Tag: The Serpentine Key

Slavery and Servitude in the Byzantine Empire

Slaves carrying a noblewoman on a litter

We often don’t think as much about slavery in the Eastern Roman Empire as we do about it in the Western, but the fact is, it existed, though perhaps not to the extent as its western predecessor,  at least after the middle and late periods. In the medieval period, enslaving Christians was forbidden and as many of the Slavic countries converted to Christianity, this impinged upon the source for slaves.  Before this occurrence, many Slavs were brought down the Dnieper by Norse-Russian traders. According to Youval Rotman in his  Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, the Greek word “δοῦλος” (doulos) was synonymous with “σκλάβος” (sklavos), from the root word for Slav.  Slavs were often the unfortunate ones sold in the slave markets of Constantinople.

He headed towards the Mese, wending this way and that, making a slow progress through the throngs that crowded around the stalls. Some had coin; many did not but loitered anyway to look at the fine things that were brought from afar. A line of slaves stood in the hot sun, their wrists shackled before them. Their sun-burnt skin and clothes trimmed in red thread marked them as Slavs. They were unused to the heat and baking sun of Constantinople and their faces bore a sheen of sweat. 

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

Though castration as at various times outlawed, it was practiced widely and a castrated male slave could command three times the amount of an intact boy. For this reason, parents often had their younger male children castrated, in the hopes they might find places in upper class homes or perhaps even the Great Palace. Often, however, the sad reality was that many of these children ended up as catamati – male prostitutes. However, eunuchs, both slave and free represented a category of positions that often were only open to them, often on governmental and imperial positions.

In the Serpentine Key, Nikolas was just such a eunuch who had been castrated by his parents in the hopes he would end up serving in the Great Palace. He did indeed secure a position as a Keeper of the Doors, but at a great price and his tragic story was only one of many of his social status.

As in most societies, slaves could not have any ownership of their own, nor give evidence in court. However by the ninth century this had begun to change and they began to gain some modicum of property rights. By the end of the medieval period, slavery had largely declined to the point that few actually owned slaves any longer.

Byzantine slavery was largely an urban phenomenon and few rural landholders could afford many slaves. In the Great Palace, those serving within its walls were both hired servants and enslaved persons.  Many wealthy people provided for the care of their slaves after their death and for the education of their children. There was also a special church service specifically for the manumission of slaves.

In The Secret Testament the crumbling rural estate that Sophia inherits does come with some slaves as well as hired help. They knew only the farm as their home and would have been hard pressed to begin a life anywhere else.  It is this continuum that Ulf recognizes when he lingers over the possibility of selling the farm in Anatolia after Sophia’s death. A steward would have been a high ranking servant but never a slave, considered trusted enough to oversee the running of a farm, especially in the absence of the owner, in this case, Ulf.

The farm seemed to be thriving under Lukyan’s stewardship. It was hard to find an honest steward. He had stood one last time looking out over the land before he had ridden away. Micah was right. He came here not just to look over things, but to feed a tightening band of melancholy. He should have set it aside after all these years, but he could not. It had occurred to him several times to sell the farm, pay the servants and disperse them, giving freedom to the two or three slaves who were still part and parcel with the property. He was scarcely ever there anyway. He knew if he did so, however, he was sending all of them away from their home and everything familiar to them. Also, there would be a finality to it, he could not bear. It would be as if in doing so, he closed the door to everything he and his family had shared there. He languished in indecision.

The Secret Testament by G.S. Brown

Often slavery is equated in the modern mind with people from Africa, but as the Byzantines primarily enslaved those whom they captured in war and these were often people to the north, east and west of them, African slavery is rather unlikely in the scope of their civilization. Slaves mentioned are almost always sourced from the Slavic lands, though some are mentioned in the sources as being captured in war from the Saracens with whom the Byzantine were at war.

In rural areas, there was a system somewhat akin to feudalism, but might also be compared to the system of sharecropping in the rural south. These people leased the land they farmed and so technically were not enslaved, but were likely so connected to the land, that they were never able to leave.

Slavery, like castration and many other things in Byzantine culture, was questioned, especially in a Biblical context, but it never entirely went away. It is also likely that because of the common practice of bound tenancy (basically serfdom) it was considered to be technically not slavery in practice, many would not have considered themselves as slave owners. Just as child labor and many other forms of slavery continued in the western world long after slavery had supposedly been abolished and in face, the practice of white slavery continued well after abolition, Byzantines could look the other way at whatever might not be in practice considered true slavery.

