Category: Culture

Seed of Yggdrasil — a review

Of any book in my personal library, Maria Kvilhaug’s Seed of Yggdrasil is the most breathtaking in its depth, scope and insight. A graduate of the University of Oslo and a long time scholar of Germanic culture and myths as well as a scholar of the Norse language, Ms. Kvilhaug presents a  fascinating foray into the Norse myths as you have never seen them. I found myself murmuring as I read this book “Well that makes sense!” as she explored the myths from the perspective of an open-minded scientist and historian. When you see the myths, not as stories but as allegories, things begin to click into place. When you begin to see evolutionary flow in the stories, you then realize that all of it was intended to be allegory, as any religion founded in Nature, is.

She also writes of spiritual allegory. “When one realizes that a Viking prince has to fight a giant called Hatred, another called Rage and must be reborn in order to win a battle he lost in his previous life, the Battle of the Rock of Greed, in order to restore the Peace of Wisdom and gain entry into the divine afterlife, what at first sight appears to be just another heroic legend of a tough guy who fights giants, become s a spiritual parable. In fact, the moment I started to apply my translated names to the old texts, a whole new world unraveled itself, a world of spiritual concerns, ageless wisdom and metaphysical and philosophical speculation; speculation that is sometimes almost compatible with modern scientific theories.”

Even if you have only a casual interest in the subject of Norse mythology, The Seed of Yggdrasil makes the myths much easier to understand. Furthermore, since the author is a Norse scholar, she is qualified to make judgement calls on translations of certain words, to which she adds her explanation as to why she does. Not only did I gain greater insight into the stories and the all probable likelihood of their place on, I gained greater insight into how the people of the Norse Culture saw their world.

Easy to read and understand, The Seed of Yggdrasil takes on an almost meditative, spiritual experience. Her deeply delving understanding of the Old Norse texts and her unwillingness to take anything previous scholars have written at mere face value without holding it up to the light of in-depth research, her a highly qualified writer on the subject. Because of her extensive studies in Old Norse, she is not simply regurgitating anything that has already been written. She writes about translating a passage from Konungsbók (The Book of the King, written around 1200 CE) while at the University of Oslo and remembers doing a double take at a passage that read “The Earth is as round as a globe.” Clearly the early medieval people comprehended much more than we give them credit for. As any reader of this book will see, Kvilhaug delves extensively into the cosmic myths of the Norse and when seen under her lens, they are seen with fresh insight. It is truly a remarkable experience.

My only pique with this book was not the price, though it was considerable. I paid over fifty dollars for it on Amazon, yet considered it immensely worth it. My issue stems from the fact it does not contain an index. I bought it for research purposes and I found the lack of an index somewhat debilitating. However, I was not adverse to reading such a book cover to cover merely for enjoyment. At well over six hundred pages, it is not a quick read, but certainly a memorable one.

Like Pulling Teeth

Today I’d like to address a few commonly held myths that, whenever I come across them, never fail to annoy me. One of them is the myth that medieval peasants were all walking around with a mouthful of rotten teeth and stinking breath. Nothing could be further from the truth. Honestly, he probably had a better set than you do. The main reason for this was a lack of sugar. Your average peasant wasn’t attached with a diehard addiction to a bottle of carbonated sugar water such as the average modern in western civilization. In fact, aside from honey (a rare delicacy) or the occasional apple or wild berries, he may never have even tasted sugar. Sugar was so rare, it was used only in very sparing amounts by the wealthiest individuals.  In fact it was not widely distributed in Europe until the late medieval era and even then it was prohibitively expensive. You might live your entire life and never taste a gram of the stuff. The main problem with medieval teeth was the consumption of stone ground bread. The grit that found its way from stone querns used for grinding grain into bread, could be problematic and would eventually wear down even the best set of teeth over time. However, dental caries affected less that twenty percent of the population of medieval western Europe (and perhaps even less in earlier Europe, if skeletons of early Anglo Saxons in Britain have anything to say on the matter), compared to nearly ninety percent at the turn of the twentieth century and the estimate that dental caries affect over half of America’s teen population today. Also, halitosis was not considered something that must be born with patience. Mouthwashes did exist, containing such herbs as  sage, rosemary, pepper, mint, and parsley, many of which also have significant antibacterial properties, in addition to making the breath smell sweeter. Used enough over time, they may have also been very beneficial for oral health.  While they may not have used toothbrushes, it was common enough to clean the teeth with a piece of linen and some burnt rosemary

Now that we have cleared that up, the next myth to debunk would the question of medieval people being significantly shorter that they are today. This myth is supposed to have arisen due to the poor health and conditions in cities during the Industrial Revolution. Stephen Nicholas and Richard H, Steckel have this to say in Heights and Living Standards of English Workers During the Early Years of Industrialization 1775-1815:

“Falling height of urban- and rural- born males after 1780 and delayed growth spurt for 13- to 23-year olds, revealed declining living standards among English workers after the Industrial Revolution.”

