At the same time, the Varangians left traces in Constantinople, most notably the rune graffiti in Egisif, the Hagia Sophia, where some guards scratched their names or representations of their ships into the marble balustrades, pillars, and window posts. ![]() Sources also mention medieval travelers to Constantinople-Miklagård, as they called it, "the big village"-who returned home with great treasures (usually coins) but who also sometimes died and were buried on foreign soil. The memories of such journeys and interactions with the Byzantine Empire have been preserved in various sources in Scandinavia and will be shared in this exhibition along with the material remains of ships, weaponry, precious objects (reliquary crosses, silks, jewelry, coins), artworks (fresco paintings, baptismal fonts), and stories (sagas).Īll these different objects, as well as inscriptions on Swedish runestones and on the so-called Piraeus Lion from the Venice Arsenal and narrative elements in Icelandic sagas, stand as evidence of the strong material and intangible intercultural exchange between these regions over several centuries. Shortly after, the first mentions of people with Nordic names appeared in Byzantine sources, and the first Varangians were baptized.įor centuries, the Byzantine emperors had a Varangian guard, a special troop of bodyguards consisting of fierce northerners who had traveled to Constantinople via major eastern European rivers like the Dnieper. The first known contact between the Varangians and the Byzantines happened in 838, when an envoy came to Constantinople and subsequently tried to return to Scandinavia via Germany, as the direct route back was blocked. ![]() The Varangians, or Ros, as they were called in Byzantine sources, soon reached the Black Sea coasts of Bulgaria and Byzantium, conducting raids and establishing trade. The route from Constantinople to the Khazars was mostly traveled via Cherson, the Byzantine outpost on the southern coast of the Crimea.įrom the mid-ninth century onward, the so-called Varangians from present-day Sweden moved into Slavic lands and founded a state that quickly expanded south, with its center first in Novgorod and later in Kiev/Kyiv. Trade became important in the lands north of the Black Sea-what is now Ukraine and Russia-only in the eighth century, when the Byzantine Empire established close contacts with the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people who had settled in the region. Long-distance trade between western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic East inevitably became an international issue in the new political context from the seventh century onwards, and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire frequently found itself in the position of intermediary between the West and the East. ![]() This exhibition explores the interactions between the Byzantine and Scandinavian lands and highlights the specific traces left in the visual, literary and material culture.
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