The Varangian Guard

Varangian returning home

In the Varangian Chronicles, a family of Varangian Guardsmen become entangled in some way with the secrets of the Brotherhood of Lampros.

 The Varangian Guard were one of the most elite guard units of history comparable to the Praetorian Guard and the Janissaries.  While Varangians as an ethnic group had long served as mercenaries in the Byzantine military, the Guard itself was established in 988 the year Vladimir of the Rus officially became Emperor Basil’s brother-in-law and sent 5,000 of his finest warriors to Constantinople. To join required at three pounds of gold. Ethnically, the composition was made up of Rus’ (Russians) and Scandinavians. As time went on, however, more and more men from England joined the Guard, as Anglo-Saxons became disenfranchised in their own country in the Norman Conquest of 1066. By the late eleventh century, Anglo-Saxon Guardsmen were common enough that a traveler to Constantinople might hear English spoken there.

In the beginning, a Guardsman’s weapons and equipment were supplied by himself. Often his weapons might include the broad “Dane axe” for which they were famous.  They might also have brought a sword with them. Armor of any kind was likely to be ring mail, but they might also have adopted the lamelar armor common to the Byzantine infantry. The long mail shirt they were known for had a Scandinavian name –  hauberk. The arms and equipment of the Varangian Guard is informational enough to be its own blog post and maybe I will address that at another time. 

The Varangians as a regiment saw their first battle under Basil II at Chrysopolis against Kalyros Delphinas and again at Abydos in which the rebel Bardas Phokas was killed.  The rebels could not have anticipated the fury of the Northmen that Basil had brought upon them, but the reputation of his northern mercenaries quickly became legendary and a force to be reckoned with. Combined with Basil’s use of Greek Fire, Phokas’ own troops were quickly defeated.

Phokas’ dromons could not come so far onto shore, as they had a much deeper draft.
They sat in the water, as shallowly as they dared. Basil’s  dromons were waiting for them. Sven
saw the great siphons on the prow of the lead imperial ship. Phokas’ helmsmen turned the prow on the  dromon. Sven stood on the deck of the longship as his men pulled at the oars, directing
the vessel into the narrow alley of water. The Rus ships with their narrow draft, easily navigated
the shore and jumping out, the men pushed the ships onto the beach. The imperial dromon
continued to bear on Phokas’ warships, daring the shallows. The great brass lion set firmly on the deck had a mouth wide and gaping as if it roared. The siphon extended from its mouth. The naval officer aboard the lead ship called aloud to his men, commanding them to bring the great siphons about. The lion’s heads were lit up in the night from the flames spewing from their
mouths, and the dark of the night was made blindingly bright as the flames snaked over the
water, dancing on the surface in a demonic frenzy.

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

Wherever Basil went, his Varangians went with him and their presence was an indication of his presence on the battlefield.  There were shouts of “The Emperor is on the field!” and even “The Emperor’s wineskins are here!” (One of the names for the Varangians was “wineskins” as they were given to prodigious drinking.) They also had a fondness for the capitol’s brothels and the chariot racing and were known to put down their substantial wages on both. Sven himself was known to frequent the brothels and he was certainly a frequent presence in the tavernas. 

After leaving Ahmed, Sven stopped at a taverna. His thirst for wine had begun to consume
him. Throwing a coin to the taverna keeper, he took his cup of wine to a darkened corner of the
taverna and sat in his usual careless manner, feet propped on a nearby bench. He needed to think. Sipping the wine, he thought about how all he had learned fit together.

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

The Varangians had their own churches as well (after all the Imperial Guardsmen had to show some piety towards  the same God of the emperor whom they served). Likely many of them had been baptized prior to their arrival in Constantinople, yet there were still many who would have clung to their old ways. 

The leader of the Varangians was the Akolouthos who was usually Greek. There was at least one who was Norse, Nambites, but it seems that the Byzantines preferred to leave matters of leadership in the hands of their own men. 

As I mentioned before, there was a substantial fee for joining and a man newly arrived in the empire might serve for a while in the regular imperial army, working to earn the amount necessary for joining the Varangian Guard.  In The Secret Testament Þórsteinn has the gold but not the physical constitution for it after an injury in an encounter with Penchenegs on the Dnieper disqualifies him from joining

Þórsteinn was in a foul mood. He had been in Constantinople for two months now. He
had been slightly overawed by the city. It was nothing like Kiev or Novgorod. Where the Rus’
cities were largely built of the timbers that were plentiful in the forests, Constantinople was
mostly stone. It had taken quite a lot of getting used to. He had recovered his strength since he
had been here, but he still walked with a limp. He had not been successful at concealing it when
he had reported to the Zeuxippos Barracks to announce that he wished to join the Guard. He was skilled at handling weaponry, and he had his three pounds of gold. But the commanding officer there had noticed the limp. It was no good to try to pretend otherwise. He was rejected. His disappointment was profound.