According to Sebastian Payne, chief scientist for English Heritage, this myth may arise from the shorter doorways of the period that were designed to be heat efficient in winter. Also, children took longer to reach puberty then and continued growing for a longer span of time than they do today. Furthermore, researchers were astonished to discover relatively few skeletons who in life had suffered from polio or tuberculosis. In fact most of the people of this period would have been far hardier, not to mention more wiry and fit than those of modern western civilization today.

While I am about it, I should probably point out that a lack of bathing is another commonly held belief about the middle ages. Public baths, just as in the Roman era, were quite common. In fact, most brothels in London required their patrons to wash before doing the deed with their girls. Not everyone could afford to immerse themselves in a full bath, but even the very poor would wash themselves spit-bath style. Baths were so important to the Norse Rus’ under Prince Oleg in the early tenth century, access to the the city’s baths was one of their requirements for leaving Constantinople unscathed, as well a good supply of food and wine. In fact, the Rus’ were known to be fastidious, utilizing bathhouses and saunas (as they had in Scandinavia) and the Slavic banya, which is very similar and which I may be discussing soon in another article.

So there you have it. While medieval people may not have had standards up the the modern Scope-swishing, Febreze-spraying, germophobic modern, neither were they the beastly smelling, rotten-mouthed, not to mention short-statured people that popular culture has led us to believe.

 

 

Landvættir — Guardians of the Land

 

Modern Icelandic coin showing the four landvaettir such as drove away the warlock

The landvættir in Norse belief were guardians of the land. Among the Anglo Saxons they were called landwights. In Iceland they were the hulduófolk (the hidden people). Among the Irish and Scots they were the pixies, brownies and fairies, who like the landvættir inhabited barrows, mounds and stone circles. They were universally venerated among the Norse and the dragon prows on Viking ships were designed to frighten the landvættir on foreign shores where ever they might approach. The prows were removed when approaching their home shore however, so as not frighten their own vættir. Many a housewife would place a bowl of milk or porridge out for these land spirits as an offering, both for protection and as a thank you. Many still continue this tradition, both those who identify as heathen or neo-pagan or those older folk in the old country who still identify with their ancestral beliefs.

There is a story told in the Icelandic Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason of a warlock who was sent from Denmark to spy out the defenses of the coast of Iceland. The warlock took the shape of a whale and encountered many landvættir:

King Harald told a warlock to hie to Iceland in some altered
shape, and to try what he could learn there to tell him: and he
set out in the shape of a whale. And when he came near to the
land he went to the west side of Iceland, north around the land,
where he saw all the mountains and hills full of guardian-
spirits, some great, some small. When he came to Vapnafjord he
went in towards the land, intending to go on shore; but a huge
dragon rushed down the dale against him with a train of serpents,
paddocks, and toads, that blew poison towards him. Then he
turned to go westward around the land as far as Eyjafjord, and he
went into the fjord. Then a bird flew against him, which was so
great that its wings stretched over the mountains on either side
of the fjord, and many birds, great and small, with it. Then he
swam farther west, and then south into Breidafjord. When he came
into the fjord a large grey bull ran against him, wading into the
sea, and bellowing fearfully, and he was followed by a crowd of
land-spirits. From thence he went round by Reykjanes, and wanted
to land at Vikarsskeid, but there came down a hill-giant against
him with an iron staff in his hands. He was a head higher than
the mountains, and many other giants followed him.

The warlock soon discovered that Iceland was well fortified with landvættir! According to a poll taken in the recently, as many as fifty percent of Icelanders still believe in the possibility of the landvættir! Iceland, is one of the few nations that still holds to a fairly homogeneous way of thinking and relating to their ancestral land. Much of this has been lost in her sister Scandinavian countries and in countries such as England, Germany, the Netherlands, et al, areas where the old beliefs of the land spirits once held sway.

