Lind, Darkness in the East

FROM GOTHS

TO VARANGIANS

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BLACK SEA STUDIES

T H E D A N I S H N A T I O N A L R E S E A R C H F O U N D A T I O N ' S

C E N T R E FOR BLACK SEA S T U D I E S

Proceedings of the 30th symposium organized by the Varangian network and

the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Southern Denmark.

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FROM GOTHS

TO VARANGIANS

COMMUNICATION AND C U L T U R A L E X C H A N G E BETWEEN

THE B A L T I C AND THE B L A C K S E A

Edited by

Line Bjerg, John Lind & Søren Sindbæk

AARHUS UNIVERSITY PRESS fø

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FROM GOTHS TO VARANGIANS

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Contents

Line Bjerg, John H. Lind & Søren M. Sindbæk
Introduction 7

Leo S. Klejn

The Russian controversy over the Varangians 27

Johan Callmer

At the watershed between the Baltic and the Pontic before Gnezdovo 39

Helle Winge Horsnæs
Networking in north-eastern Barbaricum: a study of gold imitations

of Roman coins 87

Line Bjerg
The Herulians are coming! 131

Fedir Androshchuk
Byzantium and the Scandinavian world in the 9th-10th century:

material evidence of contacts 147

Margarita Gleba
Chasing gold threads: auratae vestes from Hellenistic rulers to

Varangian guards 193

Natalia Eniosova & Tamara Puškina
Finds of Byzantine origin from the early urban centre Gnezdovo in

the light of the contacts between Rus' and Constantinople (10th -

early 11th centuries AD) 213

Volodymyr Kovalenko
Scandinavians in the East of Europe: in search of glory or a new

motherland? 257

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Contents

Ole Crumlin-Pedersen (+)

Viking warriors and the Byzantine Empire: was there a transfer of

nautical technology? 295

Elena Melnikova
mental maps of the old Russian chronicle-writer of the early twelfth

century 317

John H. Lind
Darkness in the East? Scandinavian scholars on the question of

Eastern influence in Scandinavia during the Viking Age and Early

Middle Ages 341

Ildar H. Garipzanov

The journey of St Clement's cult from the Black Sea to the Baltic Region 369

Ulla Haastrup & John H. Lind

Royal family connections and the Byzantine impact on Danish

Romanesque church frescos. Queen Margareth Fredkulla and her

nieces 381

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Darkness in the East? Scandinavian

scholars on the question of Eastern

influence in Scandinavia during the

Viking Age and Early Middle Ages

John H. Lind

As the title suggests, the focus in this paper will be on scholarly views of the

eastern influence in Scandinavia during the later period covered by our net-

work. In this period we shall concentrate first of all on the question of possible

Christian influences within different spheres; either direct influences from the

Byzantine Empire or those that were transmitted by people living or travel-

ling through the areas in between - especially those who were themselves

Scandinavians or of Scandinavian descent.

We shall limit ourselves here to the period when archaeological and written

sources in Scandinavia and Rus' begin more or less to overlap, i.e. the Viking

Age from the 8th century onwards. Perhaps in the context of our Varangian

network, this period could more fittingly be named the 'Varangian Age', not

least because the word 'Varangians' was identified with Scandinavians which

Vikings were not.

The possibility of earlier Christian influences in Scandinavia, which may

have been transmitted through the Christian Goths, who were active along

the borders of the Byzantine Empire in the earlier period, will only be given a

cursory consideration here. There seems, however, to have been links at least

between Scandinavia and the Ostrogoths in Pannonia during the period from

450 AD to around 490 AD, as gold solidi, struck in that period and presumably

paid as tribute to the Ostrogoths, found their way to Scandinavia but ceased

to appear after the Ostrogoths moved from Pannonia around 490.

These links

to the Goths may have transmitted some of the evidence on which archae-

ologists like Ulf Näsman and Charlotte Fabech have based their theory that

the area that was to become Sweden experienced its first Christian impulses

in the 3d century AD and that the actual Christianisation began already in

the late 5th century AD.

These are ideas that would find favour with one of

Näsman's and Fabech's Finnish colleagues, Unto Salo, who has recently pub-

lished a book on early Christianity in Finland in the same period.

True or

not, it is worth keeping in mind that Scandinavians may have been exposed

to Christian ideas from the east long before the period we usually associate

with the advent of Christianity in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. We

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342

John H. Lind

should take into account that eastern influence, as observed in the Viking

Age, may reflect long-established, continuous relations between the Baltic

and Black Sea regions that were, however, unlikely to be reflected in written

sources because they were carried by peoples without a written culture.

Scandinavian scholarly attitudes to eastern influence are expressed in a

number of anthologies from the last thirty years, based on seminars or exhibi-

tions in which the question of eastern - and especially Byzantine - influence

on Scandinavian Christianity was raised and debated.

These include:

Les Pays du Nord et Byzance, held in Uppsala in 1979 and published

in 1981;

Bysans och Norden (Byzantium and the North), held in Uppsala

in 1986 and published in 1989;

From Viking to crusader. The Scandinavians and Europe 800-1200,

The 22nd Council of Europe Exhibition;

Rom und Byzanz im Norden. Mission und Glaubenswechsel im

Ostseeraum während des 8.-14. Jahrhunderts, held in Kiel in 1994

and published in two volumes in 1997-1999;

The Cross goes North, held in York 2000 and published in 2003;

Från Bysans till Norden. Östliga kyrkoinfluenser under vikingatid

och tidig medeltid (From Byzantium to the North. Eastern Church

Influences during the Viking Age and the Early Middle Ages),

held Göteborg in 2002 and published in 2005.

Also to be considered is a small book from 1994, Nordens kristnande i euro-

peiskt perspektiv (The Christianisation of Scandinavia in European Perspec-

tive), in which two church historians, Reinhart Staats and Per Beskow, both

also contributing to some of the five above-mentioned anthologies,

express

their general scepticism with regard to possible Byzantine influence on early

Scandinavian Christianity.

It is an interesting fact that in all the anthologies mentioned, we find both

scholars who deny that there is any evidence of eastern influence in Scandi-

navia and scholars who find an abundance of such evidence. In the former

group we primarily find church historians like Staats and Beskow, while in

the latter we find first and foremost archaeologists.

Art historians seem to

be divided on the question. A further observation that can be made is that

the scepticists, often in contrast to their opponents, are generally unfamiliar

with the situation in Eastern Europe and Byzantium.

Many of the scholars involved in the discussion on both sides are Swedes.

This is understandable, since it is generally assumed that the majority of Scan-

dinavians active in the east came from present-day Swedish territory, which

meant therefore, that Sweden was more exposed to eastern influence than

other parts of Scandinavia. Of course, if we look at the highest stratum of so-

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Darkness in the East? 343

ciety, Norwegians in the shape of the four successive kings - Olav Tryggvason,

Olav Haraldson, Magnus Olavson and Harald Sigurdson Hardradi - who all

spent periods of their lives in Rus' or Byzantium, certainly outnumber their

Swedish counterparts. This may, however, reflect the nature of the preserved

written sources rather than differences in the 'real world'.

The Art Historian

Taking a long view on scholarly attitudes to the question of eastern influence

it becomes clear that these have shifted from one extreme to another. We may

consider for instance the famous Hoen hoard from Norway, thought to be

one of the largest finds of gold from the Viking Age in Northern Europe. The

hoard was presumably deposited in the late 9th century. It was unearthed in

1834 and since then it has been at the centre of a lively debate, which was

summarised a few years ago in an international and interdisciplinary study.