The Secret Testament by G.S. Brown

The Guard’s services were utilized for police duties within the capitol , as well as enforcing revenue collection. This made them quite unpopular with the citizens and the fact that whatever Greek was spoken was tinged with the accent of their northern homeland, that their culture and mannerisms were different, set them apart even in a city that was a cosmopolitan and diverse as Constantinople. To many people, no matter how many Varangian churches were built, the Rus had a tinge of the pagan and barbarian about them.

As time went on the Guard became distinctly less Scandinavian or even Germanic as less and less men from England joined and the reputation that Guard had earned as the Empire’s fiercest fighting forced waned. They were no longer held to the same standards, nor did they have Basil II to lead them, a man so respected by his men he was called “The Father of the Army”. By the time Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Guard was no longer a recognizable entity. Perhaps if the weak and ineffectual Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos had the advantage of Basil’s bold men sent from Rus and Scandinavia, Constantinople might never have fallen into the hands of Mehmed II.

The Black Sea, Jewel of Eurasia

The modern coast of the Black Sea

Constantinople lay at the  mouth of  Bosporus, leading to the Black Sea, surely one of her secrets to her expansive hold over commerce. Across from the Black Sea lay what is today Ukraine, but at the time was a constantly shifting arrangement of borders between the Varangian Rus, the nomadic Penchnegs and the ever opportunistic Khazars.  The Byzantine empire did business and war with all of them at one point or another.

Between the Black Sea and home, lay the Dnieper River for the Varangian traders that made their way  to and from the empire with their wares, furs, slaves, honey and many other  things. 

In The Serpentine Key, Sven sets sail across this sea on his mission with Vladimir of Kiev in a small, two-man boat. 

This was to be a clandestine operation. No need to leave from the main shipping area on the Sea. The boat was similar to the rigged faerings he was used to from back home, easily manned by two men, especially if one sailed close to shore. The waters themselves were usually calm, even at this time of the year. The Scythians called these waters Axinos – black. The Greeks called it the Euxine Sea.

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

The Black Sea has not the biodiversity of flora and fauna of an area such as the Mediterranean.  However there are at least three species of dolphins living in the Black Sea as well as jellyfish a small type of shark, crabs, mussels and scallops. There is speculation that because of a lower layer of water saturated with hydrogen sulfide and that beneath this is a completely different world fed by an underwater river originating in the Bosporus. 

in 2018 one of the oldest intact shipwrecks ever found was confirmed at the bottom of the Black Sea. The Bronze age relic was dated to 2,400 years old and found at a depth of 2,000 meters.  It has been likened to the ship on a vase depicting Homer’s Odyssey.  The researchers said they would likely find items such as copper (a hot commodity at this time) and amphorae of wine.

At the height of the Byzantine Empire, the Black Sea continued to be an important avenue for trade and chief among these trades were slaves. As Islam did not allow the enslaving of other Muslims and Christianity did not allow the enslaving of other Christians, the prime victims for enslavement were the pagan Slavs. In fact, the name Slav is commonly cited as the origin of the word “slave” so often were these unfortunate people enslaved by both Christians and Muslims. As the Slavic tribes gradually fell under the sway of Christianity, they became less and less fodder for enslavement with the Christian empires, but many Europeans were still being captured and enslaved by Ottoman Turks as late as the nineteenth century. 

Because of the location of the Black Sea, it was not only an avenue to the Dnieper and Rus’ (now modern day Ukraine and Russia) but also a way to the East, especially the Levant. Commerce was alive and well and thriving throughout the time of the Byzantine Empire and it is safe to say that Black Sea more than helped to facilitate this as maritime travel was cheaper and faster than overland. 

Greek Fire being used against the Rus in 941

But just as the Black Sea brought silk and spices to the people of Constantinople it also brought violence.  in 941 the Rus, originally immigrants from Scandinavia,  launched a series of attacks with 1,000 ships (which must have been an incredible sight)  upon Constantinople and were only repelled with the aid of Greek Fire.  Though they were defeated, the Rus led another larger force in 944 and this time the Byzantines elected to settle the difference with trade agreements rather than prolonged warfare. The Rus’ were notorious for the brutality of their warfare, nailing the heads of captives and crucifying others. Clearly, the Byzantines felt they would make better trading partners than enemies and in the decades that followed there was a steady stream of commerce down the Dnieper into the Black Sea and the heart of the Empire. However, except for Varangian Guard, they were specifically forbidden from carrying weapons in the city or having too many of them in the city at one time. The Empire was not ready to go toe to toe with these fierce warriors again soon.  In 988, Vladimir the Great of Kiev became a Christian and the Emperor’ brother-in-law, effectively changing the Nordic/Slav culture north of the Black Sea forever. 