In Iceland the huldufólk are sometimes attributed as alfar (elves) and are said to dwell in mounds. The concept of them is so strong, that in 2004 the international aluminum producer Alcoa had to have a government official certify that the area in which they desired to build a smelting plant was free of archaeological mounds and artifacts, particularly those pertaining to the huldufólk . In addition, roads have had to be rerouted so as not to offend these landvættir.

In The Plague Casket, Ulf and Sophia have a conversation about the Norse-descended Ulf who is an Úlfhéðinn. and mistaken by a band of Bedouins for a djinn. Ulf compares the desert djinn to the land spirits of his own ancestral homelands.

Finally he said, “Among my people I am called Úlfhéðinn. Yet I am nothing ghostly like a djinn. I am flesh and blood like you.” He glanced sideways at her. “You who even questioned your own icons, are you superstitious like the Bedouin and the Sabians?”
“Even the churchmen in Constantinople might question if you are possessed of evil spirits.”
He laughed. “So I am possessed by an evil spirit now? Among my people, the being the Hagarenes call ‘al-jinn’ would be called the Huldufólk – the hidden people.”
“Why are they hidden?”
“They are landvættir. They are part of the land, the rocks, the trees. They are only hidden from those who do not know what they are seeing.”

Many cultures have traditions of various spirits. As I have already discussed, these spirits have evolved with the time. The hulduófolk still maintain their presence among their people, shunning Christian crosses and modern conventions such as electricity. In an age where our planet is under constant assault from pollution, trash and a general sense of wastefulness, perhaps we would all do better to honor the traditions of the hulduófolk.

Theophano — Murderess or Victim?

Did Theophano, empress of Romanos II and mother to the young emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII,  kill her husband as was popularly believed? The evidence is thin on the ground for the death of her first husband, Romanos and father to her children Basil, Constantine and Anna, yet she seems to be implicated in the death her her second husband Nikeophoros Phokas. When Romanos II died, Theophano was still in childbed, having delivered her baby daughter Anna not four days before. This does not preclude her from having a hand in his death, that is to say ordering an assassin to do so, but it does not seem likely as in that time, a woman’s children were considered orphans if they did not have a father, not counting the status of the mother. Also, with her husband dead, it would put her own status in a very precarious situation. Theophano ( not to be confused with my character Theophana, the fictionalized bastard sister of Basil II), the empress Theophano was said to be very beautiful, but her lowborn status as the daughter of a common innkeeper made her unpopular.

She has less an alibi in the regicide of Nikephoros however. While Theophano was still considered a great beauty, Nikephoros was certainly not. The Bishop Liutprand described him thus:

“…a monstrosity of a man, a pygmy, fat-headed and like a mole as to the smallness of his eyes; disgusting with his short, broad, thick, and half hoary beard; disgraced by a neck an inch long; very bristly through the length and thickness of his hair; in color an Ethiopian; one whom it would not be pleasant to meet in the middle of the night; with extensive belly, lean of loin, very long of hip considering his short stature, small of shank, proportionate as to his heels and feet; clad in a garment costly but too old, and foul-smelling and faded through age; shod with Scythian shoes; bold of tongue, a fox by nature, in perjury, and lying a Ulysses.”

Nikephoros II Phokas, though admittedly nothing like Bishop Liutprand’s unflattering description

Their marriage was likely a business arrangement, with Nikephoros playing the role of the regent for the young emperors till they should come of age. Who can say what schemes Theophano may have played, or what favors she owed Nikephoros, or for that matter, any of the Phokades? In any case, the marriage was to be celibate as per their agreement. He busied himself on the battlefield and his wife busied herself in the bedroom… with his nephew John Tzmiskes.

On the night of the murder, Theophano left the imperial bedchamber unguarded and unbolted, ostensibly to visit the young Bulgarian princesses who were to be betrothed to her sons. In reality they were hostages, but in those days this was a fine line. The conspirators then came up the stairs and attacked Nikephoros where he lay on a leopard skin (he was a notorious ascetic) and proceeded to attack him. One of these men was Michael Bourtzes, with a personal grudge against Nikephoros. He would later betray Basil as well.

For all Theophano’s scheming, it came to naught. After the murder of her second husband, Tzmiskes completely abandoned her. The patriarch Polyeuktos refused to perform the coronation unless Tzmiskes removed “the scarlet empress.” Power comes before love in the world of Byzantine politics and Tzmiskes had her exiled to Prinkipio one of the Prince Islands in the Sea of Mamara. (The Prince Islands were so called because they were a favorite place to exile disgraced nobility.)