The editor of the ensuing volume (The Hoen Hoard. A Viking gold treasure of

the ninth century), the well-known Norwegian art historian and archaeologist

Signe Horn Fuglesang, stated well before its publication that the 'previous

theories' which 'have assumed that the bulk of ornaments in the Hoen hoard

had been imported from the East are now disproved'. She continued: 'only one

or two small objects are attributable to Byzantium, and two more may be of

an unspecifiable eastern origin', while 'all the neck and arm rings which have

often been referred to as Russian, are now proved to be Scandinavian'(italics,

JHL).

The team behind the new investigation, which was eventually published

in 2006, consisted of thirteen international experts from Norway, Denmark,

England, Germany and Sweden, each claimed to be a 'specialist in his or her

field' and therefore able to 'identify the origins of the objects with a high degree

of precision'.

However, precisely with regard to the crucial discussion of the

origin of production of the various items in the Hoen hoard, it is striking that

none of these thirteen scholars can be said to be an expert on what Fuglesang

designates as 'Russian', and only one, David Buckton, can be seen as an expert

on Byzantium. Furthermore, Buckton's contribution to the volume takes up

less than one page and concerns a disc, which, as an inscription also shows,

is of undeniable Byzantine origin. With such a composition of experts it is

not surprising that the team, in Fuglesang's words, can reach the conclusion

that 'the eastern element [in the Hoen hoard] is far smaller than previously

believed'.

In one of her own chapters, The Necklace, in the 2006 edition Fuglesang

admits that a garnet boss (no. 38) and the disc (no. 39) 'were both originally

used in Christian contexts' and that 'both are attributable to Byzantium'. To

this, however, she adds significantly that both 'probably came to Scandinavia

by way of the continent',

by which she obviously means Western Europe. -

That these general conclusions may not be the last words with regard to the

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344 John H. Lind

Hoen hoard was signalled in a paper at the recent 22nd International Congress

of Byzantine Studies (2011) by the archaeologist, Christoph Kilger, 'Treasures,

myths and female belongings: the Hoen hoard revisited'. Here Kilger stressed

that 'some of the artefacts alluding to a Christian symbolism come from the

Byzantine world'.

The view advanced by Fuglesang in the new edition of the Hoen hoard

is anticipated in several earlier papers. The arguments presented here are

instructive as illustrations of common attitudes among Scandinavian schol-

ars. A paper entitled 'A Critical Survey of Theories on Byzantine Influence

in Scandinavia' was first read in 1994 at the conference, Rom und Byzanz im

Norden,

and then repeated in August 1996 at the XIX International Congress

of Byzantine Studies, where it was also included among the pre-published pa-

pers.

Here Fuglesang initially considers what should be meant by 'Byzantine

influence', because, as she and other participants in this discussion rightly

point out, not only Scandinavia but Western Europe at large was exposed to

strong influence from Byzantium as long as the East Roman empire existed. As

a result, themes and motifs that originated in Byzantium may not necessarily

have been transmitted to Scandinavia directly from Byzantium but could have

their immediate origin in the west. Therefore, what is often termed 'Byzantine

influence' in Scandinavia may in reality have been filtered through the arts

of Italy, France, Germany, England or Russia. Consequently, to the extent the

transmitting country can be identified, one may, according to Fuglesang, use

terms like 'Russo-Byzantine', 'Anglo-Byzantine', or 'German-Byzantine'.

Based on these considerations she argues that 'each question of Byzantine

influence thus demands a two-pronged method: firstly, identifying the model

as unquestionably direct and Byzantine, not transmitted through a Russian,

German, French or English intermediary; and secondly determining the sig-

nificance of an impulse - was it restricted to the copying of a visual model, or

did it depend on a wider ecclesiastical or secular pattern of political ideals?'

(italics, JHL). After these preliminaries Fuglesang expressly claims as her aim:

'to do away with some of the spurious claims for Byzantine influence in dif-

ferent spheres of society'.

Against this background Fuglesang finds that there is no foundation for

linking to the east that Bishop Osmund, who to the disgust of Adam of Bremen

in the 1050s was kept as court bishop by the Swedish King Emund. Likewise

Fuglesang rejects the suggestion that bishops, present in Iceland at the same

time and mentioned in Norse sources like Islendingabók and as 'ermsker', were

of Armenian origin, preferring instead the view that 'they came from Ermland,

i.e. Pomerania east of the Vistula'. In this context Fuglesang also quotes this

stipulation from the Icelandic law codex Grágás: 'If bishops or priests should

come to this country, those that are not learned in the Latin language, whether

they are hermskir or girskir, then people are allowed to attend their service if

they want to' (italics, Fuglesang). However, even though she has italicized both

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Darkness in the East? 345

'hermskir' and 'girskir' she fails to comment on 'girskir'

and since 'girskir'

seems universally to be accepted as Old Norse for 'Greek', this needs also to

be explained.

Ulla Haastrup is also among the scholars whose views are challenged

precisely with regard to the interpretation of the wall paintings in the two

churches Vä and Jørlunde, on which Haastrup writes in the present volume.

As to Vä, Fuglesang writes, 'Christ in Majesty has the type of "cloisonne" folds

which were a Western adaptation of the current Byzantine figure style that

was highly appreciated in most West European workshops', and her overall

conclusion with regard to the Danish wallpaintings of the 12

century is that

in no case 'are the Byzantinising elements in the Danish wall paintings of a

kind which suggests direct contact between Constantinople and Denmark'.

This summary of Fuglesang's arguments highlights two observations.

First, a double standard is applied to the topic. While the notion of eastern,

Byzantine influence in scandinavia has to be proven as 'unquestionably direct'

in order to be accepted, this does not apply to a route via Western Europe. If

there is a possibility that a Byzantine theme or motif can have arrived along

a western route, that seems to be enough to disprove that it has arrived in

scandinavia directly from Byzantium.

A kind of double standard is also applied on another level. With regard

to both Bishop Osmund and the question of Armenian bishops in Iceland,

Fuglesang consistently chooses to rely on scholars who, on the one hand, have

argued against Bishop Osmund having links to the east, while, on the other,

argued against that 'ermsker' (or 'ermskir') in the Norse sources referred to

Armenian. Accordingly, with regard to Bishop Osmund, no mention is made

of the historian and archaeologist Peter sawyer's endorsement of Ture Arne's

argument presented in 1947 that Osmund had been ordained as bishop in

Kiev, which sawyer supports with additional evidence;

nor do we find any

mention of the slavicist Anders sjoberg's articles to the same effect.

With

regard to the Armenians as bishops in Iceland, we find no reference to Ya.R.

Dashkévytch nor to Jan Ragnar Hagland.

Not least as a result of Hagland's

articles on the subject most scholars today subscribe to the Armenian solu-

tion.

The second observation to be made is that, when Fuglesang looks for alter-

native models for Byzantine themes, motifs or ornaments in scandinavia, she

does not seem to have considered who the carriers or transmitters to scandi-

navia may have been. It should be noted also that there is little evidence that

scandinavians prominent enough to influence religious culture and art in

scandinavia ever visited the places in Western Europe where possible models

are to be found. By contrast, we do know that over a longer period countless

influential scandinavians did visit Byzantium.

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John H. Lind

Church History and Archaeology

With regard to the attitudes of church historians to the question of eastern

influence, the situation is not unlike what we encountered with the Hoen

hoard, where the theory of early acceptance of eastern influence is now denied.

