Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Varangians and their origins
- 2 The army and navy of the High Byzantine Empire
- 3 Norse and Russian forces in the Byzantine army to the death of Romanos III
- 4 Haraldr Sigurðarson and his period as a Varangian in Constantinople, 1034–1043
- 5 The Varangians between 1042 and 1081
- 6 Varangians during the period 1081–1204
- 7 The ghost of the regiment: Varangian evidences 1204–1453
- 8 The Emperor, his Court, his guards and his city
- 9 Some individual Norse and English Varangians and travellers to Byzantium
- 10 Runic inscriptions concerning Varangians
- Select bibliography
- Index
10 - Runic inscriptions concerning Varangians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Varangians and their origins
- 2 The army and navy of the High Byzantine Empire
- 3 Norse and Russian forces in the Byzantine army to the death of Romanos III
- 4 Haraldr Sigurðarson and his period as a Varangian in Constantinople, 1034–1043
- 5 The Varangians between 1042 and 1081
- 6 Varangians during the period 1081–1204
- 7 The ghost of the regiment: Varangian evidences 1204–1453
- 8 The Emperor, his Court, his guards and his city
- 9 Some individual Norse and English Varangians and travellers to Byzantium
- 10 Runic inscriptions concerning Varangians
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Up to the days of the Comnenian Emperors the greater part of the Varangians were Swedes, and in Sweden have been found a number of runic stones which bear the names of various men who died in Byzantium, and had these stones raised in their memory. How frequent the journeys to the Empire will have been in the tenth to the twelfth centuries we may see from the old Swedish legal codes, where there are provisions for inheritance for men who were resident in Greece. The older manuscript of the code states that no one may receive an inheritance (in Sweden) while he dwells in Greece, while the younger code determines that no one may inherit from such a person as was not a living heir when he went away. There are similar enactments in the older Norwegian Gulaþingslög, ‘but if (a man) goes to Greece, then he who is next in line to inherit shall hold his property’. The composition of the Västgötalag is usually attributed to Askell, brother to Earl Birger of Bjälbo, who was lawman of Västgötaland in 1219–25, but many of their enactments were obviously much older when they were codified, and this is one of these.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Varangians of Byzantium , pp. 223 - 233Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979