After Theophano’s exile, a play mocking the event took place in the streets of the city. The actress playing the part of Theophano would sing this raunchy little ditty:

The blacksmith strikes his anvil, and he strikes his neighbor’s too

For the matchmaker and the princeling are standing at the door.

Theophano wanted her pie and the beauty ate it.

He who wore the coronation robe now donned a leather hide,

And if wintry weather comes upon him, he will wear his fur coat too

For men with shriveled cock and hand-sized arseholes

parade the murdering adulteress on the saddle of a mule.

The matchmaker appears to be the chamberlain, the princeling, Tzmiskes and the “beauty” reportedly no beauty, but the middle-aged princess Theodora, who got to eat the “pie”, the wealth and power as Tzmiskes’ consort, a position Theophano had reserved for herself. The last two lines take a swipe at the purported sexual proclivities of the patriarch Polyeuktos and the imperial chamberlain Basil Lakapenos, both of whom were eunuchs.

Nothing is known of how this murder affected the young emperors Basil and Constantine. In my third book, the working title of which is The Bone Goddess, I imagine a conversation between the emperor Basil and one of his Varangian Guard, Ulf Svensson who has been set to guard his tent for the night. In this piece, I pull back the veil of how Basil may have viewed the event as the child he would have been when his stepfather was assassinated. I draw upon Leo the Deacon’s description of the assassination:

Ulf turned his face back to the wind, feeling it burn his skin raw. The normally taciturn emperor did not usually speak so much about himself. It made Ulf uncomfortable. He was not one to speak much about himself either. Basil was silent again. When he spoke, it was as if he had delved into some inner corner of himself and forgotten that Ulf was even standing there. “I was scarcely eleven summers old that night. It comes to mind because it was a night much like this one. My mother had gone from the imperial chambers to the gynaikonitis for the evening She had given word that she was going to visit the two Bulgarian princesses. They were more hostages than guests who were to be given in marriage to my brother and I.

“He laughed again. “Perhaps if those marriages had gone through as arranged, we should not be standing here in the snow talking to one another now.” Basil flashed Ulf half a smile at the irony. “My stepfather stayed in his chambers. The light from his candles showed under his door till late in the night. He had not been allowed me to ride with him on a hunt that day. I was angry. I felt I should be treated as a man. It was I who had been born to be emperor. I went to his door several times, to give voice to my indignation, yet turned away again. I remembered the night being so cold, that even under all the blankets, I could not get warm. The snow fell outside as is not often seen in Constantinople. After the vespers hour, I finally approached the door again. I heard my stepfather screaming. He was crying aloud for the protection of the Virgin Theotokos. I pushed open his door. The candles were not at his desk any longer. They had been moved by the bed. My stepfather lay on the floor on a panther skin. He was unrecognizable. His assassins ranged themselves around him. One had kicked in his jaw. He had no teeth. They had been knocked out with the hilt of a sword thrust in his mouth. One eye had been gouged out. They had kicked him numerous times in the groin. John Tzmiskes himself sat on the bed and watched as his accomplices kicked and pummeled my stepfather. I stood there in the door. I could not move. Finally one ran him through.

“I closed the door and tiptoed away. Later, as dawn broke through the winter clouds, they paraded his head in the streets. John was proclaimed emperor. He and his men had killed Nikephoros. But it was my mother who had let them in. Had he guards posted properly at the door, he would never had been murdered. He trusted my mother. I think in his own way he loved her. She did not receive such gracious treatment from the new emperor. He in turn, then betrayed her. As soon as he had been crowned, he had her exiled. She deserved little better. Nikephoros they buried and placed an inscription on his tomb. ‘You conquered all but a woman.’” Basil scoffed and drained the last of his wine, now cold.

Indeed, it may have been his own mother’s supposed licentiousness and her devious desire to gain power that turned Basil against marriage. We have no record of his marriage or of any progeny, unusual for a man who was expected to bring a male heir to the throne of such a powerful realm. Instead he left it up to his brother and (nominally) co-emperor Constantine, who produced only three daughters. Constantine himself, gave little heed to the running of the empire and had more interest in pursuits such as hunting, dancing, partying and a general lavish lifestyle. It was far easier to leave the dull work of war and ruling to big brother.

In the meantime, Basil ruled a golden age of the Eastern Roman Empire, throwing off the dark sordid cloak of his predecessors, unencumbered by marriage or women like his mother.