With a critical approach to sources like Rimbert's Life of St Anskar, Adam of

Bremen's Chronicle of the Bishops of the Hamburg Church and to the later Swed-

ish hagiographical sources, the Austrian-born Toni Schmid in 1934 wrote a

book on the Christianisation of Sweden. Here she combined a deep insight

in both western Christianity and early Rus' religious culture, which made

it possible for her to argue that early Christianity in Sweden experienced a

considerable eastern influence. This she did, even though she was seemingly

unaware of the role which the originally Scandinavian Rus' had played in the

early spread of Christianity in the Rus' polity. Therefore she did not see these

Rus' as transmitters of Christian influence to Sweden but focused instead on

the later influx of Varangians to Rus' and Constantinople. Importantly she

also realized that Christian influences could go both ways. Thus, she seems

to be the first and, for a long time, only scholar to have been aware that Scan-

dinavian saints in the twelfth century had been venerated in Rus'.

A quarter of a century later the, so to speak, secular historian Sven Ulric

Palme wrote a popular book on Sweden's Christianisation characterised by

the same critical approach to the traditional written sources. There he was

still open to the possibility of eastern influence in the spread of early Chris-

tianity to Sweden. He even suggested that the first Swedish king to adopt

Christianity, Olof Skötkonung, had been baptized in Novgorod at the court

of his son-in-law Prince Jaroslav.

Since then insight into the situation in the east and in Rus', with its close

connections to Scandinavia, has diminished among Swedish scholars (with a

few archaeologists as outstanding exceptions). Accordingly, the question of

eastern influence is often not even posed and, if posed, more or less denied.

Instead, scholars have stressed the influence from first and foremost Germany

and the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.

This was the position taken by the German church historian Reinhart

Staats when he gave the introductory paper to the seminar, Rom und Byzanz

im Norden, and when he wrote the introductory chapter to the small volume

he published in 1994 together with Per Beskow under the title Nordens krist-

nande i europeiskt perspektiv. In the latter Staats stressed that 'the great eccle-

siastical power of the Church of Bremen during three centuries from 789 to

1104 is still felt in Northern Europe. They [the archbishops of Bremen] had a

great impact on the Christianisation of Northern Europe. Even if one reckons

with the direct influence of the English mission in Denmark, Sweden and

particularly Norway - and, perhaps, a certain influence from the Church in

Russia - it is the archbishops in Bremen who played the decisive role in the

Christianization of Scandinavia' (translation and italics, JHL).

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Darkness in the East? 347

This is no doubt an extreme view, not least considering the critical attitude

to the sources emanating from Hamburg-Bremen, Rimbert's Life of St. Anskar

and Adam of Bremen's chronicle, that characterized Schmid's and Palme's

works and which today is shared by secular historians at large. It is true that

these two sources describe a more or less continuous missionary activity in

Scandinavia or at least in the part of Scandinavia that became Denmark and

Sweden. Nevertheless, they are, despite their age, not necessarily very good

sources, when it comes to understand how and why Scandinavians turned

Christian. Furthermore, the continuity in the Scandinavian mission from

Hamburg-Bremen is a claim made by Adam, but Adam had a vested interest

in making such a claim, because when he wrote it was not at all sure that Scan-

dinavia would be forever linked to Hamburg-Bremen, if indeed Scandinavia

ever was as closely linked to Hamburg-Bremen as Adam wishes to assert.

Therefore Adam's chronicle is hardly a trustworthy source on precisely this

point.

Concerning the English mission in Scandinavia mentioned by Staats, we

do not have sources that compare with the sources originating in Hamburg-

Bremen in age or detail. In fact, apart from late home-grown sources of a ha-

giographical nature, much of the early information we have on the English

impact on Scandinavian Christianity is supplied (reluctantly) by Adam of

Bremen.

When it comes to possible influence on Scandinavian Christianity from

the east, whether directly from Byzantium or indirectly through what Staats

called the 'Church in Russia', such influence hardly exists in the view of recent

church historians. The main reason for this negative view is that, if we dismiss

the 'ermskir' bishops as Armenians and the links Bishop Osmund may have

had to Kiev, we find no mention of missionaries or missionary activity from

the east in Scandinavia.

In present-day Swedish church history this fact is important because here

the early adoption of Christianity seems to be all about the presence of mis-

sionaries in Sweden. Therefore the period in which the Christianisation of Swe-

den took place is called the 'epoch of mission' (missionstiden or missionskedet),

research in that period is called 'mission historical research' (missionshistorisk

forskning); and in the process of becoming Christians the Swedes had to be

exposed to what is called 'missionary preaching' (missionsförkunnelse). With

this emphasis on the presence of missionaries in Sweden as a prerequisite

for Christianisation, the present view seems to be that a pagan Swede cannot

have turned Christian unless he met a missionary at home in Sweden. This is

a surprising position to take considering how well-travelled Swedes like other

Scandinavians were in precisely this period, the Viking Age. Furthermore it

is seemingly contradicted by as early as Rimbert in his Life of St. Anskar. Here

Rimbert retells this possibly imagined conversation, which Anskar had with

an old man on his second visit to Birka. Here the old man says:

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348

John H. Lind

"with regard to worshipping this God [Anskar's] several of us

have experienced that he can help those who put their hopes in

him ... and some of us, visiting Dorestad, have of our own accord

adopted this religion, thinking it to be useful" (translation, JHL).

Even if this conversation is imagined, it must nevertheless reflect an experi-

ence many Scandinavians travelling far and wide must have had. In fact we

find a close parallel in the Gutasaga, where it is said of the originally Heathen

merchants of Gotland, trading in both heathen and Christian countries:

"then the merchants saw Christian ways in Christian countries.

Some let themselves be baptised there and brought Christian

priests to Gotland" (translation, JHL).

Before we develop this theme we shall stay for a moment with the Swed-

ish situation. In addition to the sources emanating from Bremen, we do

have almost contemporary native Swedish sources that reflect the status of

Christianity in Sweden, i.e. the runic stones. They are mostly dated to the

11th century and several aspects of the stones and their text have been used

in the discussion on possible eastern influence. This is hardly surprising

because, to the extent the texts mention Swedes abroad, a sizeable majority

show them to have been active in the east: in Rus', Byzantium or further

to the east.

Here we shall not enter the discussion on whether the shapes

of crosses on the stones might reflect Byzantine style. Nor shall we discuss

Anders Sjoberg's suggested identifications of two of the most prolific rune

carvers: Asmund Kareson with Bishop Osmund and Öpir Ofeigr with the

priest and scribe Upir Lichyj. The latter in 1047 transcribed a Cyrillic ecclesi-

astical text in Novgorod, while the Swedish wife, Ingegerd, of Prince Jaroslav

held court there.

Instead we shall focus on some aspects of the texts which

have divided Swedish church historians.

The majority of the 11th-century rune stones in Sweden somehow reflect

the Christian faith, either because the carver has supplied them with a cross

or because the texts contain Christian elements. In addition to informing

contemporaries and posterity about the person who had the stone raised and

carved, and the person for whom it was raised, many stones also contain a

prayer for the soul of the deceased, addressed to some Christian heavenly

figure: God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, an archangel or a saint.

In 1972 and in 1983 Eric Segelberg published two articles, in which he tried

to determine from which corners of the Christian world different elements

in these prayers could have originated. Thus, 'soul' spelt as 'sel' or 'sal' could

indicate an origin in German/Frisian territory as opposed to England. How-

ever, with regard to two features, Segelberg found a Byzantine origin likely.

