Blond haired, blue eyed kids at our kids' school are few and far between, but some of them are from the Ukrainian diaspora. So when Putin invaded and started the first land war in Europe since WWII (besides the breakup of Yugoslavia and ensuing ethnic cleansing? Civil wars don't count?), we had a few conversations about some of the historical background.
Much later---as in quite recently---in the wee hours of the night, before bed, Corrie and I put eyes on one of the Youtube programs we like: an episode of SciShow about a Persian silver horde found buried in England.
In the episode, if you don't feel like watching it, it turns out that the Vikings buried treasure hordes all over their conquered or occupied lands. Historians aren't sure why, but one suggestion was that the treasure would be used to purchase favor when needed in their political shenanigans. One of the Vikings main bits of treasure was silver. They loved silver. One of the hordes recently dug up in England turned out to be from Persia. The science behind the isotopes in the impurities being a fingerprint from where it was smelt and cast was fascinating, and the Persian foundry was unmistakable.
And it turned out that the Vikings got around. Like, all over.
Today the Scandinavians we tend to lump together and call "Vikings" never would have called themselves that, and that the term "viking" may have really been a term that meant "to arrive and murder." But one of these tribes that got far, like to the Volga far, called themselves the Rus. The Volga is the river that runs from Kyiv down to the Black Sea (and has headwaters even beyond Pripyat, if you're a fan of HBO's "Chernobyl"), and it seems like it was this group, the Rus, that traded with Persian traders north of the Black Sea for their silver during their travels and trade route developments.
This is where my ears perked up. The Rus?
I have a very cool history book, an Atlas of the Medieval World, that's very small and very dense, as it tracks Europe and the near East (today's Middle East) from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Each page is a crisp outline of language family incursions, invasions by all types (Magyar, Mongol, Turkic, etc), and one thing it said I always pondered in my own time.
It mentioned that at one point the Western Slavic language branch (the closely related Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian) broke away from the other Slavic languages and became distinctly different. And I generally mulled that over in my head through the years...about how Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians were just that different from the other Slavs found in Europe proper...that seemed, I dunno, proper in some kind of way?
But seeing this show about a Viking silver horde in England, likely from the Rus, brought me back to the conversation I had with Cass a few years back.
See, as I told the Boy, the trio of Russia, their close allies in Belarus, and the Ukrainians all claim the Kievan Rus as their origin story. The Kievan Rus was the name of the original kingdom and lands held in the Volga valley around present day Kyiv, before the term Muscovite was coined around their newer homeland, Moscow (handwaving the details, certainly). They all felt like Kyiv was their origin spot, and felt like it was theirs to take back or defend with their lives.
These people were called Muscovites for a time, but the less formal general Rus was also used, and eventually that became the basis for "Russia" and "Belarus" that we've anglicized today.
But, it wasn't until just the other day that I understood that the Kievan Rus was just a gang of Vikings, and that they founded an empire and had their own familial lineage (the Rurikid) as the monarch from the year 862 until 1598, when Ivan the Terrible's feeble son died of dropsy and scurvy. For fifteen years that are called in Russian history courses "the Troubles" took place: after the last of the House of Rurik (Feodor, Ivan's youngest boy) fell, the Polish-Lithuanian empire invaded and occupied Moscow.
In 1613, after driving out the occupiers, the council elected the next tsar, and it was Michael I, and thus started the House of Romanov, the family that was Tsar until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. From 862 until 1917, with basically two family lines running all caps-RUSSIA, and the first was a freaking Viking.
And now the reason the Western Slavic branch being so different makes sense: it assimilated with a Northern Germanic/Scandinavian language.
Anyway, as I checked some of this stuff out, I learned that the Rus were also called, historically, the Varangians, which essentially meant "I agree to work for you." One group worked as the personal bodyguard to the Byzantine emperor, hence the records of their name. One of their bosses: Rurik...the same as the guy asked to settle disputes and run the show in Novgorod, founding Russia.
Most historians think this is apocryphal, or legend, but his brother Oleg could have been the true founder. Anyway...holy hell!
Vikings attacked France, and their king ceded beachfront land to them, these Norseman. They assimilated, became Normans after a French name change, and after a hundred and fifty years, invaded and conquered England.
They got around! But I didn't need to tell anyone that...
Interesting fun fact.... as you know I have dupuytren's contracture, Auntie Erm had it had fingers amputated because of it. My Cousin Benny, Uncle Al's son has it bad and has multiple surgeries around it. It's believed to be genetic, it comes from the Italian side. While Auntie Erm was dealing with it she was told it was a Viking Disease.
ReplyDeleteDupuytren’s contracture, often called "Viking disease," is a genetic hand condition causing tissue under the palm skin to thicken, forming cords that pull fingers—usually the ring and pinky—into a bent position. It primarily affects people of Northern European descent over 50, with recent studies linking it to Neanderthal gene variants
So they didn't just leave Silver around they also left some children.