 

 

 

Checkmate! Games and Gaming in Tenth Century Byzantium and Beyond

I have had to take a break from the blog because of family obligations. Now I am back with a series about games and entertainment.

In the second book of The Varangian Chronicles, the courtesan Cyra is rescued by an Antiochene court eunuch named Arpad after she has her tongue cut out. To alleviate the interminable boredom from which she suffers while hidden away in his quarters in the deepest part of the paláti (the palace in the center of Antioch) he brings her a game that he calls shantranj. She is both puzzled and delighted by this game.

From a Persian miniature depicting two shantranj players circa 1430

Over the past few days, Arpad had come and gone, each time bringing her things, usually flagons of broth. On the fifth day, he judged her mouth healed well enough that he brought her millet porridge, sweetened with honey and cardamom. She could only eat it in the tiniest spoonfuls, leaving her hungry and unsatisfied. With it, he had brought her an elegantly carved game. Each piece was made out of either ivory or ebony. The board was square and consisted of a pattern of dark and light wood blocks, arranged in an alternating pattern. She had seen one before. Once an official from Baghdad had brought such a marvel. He had called it shatranj al-muddawara. Arpad taught her how to play, moving the various pieces across the board. She was a lousy player and he won every time. She failed to see how a lowly pawn could prove the undoing of a king. Were not kings always more powerful than common soldiers? When had she gained anything from whispering simmering lust in the ear of a lowly spearman? It had been a marvelous distraction at first. She moved people across her board in a far different manner. Often Arpad’s duties kept him away all day and shantranj proved to be a welcome diversion when he returned.

Shatranj is a game from which our modern chess is derived. The rules and board have not changed drastically,though Arab manuscripts describe numerous variations and the roles and moves of the Queen and Bishop were different than they are today. Nancy Marie Brown in her book Ivory Vikings tells us that “The Arabic word for chess, shantranj, comes from the Persian chantrang, itself from the Sanskrit chanturanga. Chess seems to have arrived in Persia from India in the mid-500s. By 728 an Arabic poet wrote, ‘I keep you from your inheritance and from the holy crown so that, hindered by my arm, you remain a pawn among the pawns.’”

Nikephoros I, a ninth century Byzantine Emperor, sent word to the Abbasid Caliph, Hurun al-Rashid refusing to pay tribute according to a treaty agreed to by his predecessor Irene of Athens. He writes of Irene, that she must have “considered you as a rook and herself as a pawn.” This tells us that not only was shantranj very well known among the Byzantines at this time, but that the rules of the game had made its way into the vernacular.

 Some say that the game spread to Europe through the Islamic conquest of Spain, but there is a legend that Harun al-Rashid sent a set as a gift to Charlemagne. A set survives at the National Library of Paris that is Norman in origin. An incredibly valuable and beautiful version survives, though the collection is split between the National Museum of Scotland and the British Museum in London. They were found on the Scottish island of Lewis. Archaeologists think they were made in Trondheim, Norway. For more about the history behind these pieces, please read Nancy Maria Brown’s wonderful book, Ivory Vikings. However it got to Europe, it proved to be very popular and is now our most well known board game with chess champions the world over competing against one another.

Berserker from the Lewis Chessmen British Museum

The Arabs and the Byzantines in the East were not the only ones to have board games, nor are the chess pieces carved at Trondheim the only surviving example of gaming in Iron Age Scandinavia. Among the artifacts discovered on the Gokstad ship in Sweden was a taflborð with markings on it played like Nine Men’s Morris.

Dice have also played in almost every culture imaginable, though sometimes the knuckle bones of pigs were used. They were sometimes used for divination purposes, as even the runes are to this day.

Next time we will have a look at some of the more physical forms of games and entertainment that would have been enjoyed by the people in The Varangian Chronicles.

For further reading see:

Ivory Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown

A World of Chess; Its Development and Variations through Centuries and Civilization by Jean-Louis Cazaux, Rick Knowlton

Give me our thoughts below. I love hearing from you!

 

Cleanliness and Hygiene Among the Norse

Ibrahim Al-Tartushi, a tenth-century Arab traveler and merchant visited the Norse town of Hedeby in 950AD. He wrote “there is also an artificial make-up for the eyes, when they use it beauty never fades, on the contrary it increases in men and women as well.” One might well question whether this liner might not have been used in the manner of a football player’s eye black to shield the eyes from the intense sun especially seeing that Hedeby was a coastal town and many of them spent time on the water. Ibrahim ibn Yacoub seems insistent on the idea that it was used for cosmetic purposes, leaving us with an image of tenth century Viking men à la Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. They are depicted using kohl in this way in History Channel’s Vikings.