That applies to the prayer 'God help his soul', which, according to Segelberg

is common in the inscriptions on Byzantine seals. The other is the prayer to

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Darkness in the East? 349

God and God's mother, where the concept of Mary not as the Virgin Mary but

as Mother of God also points to the Eastern rather than the Western Church.

These articles by Segelberg and a further article from 1984 by yet another

Swedish church historian, Carl Hallencreutz, on the Virgin Mary in runic in-

scriptions

were later criticized by Per Beskow in one of his articles in Nordens

kristnande i europeiskt perspektiv. Giving credence to Rimbert's Life of St. Anskar

and Adam's chronicle, Beskow finds that both Segelberg and Hallencreutz

wish to 'minimise' the importance of what to Beskow are 'the better known

transmitters of Christianity' to Sweden, that is 'the more southern Germanic

people [Danes?] and the missions from England and Bremen' (translation,

JHL). It is on his conviction that these 'better known transmitters' were also

the 'true' transmitters of Christianity to Sweden that Beskow explicitly bases

his criticism of Segelberg and Hallencreutz. Besides, because the Latin west

adopted the Greek Theotokos, 'there is no reason with Segelberg ... to seek the

origin of the phrase in the contacts of Scandinavian Vikings with Byzantium'

(translation, JHL).

Essentially, this is same argument we saw Fuglesang use:

it is enough to reject a Byzantine origin if a western origin is possible.

When Beskow and Staats wrote their 1994 book a large interdisciplinary

research project on the Christianisation of Sweden was already underway -

with professor in The History of Christianity, Bertil Nilsson, as coordinator and

author of the first volume. Here the problem of eastern influence does not loom

large, but Nilsson does make the claim that 'in reality there is no evidence of

Christianity in its Byzantine form ever striking root in Sweden' (translation and

italics, JHL).

Here it seems that Nilsson uses the expression 'Christianity in

its Byzantine form' as if it was a clear, well-defined entity, which it was not,

especially if the Byzantine influence was filtered through Christianity as it took

root in Rus' in the first part of the 10th century. We shall return to this below.

In the most recent of the anthologies referred to above, Från Bysans till

Norden. Östliga kyrkoinfluenser under vikingatid och tidig medeltid, Nilsson re-

turns in more detail to the problem in an almost direct confrontation with

the archaeologist, Ingmar Jansson. While Jansson, together with his colleague

Johan Callmer, a leading Swedish authority on the links between Scandinavia

and Rus', find strong archaeological evidence for eastern influence on the

form early Christianity took -at least in the eastern part of Sweden, the Mälar

region - Nilsson flatly denies any such influence.

Even a cursory look at their respective arguments reveals that the differ-

ence in opinion between the two sides largely reflects the difference in their

basic source material. Thus, while the archaeological sources are generally

contemporary with the topic discussed, the written sources stem almost with-

out exception from a later period. The perspective of the archaeologist is there-

fore different from that of the church historian, and while the archaeologist

is securely based in the period he investigates, it seems the church historian

cannot help being influenced by what was to come in his evaluation of what

went before.

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350

John H. Lind

In his preliminary remarks Nilsson maintains that possible influences from

the Eastern Church, in order to be accepted as such, must somehow show

up in the source material. It is obvious that Nilsson believes that to be pos-

sible, although the written sources on which he bases his point of view are

late. However because the split between the Eastern and Western Churches,

as he maintains, began much earlier than 1054, if there were influences or

even missionary activity from the east, these would have taken such differ-

ent forms from similar western initiatives that they would somehow show

up in the sources. In his attempt to find such signs of eastern influence, Nils-

son, however, sets up some very exacting preconditions: 'In order to be able

to speak of [eastern] influences, at least some typical features in the swedish

ecclesiastical landscape must by necessity be assigned to the Eastern Church

tradition' (translation and italics, JHL). such features Nilsson is unable to find.

However, to assign such 'features in the swedish ecclesiastical landscape'

to the Eastern Church tradition is exactly what Jansson does in his article.

For instance, Jansson points out that indisputably Christian burials in Rus'

continued far into the High Middle Ages to include various kinds of grave

goods, even types that are usually interpreted as pagan. This can be seen as a

result of a less strict ecclesiastical regulation of burial practices in the Eastern

Church than came to be the rule in the Western Church. However, a similar

situation exists in the eastern part of central sweden where we see the same

blend of pre-Christian and Christian burials as in Rus'. Although difficult to

date, these burials used to be dated to a short period in the 11th century by

swedish archaeologists before Christian cemeteries were established, whereas

Russian archaeologists date these graves to a much longer period in the 11th-

12th century or even later.

Another archaeologist, Jörn staecker, has reached similar results based

on other archaeological data, that he published in articles in Rom und Byzanz

(Bremen - Canterbury - Kiev - Konstantinopel? Auf spurensuche nach Mis-

sionierenden und Missionierten in Altdänemark und schweden) and in The

Cross goes North (The Cross Goes North: Christian symbols and scandinavian

Women). Here, on the basis of his studies of the spread of various types of

cross- and crucifix-pendants, staecker finds that it is German influence in

sweden that is almost nonexistent, not Byzantine. Therefore, staecker writes,

the success of Bishop Unni's missionary activities in Birka, which according to

Adam of Bremen began in the 930s after the failure of Anskar's earlier mission,

may be doubted.

To this staecker adds, 'probably Gotland and the eastern

coast of sweden used their good contacts with Russia (through marriage and

trade) to keep the German mission at a distance by using their own images

and by keeping the process of Christianisation in their own hands'. It is in

such a context staecker sees the role of bishop Osmund at the swedish royal

court in the 1050s.

In this discussion Bertil Nilsson seems to apply the same type of double

standard to the problem as we have seen signe Horn Fuglesang use when she

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demanded Byzantine influence to be 'unquestionably direct' to be accepted

as such: if phenomena in early Swedish Christianity cannot 'by necessity' be

assigned to the east they cannot be seen as Byzantine influence. In contrast,

influence from the west does not have to be proven but is taken for granted. In

view of the results achieved by archaeologists it is tempting to turn Nilsson's

argument around and ask: which typical features in the Swedish ecclesiastical

landscape of the 10th and 11th centuries must, by necessity, be assigned to the

Western Church tradition? If such features exist, when do they start to ap-

pear? Did it happen before Sweden was finally incorporated into the Roman

Church, with the advent of the Reform Papacy towards the end of the 11th

century? These are questions that Nilsson and most of his colleagues have

failed to ask, and seemingly do not see the need to ask. Admittedly they are

difficult to answer because of the lack of contemporary native written sources

apart from the runic inscriptions which, as we have seen can be interpreted

either way.

Scandinavians in the East - Who were the transmitters of Byzantine influence

In reality we know very little about how early Christianity spread to Scandi-

navia and in which form. None of the written sources, whether contemporary

with or originating in a later period, are really trustworthy in this respect.

Thus, to quote the Oxford historian, Lesley Abrams who, like Jörn Staecker,

doubts the efficiency of the German mission from Hamburg-Bremen, 'if the

mission of Anskar and his immediate successors had significant and enduring

effects beyond his death in 865, however, they have so far failed to make them-

selves known to historians'.