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 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.

Sorcery and Magic Part Two

The Saga of Erik the Red is probably the most comprehensive information today about Norse seeresses.

There was in the settlement the woman whose name was Thorbjorg. She was a prophetess (spae-queen), and was called Litilvolva (little sybil). She had had nine sisters, and they were all spae-queens, and she was the only one now living.

It was written in a time when Christianity had come to Iceland and the old gods were becoming only a memory. Thorbjorg is obviously a very well respected woman. Like many of her ilk, she travels from farmstead to farmstead and is very lavishly received. We are told in great detail what she wears and this is obviously very important as one of the items is a cat-skin cloak. The cat was the sacred animal of Freyja, the originator of seiðr. We are not told what the talismans were, but perhaps they were rune staves.seeress

Now, when she came in the evening, accompanied by the man who had been sent to meet her, she was dressed in such wise that she had a blue mantle over her, with strings for the neck, and it was inlaid with gems quite down to the skirt. On her neck she had glass beads. On her head she had a black hood of lambskin, lined with ermine. A staff she had in her hand, with a knob thereon; it was ornamented with brass, and inlaid with gems round about the knob. Around her she wore a girdle of soft hair, and therein was a large skin-bag, in which she kept the talismans needful to her in her wisdom. She wore hairy calf-skin shoes on her feet, with long and strong-looking thongs to them, and great knobs of latten at the ends. On her hands she had gloves of ermine-skin, and they were white and hairy within.

In Erik the Red’s Saga the writer describes in detail the lavish preparation for the arrival of the spae-queen, Thorbjorg:

It was a custom of Thorbjorg, in the winter time, to make a circuit, and people invited her to their houses, especially those who had any curiosity about the season, or desired to know their fate… He invited, therefore, the spae-queen to his house, and prepared for her a hearty welcome, as was the custom wherever a reception was accorded a woman of this kind. A high seat was prepared for her, and a cushion laid thereon in which were poultry-feathers.

During the evening the tables were set; and now I must tell you what food was made ready for the spae-queen. There was prepared for her porridge of kid’s milk, and hearts of all kinds of living creatures there found were cooked for her. She had a brazen spoon, and a knife with a handle of walrus-tusk, which was mounted with two rings of brass, and the point of it was broken off.

One thing that was very important were the women who were able to chant the “wyrd” songs or fate songs. “Wyrd” was an archaic term referring to fate. We see it in Shakespeare’s “weird sisters”, in his tragic play, Macbeth, the three witches take on the persona of the three Norns of Norse myth. Wyrd became corrupted as “weird” in modern English, to mean something strange and unknown, which when you think about it, is fitting as our fates are pretty strange and unknown to us.

And when the (next) day was far spent, the preparations were made for her which she required for the exercise of her enchantments. She begged them to bring to her those women who were acquainted with the lore needed for the exercise of the enchantments, and which is known by the name of Weird-songs, but no such women came forward. Then was search made throughout the homestead if any woman were so learned.

We see that in Erik the Red’s Saga, that the old ways and the old songs are already becoming lost as Christianity takes hold in Iceland. Gudrid may well be the last generation to know how to chant the spells necessary for spae-magic to take place.

Then answered Gudrid, “I am not skilled in deep learning, nor am I a wise-woman, although Halldis, my foster-mother, taught me, in Iceland, the lore which she called Weird-songs.”

“Then art thou wise in good season,” answered Thorbjorg; but Gudrid replied, “That lore and the ceremony are of such a kind, that I purpose to be of no assistance therein, because I am a Christian woman.”

Then answered Thorbjorg, “Thou mightest perchance afford thy help to the men in this company, and yet be none the worse woman than thou wast before…”

Thorkell thereupon urged Gudrid to consent, and she yielded to his wishes. The women formed a ring round about, and Thorbjorg ascended the scaffold and the seat prepared for her enchantments. Then sang Gudrid the weird-song in so beautiful and excellent a manner, that to no one there did it seem that he had ever before heard the song in voice so beautiful as now.