Constantinople had a very cosmopolitan environment, with people of many nations passing through and living there. Among those more exotic to the native Byzantines were the Varangians, people of Scandinavian or Scandinavian-descended Russian heritage. They brought many trade goods, including amber, honey and furs. According to The Russian Primary Chronicle, the Rus invaded Constantinople in 907 and as part of the payoff agreement, the use of the public baths was agreed upon.

The Norse made extensive use of saunas. Among the Rus, their bathhouses were called banyas. An Old East Slavic illuminated manuscript, the Radzivill Chronicle mentions the banya in the in the story of Princess Olga’s revenge for the murder of her husband, Prince Igor, by the Drevlians in 945 AD. When an emissary from the Drevlians came to Olga with an offer of marriage, “… Olga commanded that a bath should be made ready for them and said, ‘Wash yourselves and come to me.’ The bath-house was heated and the unsuspecting Drevlians entered and began to wash themselves. [Olga’s] men closed the bath-house behind them and Olga gave orders to set it on fire from the doors, so that the Drevlians were all burned to death” Incidentally, Olga was the grandmother of the Prince Vladimir who was given Basil II’s sister Ann in marriage in exchange for six thousand Varangian troops and a promise of conversion to Christianity. While the Varangian inhabitants of Constantinople and indeed most of the common native people as well, were unlikely to make use of the extensive cosmetics that highborn women such as Theophana would use, cleanliness was nevertheless highly valued, weakening the popular image of the medieval Scandinavian as dirty and unwashed.

The Abbot of St. Albans write with no little chagrin of the Danes who settled in England that “thanks to their habit of combing their hair every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles to be their mistresses.” Apparently even Anglo-Saxon women were crazy about a sharp dressed (Danish) man.

In The Serpentine Key, Freydis washes her hair in water scented with lavender flowers and this is a scent that Sven always associates with her:

Freydis placed the basket she had been carrying on the table. It was filled with meadow rue. There was almost little enough room for them both in the small space and she pushed past him, her hair smelling of lavender. If he had not known better, he might have thought he had never left Rodnya. A feeling like longing overcame him, drowning his senses in memories, threatening to make him forget why he was here.

Then as now, cleanliness was appreciated and enjoyed and we see that those who came before us, were perhaps not as smelly as we may have supposed.

Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 794-1241 by John Haywood

Face Paint: The Story of Makeup by Lisa Elridge

Cleanliness and Hygiene Among the Byzantines

Despite the Byzantine Orthodoxy that sought to minimize the Classical emphasis on grooming and beauty, citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire enjoyed primping. Certainly, the wealthy and noble women of the empire were concerned with their looks and Christianity cast no pall on the baths nor the sale of cosmetics and perfumes. Indeed, law in Constantinople decreed that the perfumers must set up their shops near the Great Palace so that the Emperor and his family might not have their olfactory senses assaulted by the common smells of the streets.

Furthermore, sweet-smelling scents was not merely the province of the elite. Because of the belief that health was made of a unique balance of humors, a sort of aromatherapy was engaged in which humors could be balanced by the smells of certain aromatic oils. Byzantine gardens, therefore, had areas set aside for aromatic flowers from which could be distilled some of the more fragrant oils.

Mirrors, tweezers and similar hygiene equipment would have been commonplace in a not only a Byzantine home, but a Varangian one as well. Numerous excavations have revealed hygiene implements from Viking-era graves including ear spoons, tweezers and dental cleaning tools.

To a certain degree my character Theophana is based on Basil II’s niece , the Empress Zoe, who was obsessed with beauty, even into her old age. In The Well of Urd, Theophana’s habits are described:

No longer young, she was still vain. She spent enough on costly unguents and cosmetics. She had royal jelly and saffron imported from Egypt at great expense to her husband. She also insisted on bathing once a month in wine, a habit he greatly detested. He did not know if it was the cosmetics or the way she had with those unearthly eyes, but men still managed to find her attractive and enthralling.

