Byzantium needed the military service of foreigners as much as the Scandinavians needed the empire as a foil for constructing their own cultural identity. 'Byzantium and the Viking World' brings together scholars from the very different worlds of Byzantine and Scandinavian studies, and from the different academic disciplines of archaeology, history and literature. They offer a snapshot of recent findings on the material evidence and the reasons for contacts between Byzantium and the Viking world, and on Byzantium's image in the Old Norse sagas and Rus chronicles, while presenting new interpretative models of cultural transfer between these worlds.
Author(s): Fedir Androshchuk, Jonathan Shepard, Monica White (eds.)
Series: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 16
Publisher: Uppsala University
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 486
City: Uppsala
Acknowledgments vii
Preface ix
Notes on contributors xiii
Abbreviations xix
General maps xxiii
PART I: CONTACTS AND CULTURAL TRANSFER BETWEEN BYZANTIUM AND THE VIKING WORLD
1. Jonathan Shepard / Small worlds, the general synopsis, and the British ‘way from the Varangians to the Greeks’ 3
2. Lesley Abrams / Connections and exchange in the Viking world 37
3. Roland Scheel / Concepts of cultural transfer between Byzantium and the north 53
PART II: CONTACTS REFLECTED IN THE MATERIAL CULTURE
4. Fedir Androshchuk / What does material evidence tell us about contacts between Byzantium and the Viking world c. 800–1000? 91
5. Marek Jankowiak / Byzantine coins in Viking-Age northern lands 117
6. Florent Audy / How were Byzantine coins used in Viking-Age Scandinavia? 141
7. Magnus Källström / Byzantium reflected in the runic inscriptions of Scandinavia 169
8. Thorgunn Snædal / Runes from Byzantium: reconsidering the Piraeus lion 187
9. Fedir Androshchuk & Gülgün Köroğlu / A Viking sword-bearing resident of southern Asia Minor? 215
10. Valeri Yotov / Traces of the presence of Scandinavian warriors in the Balkans 241
11. Mathias Bäck / Birka and the archaeology of remotion: early medieval pottery from Byzantium and beyond in eastern Scandinavia 255
12. Inga Hägg / Silks at Birka 281
13. Valentina S. Shandrovskaia / The seal of Michael, Grand Interpreter of the Varangians 305
PART III: CONTACTS REFLECTED IN THE WRITTEN SOURCES
14. Elena Mel’nikova / Rhosia and the Rus in Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos’ 'De administrando imperio' 315
15. Anna Litvina & Fjodor Uspenskij / Contempt for Byzantine gold: common plot elements in Rus chronicles and Scandinavian sagas 337
16. Sverrir Jakobsson / The Varangian legend: testimony from the Old Norse sources 345
17. Scott Ashley / Global worlds, local worlds: connections and transformations in the Viking Age 363
PART IV: CHRISTIANITY AND THE INTENSIFICATION OF CONTACTS
18. Monica White / Relics and the princely clan in Rus 391
19. John H. Lind / Christianity on the move: the role of the Varangians in Rus and Scandinavia 409
Glossary 443
List of illustrations and acknowledgements 447
Index 455