But as we have seen from both Rimbert's Life

of Anskar and the Gutasaga, quoted above, Christianity did not necessarily

reach Scandinavia through the work of missionaries from one or other of the

dominant Churches,

as modern church historians seem to think. Individual

and widely travelled Scandinavians could adopt Christianity in places where

they became acquainted with the new faith, and in the form it had locally.

might even have proved advantageous for them to be at least prime-signed as

a first step towards becoming a Christian in places they visited, where they

traded, or where they served as mercenaries. This was what Olav Tryggvason

did, according to Oddr Snorrason's Saga of Olav Tryggvason, when he visited

Greece before returning home through Rus'.

This individual approach to the adoption of Christianity may be the origin

of one of the dominant features of early Scandinavian Christianity: the wide-

spread use of proprietary churches, where a magnate built his own church

and chose his own priest. The latter could be one of his servants or slaves,

whom the magnate had educated in the confession he, the magnate, had in

one way or another adopted, perhaps on travels to distant regions.

Such widely travelled Scandinavian magnates were probably among the

first Christians in their respective regions. Often they adopted Christianity

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John H. Lind

long before the 'official' Christianisation of the rulers in the late 10th and

early 11th century. In all the hitherto pagan territories dominated by Scandi-

navians, archaeological data show to a still larger extent that Christianity was

quite widespread before these 'official' Christianisations. That is the case in

Denmark prior to the baptism of Harald Bluetooth c. 965.

More importantly

in our context, it was also the case in Rus' before the baptism of Vladimir

Svjatoslavič in 988/9.

With regard to early Christianity in Rus', however, we

do not have to rely only on archaeological data, nor do we have to rely on nar-

rative sources like Rimbert's Life of St. Anskar or Adam of Bremen's chronicle

with their vested interests.

In the early Russian chronicle, The Tale of Bygone Years (Povest' vremennych

let), written c. 1110, the compiler had, in contrast to his immediate predeces-

sor,

access to the texts of a number of treaties which the Rus' leadership had

concluded with Byzantine emperors in 907, 911, 944 and 971. The original texts

were probably written in Greek but were translated into Old East Slavonic

before they were inserted in the chronicle. It is generally agreed that these

texts offer a faithful rendition of the original treaties with a few minor adap-

tations to 12th-century forms.

As performative sources, these treaty texts

are far superior to the early narrative sources on the spread of Christianity

among Scandinavians that have been mentioned so far.

In both early treaties (907 and 911) the Rus' envoys with Scandinavian

names like their leader Prince Oleg (Helgi, preserved as HLGW in a contem-

porary Hebrew source), are portrayed as pagans, who swear oaths on the

treaty by their gods and their weapons.

By contrast, the Byzantines, referred

to either as Greeks or simply Christians, as if the two terms were synonymous,

take their oaths by kissing the cross.

In the third treaty from 944 this has changed. The treaty lists no less than

seventy-two or seventy-three names by whom, or on whose behalf, the treaty

was concluded on the part of the Rus'. Once again almost all the names of

the Rus' in the text are clearly Scandinavian.

But in contrast to the previous

treaties, the 944 treaty repeatedly, when relevant, distinguishes between those

Rus', who are still pagan and those who are now Christians. The chronicler

ends his quotation from the treaty with a report by the Greek envoys on its

ratification by the Rus' in Kiev:

"in the morning, Igor' [the ruling prince, Ingor according to a

contemporary Greek source] summoned the envoys, and went to

a hill on which there was a statue of Perun. The Rus' laid down

their weapons, their shields, and their gold ornaments, and Igor'

and his people took oath - at least, such as were pagans, while

the Christian Rus' took oath in the church of St Elijah",

This situation the compiler of The Tale of Bygone Years expounds c. 1110:

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"which [the Elijah Church] is above the creek, in the vicinity of

the Pasyncha square and the quarter of the Chazars. This was,

in fact, the cathedral church, since many of the Varangians were

Christians".

From this text it is clear that between 911 and 944 a significant number of

Scandinavians or people of Scandinavian descent in Rus' had decided to

adopt Christianity, presumably by individual choice, perhaps while living

in or visiting Byzantium. Furthermore, the fact that a separate ratification to

this international treaty by the Christian Rus' was now a necessity, shows that

Christianity by 944 had obtained official status in Rus' almost half a century

before the conversion of its ruler, Vladimir Svjatoslavič.

Even though it has largely gone unnoticed by Scandinavian scholars, this

fairly large-scale adoption of Christianity by Scandinavians or people of Scan-

dinavian descent, active in the east at a time when there was a constant flow

of Scandinavians between Scandinavia and Byzantium, can hardly have failed

to influence Scandinavians at home - especially those living in present-day

Sweden, if we assume that Swedes constituted the majority among Rus' and

Varangians.

It is true that we find few traces of Byzantine influence in Scandinavian

church life as it appears in our earliest written sources from around 1100 and

later, unless we read such influence into the runic inscriptions. Thus, in con-

trast to Finland, where a number of important Christian terms, derived from

Church Slavonic, survived the Swedish crusades in the 12th century when the

Catholicism, as perceived by the Reform Papacy, was forced upon the Finns,

we do not find a similar Christian vocabulary in Scandinavia that is influenced

from the east. One reason for this could be that Scandinavians were already

acquainted with a Christian vocabulary in related Germanic languages, first

of all Anglo-Saxon. The Finns did not have the same opportunity to acquaint

themselves with a ready Christian vocabulary in a related language.

Above we have seen how Signe Horn Fuglesang considered that, what is

to be found of Byzantine influence in Scandinavia 'probably came to Scandi-

navia by way of the continent', (meaning Western Europe), without consider-

ing the question of, who the most likely transmitters of Byzantine motifs and

ornaments found in Scandinavia could be. Thus like many other scholars she

disregards the fact that so many Scandinavians, first known as Rus' since as

Varangians, travelled along the East European rivers to Byzantium.

This traffic started no later than the early 9th century and it continued until

at least the Latin conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in

1204: as late as in the early 1190s we are told in a contemporary source that

the Danish and Norwegian participants in the Third Crusade (1189-92) had

contacts with their compatriots in the Varangian Guard when they returned

home through Constantinople.

The Scandinavians came to Byzantium either as part of armies that attacked

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John H. Lind

Byzantine territories or, more importantly, to serve the Byzantine emperors.

In case they entered imperial service, they also stayed in Byzantium for pro-

longed periods, acquainting themselves with and adapting to the Byzantine

way of life. Those who survived either returned home or settled in Rus', which

was politically dominated by scandinavians until well into the 10th-11th cen-

tury. As we have seen, many of these scandinavians adopted Christianity in

the process long before the official Christianisation of their home countries,

whether these were the Rus' principality or the emerging scandinavian king-

doms.

If we take into consideration the fact that Byzantine emperors were able

to field armies that comprised several thousand Varangians in one battle, as

Constantine IX Monomachos did in 1045,

there must have been a consider-

able flow of scandinavians over the centuries, travelling in their thousands to

Byzantium. Like Harald Hardradi or the lesser known Ragnvald, who claimed

on a runic stone that was raised in commemoration of his mother to have been

in Greece as 'commander of the retinue' (U 112), these many scandinavians

must generally have belonged to the higher echelon of scandinavian society.

An ordinary, low-born scandinavian could not just leave home in order to join

the Varangian Guard. Even if he had the necessary military training to be a

member of the imperial army, he had to be able to afford the travel expenses

from scandinavia to Constantinople, but in addition he also had to pay a

substantial entrance fee, before he could join the Varangian Guard and begin

to earn the dividends of this very substantial investment.

Consequently, the

scandinavians who joined the Byzantine army had to be people whose influ-

ence at home counted, and who probably expected their influence to have

grown when they returned. These scandinavians, therefore, also represented

that social stratum, which today is thought to have played a leading role in

the Christianisation of their respective countries from Rus' to Iceland.

