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| A Varangian reenactment in 2019. Image source: Silar |
Oleg was succeeded by Igor in 912, who expanded Rus rule over the Pechenegs (a Turkic people) and the Drevlians (a Slavic people), and led expeditions against the Byzantines in the 940s, which failed due to the destruction of his ships by legendary “Greek fire”. Olga gave birth to Igor’s son Sviatoslav around this time. Igor was murdered by the Drevlians in 945, while collecting tribute. At this time Sviatoslav, Igor’s heir, was very young.
Without a warrior prince to protect them, Olga and Sviatoslav were now in a dangerously precarious situation – knowing this, the Drevlians sent emissaries to Olga proposing that she marry their leader, Prince Mal. Such a marriage might indeed save Olga but it could result in tragedy for her young son and this, I suspect, is the primary reason she subsequently conducted herself as she did.
Olga, Princess of Warriors
Princess Olga told the Drevlian emissaries that she was pleased with the proposal but that she would like to honour the Drevlians publicly the next day by carrying them in boats, with her people crowded together to witness. The Drevlians were thus honoured until they reached a deep trench, at which point the Drevlian boats were tipped into the trench and the occupants covered with soil and stones, so that they were buried alive.
Olga then sent her own emissaries to Prince Mal indicating her consent to marry him, and requesting he send his noblest men to come to her. She warned that her people would not let her go unless this honour were shown to her. Prince Mal granted this request. When the distinguished Drevlians arrived she sent a message that she would personally greet them after they had washed at a bathhouse. Once inside the bathhouse her people locked the doors and set the building alight, killing all of the occupants.
Acting quickly, Olga sent another message to the Drevlians (who were still unaware of the deaths of their emissaries), asking them to “prepare great quantities of mead” in the place where Igor’s body was buried so that she could weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him. She arrived with a retinue of warriors and the feasting began. Her men encouraged the Drevlians to drink heavily while they themselves were careful not to drink too much. The Drevlians became so intoxicated they were unable to resist being massacred by the Rus – it is said that 5000 Drevlians were thus slain.
Olga then returned to her people and assembled an army to crush the remainder of the Drevlians. Sviatoslav, though a small child, took part in these battles. She spent a year attempting to take their final stronghold by force. Wishing to break the siege, she proposed the Drevlians submit to a modest tribute of three pigeons and three sparrows from each inhabitant within the stronghold, telling them that as she had already avenged her husband she would – after receiving tribute – be satisfied. The Drevlians agreed. Upon receiving the birds Olga’s people attached burning cloth and sulphur to their claws, after which they flew back to their nests within the stronghold, causing the numerous wooden buildings within to be set alight and set the entire city ablaze.
Thus the Drevlians were subdued.
Igor was likely in his 60s at the time the Drevlians murdered him, while Olga must have been at least twenty years younger for her to have been capable of giving him a child. In Rus culture Pagan wives were expected to be extremely loyal to their husbands, as a 10th century Muslim traveler described:
“When a man dies, his wife is burned alive with him … The women passionately want to be burned, because they believe they will enter Paradise … the woman is not burned unless she gives her consent [written by Mas’udi, cited in Ibn Fadlan at 132].”
Thus vengeance, born of loyalty to Igor, must have been a motivating factor for Olga, but I believe that love for Sviatoslav, and an intense desire to protect him, was her primary impulse, and this explains the extreme brutality of her actions.
The Conversion of Olga
This motivation of love for Sviatoslav may also explain the next significant chapter in Olga’s life. From 945-964 Olga was regent on Sviatoslav’s behalf. Constantinople lay to the south and was in the midst of a golden age (known as the Macedonian era – 867-1025). The Byzantine empire was at her fabulous peak and the Rus had established military and trading ties decades earlier but the terms most recently established in 945 were not as favourable as those made with Oleg in 911. In the 945 treaty the Pagan Rus had sworn their oath on a hill on which there was a statute of the thunder God (Perun / Thor), however, the Byzantines had been sending Christian missionaries to the land of the Rus for decades and thus some Varangians were Christians by this time, and they swore an oath in a local Rus church.
