and northerly segments, since it was thought to belong to the easterly quarter, but one could get there only by travelling northwards. Movement from one segment into another is defined not according to the compass points but according to the accepted naming of these segments, which means that spatial orientation is described in terms of a goal. Thus, when somebody goes from Sweden to Denmark he is said to go either suðr (to the south) (Hkr 1941, 349), because Denmark belongs to the “southern segment,” or to go austan (from the east) (Hkr 1951, 92), because Sweden belongs to the “eastern segment.”
Chapter 10 - Bjarmaland
- Tatjana N. Jackson
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- Book:
- Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 30 April 2019, pp 107-114
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THIS CHAPTER PROVIDES a brief survey of all available sources where Beormas/ Bjarmar and Biarmia/ Bjarmaland occur; firstly, to show that different groups of Old Norse sources had different ethno-geographical nomenclature; secondly, to explain how and why the meaning of the place-name Bjarmaland changed; and finally, to describe the position of Bjarmaland between Norway and Old Rus’.
Bjarmaland, a mysterious land in the north of Europe, is mentioned in a number of Old Norse sources (cf. Tiander 1906). But before data concerning this land were put in writing by medieval Icelanders, the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred, in the late ninth century, added to his translation of the Historiae adversum Paganos by Paulus Orosius a record of a report of a certain traveller Ohthere, who had reached a land named Biarmia from the place of his habitation in the north of Norway, in Hålogaland. Ohthere's story is of vital importance within the context of Biarmia/ Bjarmaland studies, as an account of his voyage gives a detailed description of the northbound route from Hålogaland to the land of the Beormas.
Ohthere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede cyninge, þæt he ealra Norðmonna norþmest bude. He cwæð þæt he bude on þæm lande norþweardum wiþ þa Westsæ. He sæde þeah þæt land sie swiþe lang norþ þonan, ac hit is eal weste, buton on feawum stowum styccemælum wiciað Finnas, on huntoðe on wintra & on sumera on fiscaþe be þære sæ.
He sæde þæt he æt sumum cirre wolde fandian hu longe þæt land norþryhte læge, oþþe hwæðer ænig mon be norðan ðæm westenne bude. Þa for he norþryhte be þæm lande; let him ealne weg þæt weste land on ðæt steorbord þrie dagas. Þa wæs he swa feor norþ swa þa hwælhuntan firrest faraþ. Þa for he þa giet norþryhte swa feor swa he meahte on þæm oþrum þrim dagum gesiglan. Þa beag þæt land eastryhte, oþþe seo sæ in on ðæt lond, he nysse hwæðer, buton he wisse ðæt he ðær bad westanwindes & hwon norþan & siglde ða east be lande swa swa he meahte on feower dagum gesiglan. Þa sceolde he ðær bidan ryhtnorþanwindes, for ðæm þæt landbeag þær suþryhte, oþþe seo sæ in on ðæt land, he nysse hwæðer.