If, with Harald Hardradi, we move a further step up on the social latter

to the level of royalty, the link to the east is equally clear. Apart from Knud

the Great, who after the conquest of England married into the English royal

house in order to bolster his power, only the Danish King Knud IV (+1086)

married in the west, probably as part of a plan to reconquer England; other-

wise almost all dynastic links we know of beyond scandinavia were formed

with royal or princely houses in the east: with West-slavic dynasties to the

south and south-east, or with the gradually slavicised scandinavian relatives

in Rus'.

These eastern links dominated in the scandinavian royal houses well

into the 12th century and reached a peak during the reign of King Niels and

his wife Margrethe Fredkulla in the early 12th century, when a direct link to

the Byzantine imperial family was established.

some of the effects of this ongoing traffic of scandinavians to and from

Byzantium are well-known and are reflected to a growing extent in archaeo-

logical data in Byzantium, in scandinavia, and along the river systems of east

central Europe,

where the scandinavians in forming the Rus' principality

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355

linked a Finnic-Baltic dominated region in the north with Staraja Ladoga -

and later Novgorod - as centres with a Slavic dominated region in the south,

with Kiev, Černigov and Perejaslavl' (Russkij) as centres.

As the Danish slavicist, Adolf Stender-Petersen demonstrated in his disser-

tation from 1933, this traffic is not just reflected in archaeological data, but also

in folkloric and literary motifs that were soaked up by Scandinavians in oral

tradition in Byzantium and transmitted through Rus' to Scandinavia, where

these motifs emerge in literary works such as the Russian chronicles and the

Norse sagas.

The fact that we find these motifs in both Russian and Scandi-

navian contexts shows that in this case the route this type of Byzantine influ-

ence travelled to Scandinavia was via the eastern route and not through some

Western intermediary. Against this background it seems rather far-fetched to

seek alternative places of origin of Byzantine influence in Scandinavia in the

west, unless conclusive evidence supports such an alternative.

'Russian' as opposed to Scandinavian and the concept of the 'Church in Russia'

The hesitancy of some scholars to see and accept Eastern influence in Scan-

dinavia has, to a large extent, to do with their general unfamiliarity with the

situation in the east. This can be exemplified in the way in which they use

the term 'Russian'. In connection with the 9th-century Hoen hoard we quoted

Signe Horn Fuglesang for the claim that 'all the neck and arm rings which

have often been referred to as Russian, are now proved to be Scandinavian'.

The question here is, what in a 9th-century context, 'Russian' as opposed to

Scandinavian can refer to? At that time the term Rus' still referred to Scan-

dinavians or people of Scandinavian descent or to the polity to which they

gave their name and where they were the dominating force. Apart from these

Scandinavian Rus', the Rus' polity was a multi-ethnical and multi-cultural

formation. Therefore it hardly makes sense to characterise something as 'Rus-

sian' in this period unless it refers Scandinavians in Rus'.

It also seems problematic to refer, in the words of Reinhart Staats, to the

'Church in Russia' as a possible - if, in his opinion, unlikely - source of in-

fluence on Christianity in Scandinavia prior to 1104 when the Scandinavian

church province was established, centred at Lund. Similar to what was stated

above concerning Bertil Nilsson's use of the concept 'Christianity in its Byz-

antine form', such an expression seems to imply that we can really talk about

a 'Church in Russia' as if this was a clearly defined entity, which on the basis

of contemporary sources would allow us to distinguish the forms Christian-

ity took in Rus' from Christianity in Scandinavia. But this is not the case.

Interaction between Christianity in East and West

What we can do, more or less by coincidence, is to observe several instances of

possible interaction between Christianity in the two regions. As noted above

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John H. Lind

already, Toni Schmid knew that Scandinavian saints in the twelfth century

had been venerated in Rus'.

This concerns the following sequence of saints

included in the litany of a 12th-century Russian prayer to the Trinity: Magnus

(of Orkney), Canute, Benedict, Alban (St. Knud and his brother Benedict killed

in 1086 in St. Alban's Church in Odense, hence Alban), Olav, and Botulph.

Another case of interaction can be seen in relation to the foundation in the

second half of the 11th century of the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, a leading

centre of Russian spirituality. The foundation is described in the monastery's

Paterikon, where the first three tales are devoted to the role played by a Varan-

gian, Šimon (Sigmundr). Baptized according to the Latin rite, he had newly

arrived in Kiev from Scandinavia. In the Paterikon we are told how traditions

he had brought with him from Scandinavia influenced not only the building

of the main church, dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, but also

the rituals that were adopted in the monastery. Elsewhere in the Paterikon we

are told how two other Varangians, a father and his son, this time baptized

according to the Greek rite and killed during pagan riots in Kiev in 983, were

now venerated in the monastery as the first martyrs in Rus'. As described in

the Paterikon, it is clear that the monks in the monastery held the early Va-

rangian Christians in high regard, whether they had adopted Christianity in

Byzantium according to the Greek rite or at home in Scandinavia according

to the Latin rite. It is equally clear that the monks to a large extent saw these

Varangians as founders of Christianity as it was practised in the monastery,

where Christianity was presented as a blend of influences from both east and

west.

Another kind of interaction can be seen in the early spread of saints' cults to

Rus' and to Scandinavia. With regard to the cult of St Clement this is demon-

strated by Ildar Garipzanov in the present volume, while in an earlier parallel

article Garipzanov has done the same with regard to the cult of St. Nicholas.

In both cases Garipzanov has shown the spread of these cults to Rus' and to

Scandinavia to be interlinked and that they are not a separate phenomenon

within the Eastern and Western Churches.

For a final case of possible interaction we shall return to Bishop Osmund,

mentioned several times above. The controversy concerning his person is

based on Adam of Bremen's account. According to this he appears in the 1050s

as King Emund's court bishop. Adam is critical towards the king because he

did not care about what Adam calls 'our religion', by which Adam presum-

ably meant that the king did not accept the authority of Hamburg-Bremen.

Against Bishop Osmund, who is said to stand outside the church hierarchy

as 'headless' (episcopus acephalus), Adam is even more critical. He describes

him as a 'tramp' who, after having been taught in Bremen, had in vain sought

ordination in Rome before he was finally ordained by an archbishop in Pola-

nia.

This may be Poland as many scholars think.

It may, however, just as

well have been in Kiev, the centre of the East Slavic tribe, the Poljanians. Be

that as it may, there is however a further aspect to this story. Approximately

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Darkness in the East? 357

at the same time as osmund appears as an independent bishop at the court

of King Emund, King Emund's cousin by marriage in Kiev, Prince Jaroslav

decided, likewise in opposition to the church hierarchy - in this case the Byz-

antine church authorities - to appoint his own residential cleric, the Russian-

born Ilarion, to the metropolitanate after the reigning Greek metropolitan of

Kiev had died in 1049. In time, this further coincides with a clash, described

by Adam, between the Bremensian archbishop Adalbert and Harald Hardradi

of Norway, Prince Jaroslav's son-in-law. Adalbert had reproached Harald,

the "tyrant" in Adam's words, for having had his bishops ordained either in

France or in England without asking Adalbert, who, according to Adam, had

the apostolic authority to do the ordaining. To this criticism Harald replied,

according to Adam, that he did not know who was archbishop in Norway

nor who had power there except himself.