Presumably for reasons of diplomacy, Olga travelled to Constantinople, either once or twice at some point between 954 and 957, with a retinue of more than a hundred men, and became the goddaughter of the Byzantine Emperor, after agreeing to be baptised. Her Pagan name (Olga) derived from the Germanic word for “holy” (Helga), fittingly, her chosen Christian name was Helena, named after the mother of Emperor Constantine (who had played a crucial role in establishing Christianity as the state religion of the Roman empire). It is said that the Patriarch of Constantinople himself taught her the ways of the faith and that she showed immense aptitude in learning, “like a sponge absorbing water”, for “from her youth up the sainted Olga always sought wisdom in this world” (Russian Primary Chronicle).
Olga's Son, Sviatoslav the Chad
Olga had sought a Byzantine bride for Sviatoslav. In this she momentarily failed. However, Sviatoslav’s son Vladimir would go on to marry the sister of the Byzantine Emperor after his own conversion, following which the much famed Varangian guard was formed. So Olga’s efforts did eventually bear fruit (as an interesting Anglocentric aside, Vladimir’s granddaughter would marry the King of Norway, who Harold Godwinson defeated at Stamford Bridge). In any case, Sviatoslav had no interest in converting to Christianity, he told his mother that his followers would laugh at him if he received baptism.
“… he began to collect a numerous and valiant army. Stepping light as a leopard, he undertook many campaigns. Upon his expeditions he carried with him neither wagons nor kettles, and boiled no meat, but cut off strips of horseflesh, game, or beef, and ate it after roasting it on the coals. Nor did he have a tent, but he spread out a horse-blanket under him, and set his saddle under his head; and all his retinue did likewise [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
Sviatoslav was a great warrior, defeating the Turkic Khazars, and the Bulgars a few years later, when he was in his 20s. He left his three sons with Olga in Kiev while he campaigned elsewhere, expanding Varangian lands. He was away from Kiev so often that the Pechenegs managed to besiege it. Famine and dehydration had already begun to take hold before Sviatoslav became aware of what was happening:
“… he quickly bestrode his charger, and returned to Kiev with his retinue. He kissed his mother and children, and regretted what they had suffered at the hands of the Pechenegs. He therefore collected an army, and drove the Pechenegs out into the steppes. Thus there was peace [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
Olga, now in poor health, died soon after. She was given, upon her own instruction, a Christian funeral, despite the fact that the Rus were still overwhelmingly Pagan at this time.
“Her son wept for her with great mourning, as did likewise her grandsons and all the people … Olga was the precursor of the Christian land … as the dawn precedes the day … she shone like the moon by night [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
Sviatoslav negotiated a new treaty with the Byzantines in 971. He swore that if he or his followers failed to abide by the terms:
“… may we be accursed of the God in whom we believe, namely, Perun and Volos, the God of flocks, and we become as yellow as gold, and be slain with our own weapons. Regard as truth what we have now covenanted with you, even as it is inscribed upon this parchment and sealed with our seals [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
Months later, the Pechenegs ambushed Sviatoslav and killed him (but he had left heirs).
“The nomads took his head, and made a cup out of his skull, overlaying it in gold and they drank from it [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
Olga's Grandson, Vladimir the Pagan
The process by which Russian Orthodoxy came into being is often simplified into a story about Vladimir, Olga’s grandson, sending emissaries to Jews, Muslims and Constantinople and then picking Christianity because his men were so impressed by the beauty of their church services. The story is a little more complex than that – upon the death of Sviatoslav, Vladmir fled to Scandinavia and raised an army so that he could consolidate his rule (defeating his brother). He then took multiple Pagan wives (and hundreds of concubines) and attempted to build a community around a pantheon of Pagan Gods.