Michael Psellos wrote that Zoe turned her chambers into cosmetics laboratory in which she created cosmetics and ointments to preserve her beauty well into old age. Also in common with the fictional Theophana, Zoe was known for her numerous infidelities. Eventually, her husband, Romanos was drowned in his bath by assassins. Both historians John Skylitzes and Michael Psellos agree that Zoe was complicit in his death. Byzantine women did not use as heavy cosmetics as their earlier Roman counterparts. This was a good thing. A common cosmetic of Western Rome was white lead, used to make skin appear fashionably pale. It is also very toxic. For eye liner and darkening eye brows and lashes, kohl was very popular. Kohl was a dark-colored powder made of crushed antimony,(Stibnite. Unfortunately it is lead-derived and toxic) burnt almonds, lead, oxidized copper, ochre, ash, malachite and chrysocolla. Stibnite is initially gray, but turns black when it oxidizes. It was mixed into a fat base and applied with a rounded stick.

High born Byzantine women would keep their cosmetics in little jars called pyxides. These could be of pottery, glass or ivory, sometimes sumptuously carved as this example shows.

590px-Byzantine_-_Circular_Pyxis_-_Walters_7164_-_View_D
Byzantine pyxis Walters Art Museum [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Resources:

Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium AD 527-1204 By Lynda Garland

Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology by Barbara Hill

 

Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire by Marcus Rautman

 

 

If a Coin Could Speak

I was given this coin as a thoughtful gift by a friend a few months ago.  The coin does not come from exactly the same era as The Serpentine Key, but it is very close. In fact, the emperor depicted on the front is Constantine VIII, younger brother to Basil II, who is the Emperor in The Serpentine Key. Constantine co-ruled only nominally with his older brother Basil II. While Basil decided to throw off the oppressive regime of their great uncle the eunuch Imperial Chamberlain, Basil Lekapenos and take a serious interest in the affairs of state, Constantine showed no such inclination. He and his wife the Empress Helene continued the party lifestyle. It was one that ill prepared Constantine for sole rulership when Basil died in 1025. With Constantine’s daughter, Zoe marrying Romanos III Aryros and producing no issue, it spelled the end of the Macedonian dynasty and all the work Basil II had gone to to ensure that the Byzantine Empire would remain financially stable.

This coin would not have been very valuable in its time. It is not a gold solidii. But it would have been much used. Perhaps it passed through the hands of soldiers, merchants and  Arab traders.  Did it buy a cup of wine? A loaf of bread? A night with a girl in a brothel? I can only imagine that if it could talk, what a lot of stories it could tell.

At the time of Basil II’s death, the Empire stretched in the north to nearly the entire circumference of the Black Sea (then the Euxine Sea) to Crete in the Mediterranean in the south. To the west it encompassed Croatia and the southern end of Italia; in the east it bordered Syria, still maintaining Antioch and bordering Armenia, Iberia and Mesopotamia. While not as vast as the earlier Western Roman Empire before the division, the empire Basil left was stable. Her borders were secure, her people well cared for, her finances in order. Then began a slow decline for the Empire, till the sack of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453.

This coin could have been carried to Baghdad by a Syrian pepper merchant like Ahmed al-Zayeeb.. Perhaps it was spent on a cup of wine by a Varangian Guardsman, like Sven. They were notorious drinkers and a nickname for them was the “Emperor’s wine skins”. Perhaps a coin much like this went for a length of blue wool, for a cloak for Ulfric as described in The Serpentine Key:

Freydis fingered some blue woolen cloth for sale at the cloth merchants. It would make a fine cloak for Ulfric. Winter would be soon closing in. While it was not as harsh as in the Northlands, he was in dire need of a new cloak. The fabric was fine. She ran her fingers over the coin in her hand, feeling the raised profiles of the two Emperors, wondering how much she could haggle the cloth merchant down.

From The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

If only my coin could tell its own story. In the meantime, I must be content to weave my own.

Sorcery and Magic Part Four

Magic in the Christian context I n Constantinople is slightly harder to define, though not by much. If you think of magic as a belief system whereupon the order of things can be influenced by human will alone, there is much in Christianity and especially Byzantine Orthodox Christianity with its icons and incense that fits the bill nicely. The use of icons began to be seen as a form of idolatry and in the eight century, iconoclasm saw the destruction of many of these images of art. A second iconoclasm occurred in the ninth century. The people loved their icons however and iconography was eventually restored. Items such as amulets were popular to protect a mother during pregnancy for example, or worn to ward off the “evil-eye”, though they were frowned upon by the Church hierarchy. It was suspected that the Empress Zoe was indulging in some sort of pagan ritual in her chambers, while pretending to distill sweet oils for perfumes and cosmetics.