Thus, more or less simultaneously, we see all three closely related rulers,

of which at least two had intimate knowledge of the Byzantine system, apply

a caesaropapistic approach to appointments to the highest ecclesiastic offices

in their countries, exactly as it was done in Byzantium. Therefore, whether

or not Bishop Osmund was ordained in Kiev or in Poland, his presence at

the court of King Emund was nevertheless likely to be a result of Byzantine

influence.

These cases of interaction shows that throughout the 11th and well into

the 12th century Christianity, whether in Scandinavia or in Rus', had not as

yet been subjected to the dogmatic and ritual centralization that especially the

Western Catholic Church under the Reform Papacy attempted to accomplish.

Concluding Remarks

If we want to form an idea of the kind of influences that helped shape early

Christianity in Scandinavia and in Scandinavian-dominated regions like Rus'

at a time when we really have no or at best very few native written sources,

it is first of all important to avoid drawing conclusions based on sources

that describe a later situation or, worse, use that situation as an additional

source. That is particularly important with regard to Scandinavia. Apart from

the Runic inscriptions, native written sources describing local church life in

Scandinavia only begin to appear after the region had become firmly inte-

grated into the Latin Church, which by then had already been taken over by

the Reform Papacy, with its wish to centralize, dominate and conform local

Christian usage in accordance with a strict set of rules.

Before this take-over of the Latin Church by the Cluny-inspired reform

popes, Christianity in the West could, just like in the East, take many local

forms. A case in point can be found in Adam of Bremen's criticism of his arch-

bishop, Adalbert (1043-1072), because he had on three occasions used 'some

other Roman or Greek tradition', when he no longer wished to follow the es-

tablished Latin rite.

At that time it was still possible to use Church Slavonic

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John H. Lind

within the Western Church. But when Vratislav II of Bohemia in 1080 asked

permission for the Bohemian church to use the Church slavonic liturgy, Pope

Gregory VII refused,

and the result was that the last vestiges of the Church

slavonic rite within this region of the Western Church were eradicated in

1096, when the sázava Monastery in Bohemia was 'Latinized'.

In view of this ongoing process of centralization and standardization, first

of all within the Catholic Church - but also to a lesser degree within the Or-

thodox Church, the only features in later written sources that can cast light

on earlier stages of Christianity are those that cannot be explained within the

framework of the current form of Christianity but must be seen as remnants

of earlier stages. That is the case with regard to the early Latin influence in

the Caves Monastery; and it is the case with the remnants of Church slavonic

in the Finnish Christian vocabulary.

It must also be the case with regard to the stipulation in the Icelandic law

codex Grágás, quoted by Fuglesang, about the 'ermskir' and 'girskir' bishops,

whose services people were 'allowed to attend', if they wished to do so, even

though these bishops were not 'learned in the Latin language'.

A stipulation

like this would hardly have been inserted into a normative source had the

problem not at some point been on the agenda. And even if we were to accept

the unlikely situation that the 'ermskir' bishops could be clerics from the Bal-

tic Ermland and, therefore, baptized, educated and consecrated in the Latin

rite, even if they were unable to function in that rite, we are still faced with

the 'girskir' bishop(s). They did not necessarily have to be Greek. They could

very well be scandinavians (even Icelanders), who were baptized, educated

and consecrated in Byzantium or Rus', but they belonged in any case to the

Greek rite.

We find a similar case on the other side of the confessional border. Probably

most early scandinavian Christians, whether in Rus' or at home, were unaware

of the existence of such a border, at least it was not felt as sharp among them as

it was felt between Constantinople and Rome. But over time this border became

more distinct. As we have seen, Varangians of both the Greek and Latin rite

were influential in the formation of Christianity in Rus', but in the course of the

Middle Ages the Latin rite did become a problem and already by the middle of

the 12th century the term Varangians in Rus' became synonymous with scan-

dinavians of the Latin rite and later in the Middle Ages the term 'Varangian

faith' (varjažkaja vera) even became synonymous with the Latin Christianity

- whether or not scandinavians were involved. It is against this background

we have to understand some questions on a list of inquiries from the middle

of the 12th century, attributed to the monk Kirik (Voprošanije Kirika) and put to

his archbishop, Nifont of Novgorod. One question concerns a person baptized

in the Latin faith who wishes 'to convert to us'; the reply states that he 'should

attend a [Russian] church for seven days, take an [Orthodox Christian] name,

and say four prayers a day'. Another question concerns those Orthodox people

who bring their children to the 'Varangian priest' [to be baptized]. These were

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359

now said to be 'dual believers' and were to accept 6 weeks' penance.

The de-

cisions by the archbishop clearly reveal a new attitude to a problem that was

not earlier felt to be a problem. Especially the last question shows that ordinary

Novgorodians (people who were not of Scandinavian descent) often had their

children baptized by the priest at St. Olaf's Church, just like other Novgorodi-

ans did in other of Novgorod's many churches.

A final case concerns the very heart of the Scandinavian church, at least if

the Danish historian Kai Hørby is correct in assuming that Archbishop Absa-

lon's liturgical reform in 1187 of the diocese of Lund 'removed the remnants

of a Greek-influenced liturgy in favour of the liturgy prescribed by Rome'

(translation, JHL).

Apart from this type of evidence from later written sources we have, in

general, to base our knowledge on early Christianity in both Scandinavia and

Rus' on archaeological data, and it is mainly through future archaeological

excavations that we can hope to gain added knowledge. With luck archaeol-

ogy can, of course, also produce new written sources. Thus, in addition to the

more than 1.000 birch bark documents, unearthed so far during excavations

in Novgorod, archaeologists in 2000 also found some waxed wooden tablets,

now known as the Novgorod Codex. The codex contains two Psalms and

fragments of a third. It seems to have been written by the monk Isaakii, who

claims in the codex that he was consecrated as a priest in 999 in Suzdal' in

the 'church of St. Alexander the Armenian'. The reference to this Alexander

the Armenian may, according to Andrej Zaliznjak, reflect Bogomil influence.

This suggests that many varieties of Christianity were at play at the time.

We can hope that future archaeological excavations may produce further

evidence of this type. With luck archaeologists may also eventually be able

to bridge the gap that still faces us with regard to relations between the Baltic

and the Black-Sea regions in the period between the migration of the Goths in

the early centuries of the Christian era and the appearance of the Scandinavian

Rus' along the East European river system in the 8th century. If this will also

produce further evidence of early Christian influence in Scandinavia, it is to

be hoped that in the future this will be appraised without sidelong glances

at Christianity as it developed in later periods. In any case there is a distinct

need among scholars for a keener awareness of the links between Scandinavia,

Rus' and Byzantium during the early spread of Christianity.

Notes

1 Lind 2011; Lind 2012; see also this volume, Introduction.

2 Kromann 1989, 85-86; Kaliff 2001, see also Metcalf 1995, 413-41.
3 Press releases: http://svt.se/2.33731/1.1144708/kalmarforskare_spracker_ansgar-

myten?page1851238=8; http://www.dagen.se/dagen/article.aspx?id=153413;
http://www.vr.se/huvudmeny/forskningvistodjer/humanioraochsamhallsveten-
skap/manadensprojekt/sverigeborjadeblikristetredanpa500talet.4.41c4c50b119

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5b50750780002443.html;. English presentation of project: http://www2.hik.se/

applikationer/forskningspresentation/project.aspx?culture=en&projectid=423 (all

accessed 5.09.2010)

4 Salo 2006. For a comparative approach to the question of Christianization, Berend

(ed.) 2007, and herein esp. Bagge & Nordeide 2007; Blomkvist, Brink & Lindkvist

2007; Gelting 2007; and Shepard 2007.

