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The Later History of the Varangian Guard: Some Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

R. M. Dawkins
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Extract

The famous Varangian corps of mercenary soldiers in the service of the emperors of Byzantium is well known in its earlier days to have been recruited from the Scandinavian north. Forging their way from their own inhospitable lands the Northmen, first of all from Sweden, reached the Volga and the lands even to. the south of the Caspian; later by the ‘East Way’, called also the ‘Varangian Way’, they came down through Russia by way of the Dnieper and the Black Sea to Constantinople, first as pirates, then as traders, and finally as the most trusted guards of the imperial person. Later again they ventured on the all-sea route, the ‘West Way’, and also opened a path across Europe, either over the Alps or by way of Provence, and so through Italy: this was the ‘Southern Way’, otherwise called the ‘Way by Rome’ But in the eleventh century, in the first half of which Harald Hardrada, the most famous of all the Varangians, was in the imperial service, there was a certain change; recruits began to come increasingly from England.

The first actual mention of the English name seems to be in a bull issued by the Emperor Alexios in 1088 to Christodoulos, the Abbot of the Monastery on Patmos.

Type
Papers Presented to N. H. Baynes
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1-2 , November 1947 , pp. 39 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © R. M. Dawkins 1947. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 For details on these three ‘Ways’, see Riant, Expeditions et pélèrinages des Scandinaves en Terre Sainte, 62–90.

2 Text in Miklosich and Müller, , Ada et diplomata graeca VI, 44 ffGoogle Scholar. (p. 47 quoted), and also in Zachariae a Lingenthal, Jus Graeco-Romanum III, 373.

3 Bonn ed., p. 55, 10, De mensa imperatoris.

4 ibid., p. 57, 10.

5 Freeman, , Norman Conquest IV, 632Google Scholar.

6 The whole story with references is in Riant, op. cit., 308–13.

7 Bonn ed., p. 691, 17.

8 Alexios II, II; Bonn, ed., p. 128, 16; and Georgina Buckler, Anna Comnena, 438.

9 Historia 1, 3; Bonn ed., p. 8, 15.

10 See ‘Nabites the Varangian’, by Blöndal, Sigfús in Classica et Mediaevalia, Revue danoise II, 1939, 145Google Scholar. He refers especially to a paper by Vasiliev in the Annales de l'Institut Kondakov, IX, 39–70.

11 De gestis rerum Anglorum, Rolls series I, 275. The question whether Manichetis in the text is the emperor Michael VII, Parapinakis, or the general George Maniaces, is here of no importance.

12 Flateyjarbok III, 466. Also Jatvardar Saga, printed as an appendix to the Rolls edition of the Orkneyinga Saga, chap. 3, pp. 391 and in translation volume, p. 419. These are two separate texts of the Saga.

13 Historia ecclesiastica, pars, II, lib. IV; in Migne, PL 188, col. 309.

14 Vasiliev, A. A., History of the Byzantine Empire II, 155Google Scholar.

15 A History of the Vikings 177.

16 Freeman, , Norman Conquest IV, 627Google Scholar.

17 Gaufredus in Muratori, Rer. ital. Scriptores V, 584; Ordericus, loc. cit.; Comnena, Anna, Alexias IV, 6Google Scholar, in Bonn ed. pp. 208, 20, and 210, 19.

18 Rolls edition, Orkneyinga Saga, ch. 10, p. 398, and in translation volume, p. 425. Also Flateyjarbok III, 470.

19 Orkn. Saga I, XVII.

20 Olafs Saga Tryggvasonar, in Flateyjarbok I, 117.

21 The Fall of Constantinople, 155.

22 Ref. in note 9.

23 The letter is in the Chronicle of Roger de Hoveden, Rolls edition, ed. Stubbs, II, 102. The emperor writes of himself as ‘imperium nostrum’; the English king is to him only ‘nobilitas tua’. Cf. also Vasiliev, in BZ XXIX, 244Google Scholar.

24 BZ XXIX, 243.

25 Bonn ed., p. 721, 19.

26 Ch. XXXV, section 171; ed. of De Wailly, p. 96.

27 ibid., ch. XXXVIII, section 185, p. 106.

28 Robert de Clari, ‘La Prise de Constantinople,’ ch. LXXIV, in Ch. Hopf's Chroniques Gréco-Romanes, 59.

29 ibid., ch. LXXX, 63.

30 Bonn ed., p. 547, 3.

31 Bonn ed., p. 726, 21.

32 The Byzantine Empire, 288. See also Sathas, , Bibl.gr. med. aevi. VII, 444Google Scholar.

33 Edited by John Schmitt: l. 4319 of the H version.

34 Nicephorus Gregoras, Bonn ed., pp. 303, 22; 398, 20.

35 Bonn ed. I, p. 389, 15.

36 Printed in Wagner's Carmina graeca medii aevi; the passage referred to is on p. 200. Krumbacher (Geschichte d. byz. Litteratur, 1891, 463 = ed. 2, 1897, 884) thought that this mention of the Varangians dated the book to the twelfth century, Heisenberg (Dialekte und Umgangssprache im Neu greichischen, 44) has pointed out that this is an error.

37 Leontios Makhairas, Oxford, 1932, I, 327Google Scholar.

38 In Müller, , Fragmenta historicorum graecorum V, 52Google Scholar.

39 The Relations between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia, 114.

40 Although the index to the Turkish edition has for vol. IV these entries: ‘Expedition to the Alman Vilayet, Holandia and Isfaj (?). Return from Holandia: the City of Amsterdam, Prandenburgh.’ Here again I am indebted to Sir Patrick Coghill.

41 The ballad quoted is printed with notes as to its origin in ἈρΧεῖον Πόντου, I (1928), 70–3. The lines quoted are 61–4.

42 Belin, Latinité de Constantinople, 2nd ed 1894, 21.

43 The Fall of Constantinople, 154, note See also Robert Byron, The Byzantine Achievement, 146.

44 Belin, op. cit., 20.

45 This is published in the periodical of the Ἐλλην. Φιλολ. Σύλλογος, of Constantinople, in the παράρτημα to vol. XVI (1885), 36.