As with any culture, when a religion such as Christianity is introduced, it begins with the aristocracy and only slowly filters down to the lower strata of society as folk wisdom and folk magic continue to be practiced long after a nation has been “converted”. This was evident in Anglo-Saxon England as witnessed by the endurance of the old gods in things such as place names, the days of the week and even our own planet. It certainly was evident in Kiev, for though Vladimir converted to Orthodox Christianity, and outlawed the old Slavonic and Norse gods in an attempt to unify his people through religion, he failed to eradicate the old ways completely and in fact they continued to remain vibrant for the Russian people as late as the fifteenth century.

Henry Maguire writes in Byzantine Magic:

Practices like exorcism, blessing, or even the major sacraments could be viewed and used on the popular level in precisely the same ways as the magical operations designed to manipulate the material conditions of human life while prayers and rituals dedicated to saints who would be used in specific circumstances could be thought to create similarly efficacious alterations in human relations t those of the magical practices described above.

Emperor Manuel I Comnenus utilized astrology for his own purposes in the twelfth century. The Byzantine historian Anna Comnene, daughter of the Emperor Alexios, commented at length in her Alexiad on the use of astrologers and prophesies. Now these (astrologers) observe the hour of the birth of the persons about whom they intend to prophesy, and fix the cardinal points and carefully note the disposition of all the stars, in short they do everything that the inventor of this science bequeathed to posterity and which those who trouble about such trifles understand. We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgment upon its devotees. She takes care to distance herself, not wishing to impinge on her reputation or imply that she (God forbid!) recommends that anyone ought to visit an astrologer for personal reasons.

Resources: Byzantine Magic by Henry Maguire

Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen Through Contemporary Eyes By Deno John Geanakoplos

History of the Byzantine Empire from DCCXVI to MLVII By George Finlay

 

Sorcery and Magic Part Three

Seiðr was associated with spinning and weaving as were the Norns themselves. This may have also been one of the reasons why it was considered unmanly for Norse men to practice, as fiber arts were the domain of women. As Thorsteinn noted when he happened upon Málfríðr, Sigga and Olga in the marsh near Kiev:

He observed the three, a little girl, a young woman and an old crone, and the spinning and the wool in various stages of work and his face creased into a half-frozen smile. “I do believe I have wandered down to the very roots of the Great Tree and found the three Norns at work, spinning the fates of the world.”

Freydis explains the concept to Theophana in The Serpentine Key:

Theophana frowned. “I do not understand these words that you use. Orlog and Urðr .” The witch placed her hand on the door. She stroked the sleek surface, letting her fingers linger as if on a lover, before she answered.

“Orlog and Urðr are fate of mortals and immortals alike. But they are not the same. Orlog is immovable. Urðr, you move and shape through your own actions, like a fly’s struggle on a web. You may influence your own path which is Urðr , but you may not change Orlog, which is primal, unchanging, never ceasing.”

Nornsweaving

Urðabrunnr (Urðr’s Well) is located at the root of the World Tree, Yggdrasil and Urðr, being one of the Norns, controls the destinies of all mankind. The Norns are three in number and in addition to Urðr (That Which Is) are her two sisters, Verðandi (That Which Is Becoming ) and Skuld (That Which Should Become) There was no concept of the future in Norse eschatology. The future is ever changeable, depending upon what Urðr deals you. The only thing you may not change is Ørlög or primeval law. It is Urðr or (Wyrd in the Anglo-Saxon) that the seiðkona seeks to influence. Ørlög and Urðr can be likened to weaving. Any Norse woman in charge of a farmstead or indeed any common farmwife with the borders of the Byzantine Empire would understand that you have warp threads, which remain unchangeable and that weft threads or Urðr are what we can change in our lives and what give the weaving its pattern and color. The Norns were thought to influence the destiny of a child at birth and this concept can be seen in such well-known stories as the story of Sleeping Beauty and the fairies who are invited to weave a positive destiny for the child. Here too, the fiber arts make their appearance in the form of a spindle, which certainly takes us back to the Indo-European concept of our destinies as a thread. The Valkyries too are depicted as “weird-sisters” in Njall’s Saga, weaving the fates of men, though they thread and weight their looms with gore:

“See! warp is stretchedValkyrie
For warriors’ fall,
Lo! weft in loom…

“This woof is woven
With entrails of men,
This warp is hardweighted
With heads of the slain,
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom ironbound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our warwinning woof.