5 Zeitler 1981.

6 Piltz 1989.
7 Roesdahl & Wilson 1992.
8 Muller-Wille 1997.
9 Carver 2003.

10 Janson 2005.

11 Beskow 2003, Staats 1997.
12 There are sceptics also among archaeologists such as Anne-Sofie Gräslund, who,

although she wishes 'to show the potential of archaeological evidence to highlight

the process of Christianization', in her introductory overview and before she has

presented this evidence nevertheless a priori claims that Sweden was christianized

from the west, Gräslund 2002, 24, 140.

13 Fuglesang 2001. Below we shall return to the apparent inconsistency concerning

'Russian' vs. 'Scandinavian'.

14 Fuglesang 2001.
15 Fuglesang 2001.
16 Fuglesang & Wilson 2006, 94.
17 Kilger 2011.
18 Fuglesang 1997.
19 Fuglesang 1996.

20 Fuglesang 1997, 35-36.

21 Fuglesang 1997, 36.
22 In fact the close link between 'hermskir' and 'girskir' about bishops and priests

who are not familiar with the Latin rite seems in itself to lend support to the

identification of the '[h]ermsker' bishops as Armenians rather than coming from

Ermland, where we would expect them to have been 'learned in the Latin lan-

guage'. We shall return to this quote in Grágás below.

23 Fuglesang 1997, 47.
24 Sawyer 1982, 141; Arne 1947.
25 Sjöberg, 1982; Sjöberg 1985.
26 Sjöberg, 1982; Sjöberg 1985; Dashkévytch 1986-1987; Hagland 1996. Hagland

returned to the question in Hagland 2005 and Hagland 2011.

27 Uspenskij 2000; Cormack 2007.
28 Schmid 1934, 55-56.
29 Palme 1962, 58, 104-27.
30 Staats 1994, 3. Below we shall return to what can be meant in this context by the

'Church in Russia'.

31 As we shall see below both the Swedish king, Edmund, and the Norwegian king,

Harald Hardradi, appointed bishops that were independent of Hamburg-Bremen,

for which Adam repudiated them severely. By contrast, he praised the Danish king

Sven Estridsen for his apparent obedience towards Hamburg-Bremen; however

while King Sven entertained Adam at his court in a friendly manner, the king

was at the same time in contact with the popes Alexander II and Gregory VII

92202_from goths_3k.indd 342 08-02-2013 14:19:56

Darkness in the East? 361

with the intention of establishing a separate Danish church province, which Pope

Gregory was apparently prepared to grant had King Sven not died in 1074/76.

32 Rimbert 1978, 90.
33 Gutasaga: http://runeberg.org/gutasaga/05.html (accessed 10.09.2010).
34 Larsson 1990.
35 Sjöberg, A. 1982; Sjöberg 1985. After Ingegerd's and Jaroslav's deaths in 1050 and

1054 a different branch of the dynasty without links to Sweden took power in

Novgorod. That, in Sjöberg's opinion, could be the occasion when Upir Lichyj

left Rus' to become Öpir ofeigr, as 'ofeigr' could be a possible Swedish rendition

of 'lichyj'.

36 Segelberg 1972; Segelberg 1983. This point is also made by Sjöberg 1985, 76.
37 Hallencreutz 1982.
38 Beskow 1994, 16, 25.
39 Nilsson 1998, 64.
40 Nilsson 2005, 38.

41 Jansson 2005, 66-67.

42 Staecker 2003, 476.
43 Staecker 2003, 478.
44 Abrams 1995, 213.
45 Often we only operate with two major churches, the Greek Orthodox and the

Roman Catholic Churches. This may be relevant at a later period, but it is appro-

priate in this connection to recall that when the Byzantine Patriarch and the

Roman Pope towards the end of the 9th century jointly supported the Cyrillo-

Methodian Mission to Great Moravia based on the Church Slavonic rite, they

were both opposed by the powerful Frankish Church that managed to expel the

Church-Slavonic missionaries from Great Moravia. Later, in the second half of

the 11th century the Frankish Church took over the papacy when Cluny-inspired

reform popes like Gregory VII came to power.

46 Wilson & Roesdahl 1992, 42.
47 Hagland 2007, 50.
48 Smedberg 1981, 235-36; Wood 2006.
49 http://lindegaarden.wordpress.com/ (accessed 27.12.11).
50 Petrukhin & Pushkina 1999 and articles in the present volume.

51 The Povest' vremennych let has been translated into English under the mislead-

ing title The Russian Primary Chronicle, cf. Cross & Sherbowitz-Wetzor 1953. The

predecessor from c. 1095 is partly preserved as the initial part of the Younger

Version of the First Novgorod Chronicle. It is traditionally labelled Nacal'nyj svod

(Primary Chronicle or Compilation, which is why it is not helpful to refer to

Povest' vremennych let as The Russian Primary Chronicle).

52 Malingoudi 1994; Malingudi 1995-97; Bibikov 1999.
53 Compare Adam of Bremen's account of a peace making between Danes and

Franks at the time of Louis the Pious: 'the Danes swore on the treaty according

to the tradition of the people an unbreakable oath by their weapons', Adam of

Bremen, 298.

54 Byčkov 1926, 30-31; Cross & Sherbowitz-Wetzor 1953, 64-77.
55 Melnikova 2004.
56 Byčkov 1926, 32-37; Cross & Sherbowitz-Wetzor 1953, 73-77. Observe that when-

ever the chronicler quotes the treaty itself he only uses the term Rus', whereas he

has to call these Rus' 'Varangians' when commenting on the text because of the

92202_from goths_3k.indd 343 08-02-2013 14:19:56

362 John H. Lind

different connotations the term Rus' carried in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,

when it had already turned from a semi-ethnic term denoting scandinavians into

a term that also included the slavic majority population of the Rus' principality.

57 Lind 2006.
58 skovgaard-Petersen 2001.
59 Blöndal 1978, 105.

60 Blöndal 1978, 200.

61 Gillingstam 1981; Lind 1992.
62 see Haastrup & Lind, this volume.
63 see Androshchuk; Eniosova & Puškina, this volume.
64 stender-Petersen 1933.
65 schmid 1934, 55-56.
66 Lind 1990; Lind forthcoming.
67 Lind forthcoming.
68 Garipzanov 2010; and his article in this volume.
69 Adam of Bremen 1978, 344. After the death of King Emund, Bishop Osmund

went to England and lived his final years in the monastery at st Ely, where he

was eulogized in the Liber Eliensis, Fairweather 2005, 201.

70 Janson 1998, 113. Janson gives the most detailed, recent presentation of Osmund's

role, Janson 1998, 104-75.

71 Adam of Bremen 1978, 348.
72 Adam of Bremen 1978, 362.
73 Emerton 1969, 148.
74 see the quote from Fuglesang above. The original text reads, 'Ef biskupar koma

út hingaö til lands eöa prestar their er eigi eru lærSir á latinutungu, hvorts their

eru ermskir eöa girskir, og er mönnum rétt aö hlýSa á tiöir theirra ef vilja', see

Karlsson, sveinsson & Árnason 1992, 19.

75 Pavlov 1880, 22, 31.

76 Hørby 1994, 29. The text of the reform was reconstructed by Hørby's colleague

Niels skyum-Nielsen and published posthumously; see skyum-Nielsen 1991-93

77 Zaliznjak 2003.

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