We commonly consider the Viking Age to be a western
European phenomenon. This is not surprising, given the Viking impact on
communities either side of the North Sea and the English Channel and across the
British Isles. However, it also had a crucial eastern aspect that was a key
cause of the Viking raids in the first place.
Changes taking
place in the distant Islamic Caliphate disrupted the flow of silver to
Scandinavia. For years, Islamic merchants and their middlemen had carried
silver to northern Europe. There, they traded it for slaves, furs and amber.
Facing this change, raiding in the West offered the Vikings an alternative way
to get their hands on precious metals and slaves.
At the same
time, the forest products of the eastern Baltic and the supply of slaves from
there drew Swedish adventurers eastward. For several reasons, the Viking
phenomenon increasingly had an eastern front. Utilizing the river systems,
these Vikings soon became active on the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and in the
Byzantine Empire.
In this brilliantly timely book, historian
Martyn Whittock explains how it was a Viking-Slav dynasty that created the
first Russian state and how a rivalry between Viking leaders set up the states
that would later become Russia and Ukraine, with consequences we are still
living with today.
Since the sixteenth century, rulers in
Russia have referenced these origins to enhance their power and secure control
over the Ukrainian lands, most recently demonstrated by Vladimir Putin as his
justification for the seizure of Crimea and then the Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