“… he set up idols on the hills outside the castle [in Kiev] with the hall: one of Perun, made of wood with a head of silver and a mustache of gold, and others … The people sacrificed to them [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
It came to be that a human sacrifice of a youth and a maiden was called for and so lots were drawn. It so happened that the youth who was selected was a Christian. When Vladimir’s men came for him the youth’s Christian father said:
“… the Gods whom the Greeks serve and worship is one; it is he who has made the heaven and earth, the stars, the moon, the sun, and mankind … what have these Gods created? They are themselves manufactured. I will not give up my son [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
He and his son were killed in retribution by their Pagan neighbours.
Vladimir’s Bulgarian neighbours encouraged him to convert to Islam but he was put off by their teetotalling. Then some Catholics from the Germanic west attempted to convert him, as did Jewish Khazars from the east. Vladimir found them both underwhelming. A Byzantine scholar came to Vladimir and told him that Muslims “moisten their excrement, and pour the water into their mouths, and anoint their heads with it, remembering Mahomet”* (Russian Primary Chronicle), that Catholics “have modified the faith” by using wafers instead of bread during their rites, and that Jews were under punishment from God for their failure to acknowledge Christ. Vladimir spoke extensively to this scholar and other Byzantines at this court, saying of them:
“Their words were artful, and it was wondrous and pleasant to hear them. They preach the existence of another world [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
He then, after consulting with his men, sent emissaries to the lands of the Muslims, the Catholics and the Byzantines, to observe the fullness of their rites. Whereupon the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Emperor himself escorted the Varangians to what was probably the Hagia Sophia. The Varangians were bowled over, telling Vladimir:
“… we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations, for we cannot forget that beauty … If the Greek faith were evil, it would not have been adopted by your grandmother Olga, who was wiser than all other men [Russian Primary Chronicle].”
Soon after, the Byzantine Emperor requested military assistance from Vladimir, who agreed, in exchange for the Emperor’s sister in marriage. The Emperor consented so long as Vladimir was baptised. The Rus elite and their cities followed this example (many of them quite reluctantly) but “much of the countryside remained Pagan until the 14th and 15th centuries” (Ware at 75).
Saint Olga of Kiev
Thus goes the story of Olga and the men she loved most in life. Popular ideas about her are lamentably shallow – the main one seems to be that she was a vengeful Pagan who was tamed by the light of Christ, whereas I am convinced she was motivated by love in all of her actions, both before and after her conversion. The emphasis Christianity places on love may have made the case for that religion more compelling to her, but it is obvious that political expediency (driven by love for Sviatoslav) was a significant pull to the new faith, as it was for Vladimir. A modern eye might view this Christianisation process with cynicism but there is every reason to believe the conversion of both St Olga and St Vladimir was sincere, for both could have easily remained Pagan had they wished and both experienced pushback after their conversion. Much is made of Olga as an avenging wife, but it is her story as a loving and protective mother (and grandmother) that most holds my attention, and I wonder too about what it must have been like for her living as a Chrisitan in a society that was almost entirely Pagan. We can only guess – perhaps she was a crucial member of a small Christian community in Kiev in which she found much fulfillment, or perhaps she lived much as other Rus Pagans but had a Christian funeral so as to indicate to Sviatoslav the importance of the alliance with the Byzantines. Either way, her heart overflowed with love.
* This is obviously laughably untrue – but it possible that both Vladimir and the scholar believed it.
Sources:
Encyclopedia Britannica (at www.britannica.com)
Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North, Penguin Classics
Medieval History (at historymedieval.com/varangian-guard-protectors-of-the-byzantine-empire/)
Medieval Reporter (at medievalreporter.com/olga-of-kiev/)
Orthodox Church in America (at www.oca.org/saints/lives)
Roesdahl, The Vikings, Penguin
Russiapedia (at russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/history-and-mythology/princess-olga-of-kiev/)
Russian Primary Chronicle (at home.uncg.edu/~jwjones/russia/377readings/primarychronicle.html) – highly recommend btw
Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin
Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, Yale University Press
Written by M' Sentia Figula (aka Freki), find me at neo polytheist (romanpagan.blogspot.com)
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