In The Serpentine Key, Freydis is a seiðkona. Seiðkona means literally “woman of seething”. Freydis walks the nine worlds, speaking to the spirits and sometimes bringing back messages from the gods. In my writing, I leave the experience up to the interpretation of the reader. Did she have a real transcendental experience? Did she become high from the henbane and hempr (old Germanic word for cannabis) seeds thrown on the fire?

She settled the distaff between her thighs as if to begin spinning. But instead of wool, the end of the staff instead carried upon it a carved, whorled head. Instead of spinning, Freydis settled herself on the high platform, the catskin cloak warm over her shoulders. The ends of her fingers tingled and something deep in the pit of her stomach stirred, like a restless animal just beginning to awaken. The beat of the drum thrummed within her. The animal inside was coiled now. Watchful. Waiting. She was ready.

In The Bone Goddess, Freydis’ granddaughter Sigga learns seiðr under the tutelage of the same volva as Freydis did. Málfríðr is by this time, very old. The real Málfríðr was the mother of Vladimir Prince of Kiev and the Russian Primary Chronicle records that she lived to be over a hundred years old and even after the introduction of Christianity, was brought out from her cave (where she was presumably exiled) and called upon to prophesy. Was old Málfríðr (Malusha in the Slavic) actually a seiðkona? We may never know. The Russian Primary Chronicle tells us that she was a bondwoman and it seems unlikely that as powerful and important a woman as a seiðkona would be in bondage.

Seeresses were sometimes viewed with something more like fear. It is important to remember that there was sometimes a differentiation between seiðr and Spa. The spakona was more often likely to do good with her magic; the seiðr seeress was sometimes looked on with suspicion, perhaps because her practice involved sexual elements, though this attitude may have come about more recently with the advent of Christianity. Sometimes they were looked upon as evil, faring forth in the form of a fylgia, most often an animal or bird, intent on doing harm. The Voluspa from the Poetic Edda tells of one such sorceress:

Heid, they named her, who sought their home

The wide-seeing witch, in magic wise;

Minds she bewitched that were moved by magic

To evil women, a joy she was.

Since anything we have about seiðr today is written from a Christian perspective, after the arrival of the religion to Scandinavia, we may never know.

Resources:

Seidr: The Door is Open: Working with Trance Prophesy, the High Seat and Norse Magic by Katie Gerard

Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism by Jenny Blain

Seed of Yggdrasil by Maria Kvilhaug See also the author’s excellent web site: http://freya.theladyofthelabyrinth.com/

Poison Apothecary Part Two

Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) has an interesting and varied past. On the one hand it has been used in medicine. The Byzantine physician, Paul of Aegina (625 – 690) used a decoction of henbane mandrake, opium, and wine as an anesthetic before surgery. In any case, henbane was well know throughout Europe and not just for magic. It was an effective poison. Some say second only to aconite in the poisoners’ arts. Etymologically, henbane has nothing to do with hens at all. In old English, hen had to do with death and in fact, the plant was once called henbell.

It is probably associated with witchcraft more than any other plant. A very important Norsewoman, likely a volva or Seihdkona was found in a rich burial in Fyrkat Denmark. Among her grave good was a pouch containing the seeds henbane and cannabis, both with mind-altering properties. However it is the henbane that has been associated with the sensation of flying that it gave to witches who used it. Often it was combined with mandrake, datura and nightshade, themselves all highly toxic plants. Even henbane petals rubbed against the skin have been reported to have caused an experience akin to floating of flying.

Every party of henbane contains alkaloids such as scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine. The seeds are slightly less toxic, which is why the lady of Fyrkat may have been carrying those in her pouch for magic work and not compounds of the deadlier part of the plant.

Safe to say, henbane was as well known to the Byzantines as it was to the Norse. Prior to the use of hops, it was used in brewing beer. It still is to this day. It is called Pilsenkraut Among the Byzantines as stated above, was used in medicine. There can be no doubt it was favored by both when it came time to rid oneself of a particularly obnoxious enemy.

One was always wise to taste carefully anything proffered by anyone that one could not altogether trust, as Sven does in The Serpentine Key:

Sven waited until the chamberlain took a sip and then he too took a tiny sip of the wine testing it on his tongue for any sign of bitterness of henbane or the throat tingling that was said to come with aconite. It did not taste of poison, but then he knew plenty of artful concoctions that were tasteless and odorless. One did not long reside in the Imperial City without a good education of the mixtures that were at the disposal of the poisoners’ arts. He took a slightly larger sip. It had a faint note of oak. The former chamberlain detected his appreciation of it. “That is a fine wine. My nephew has confiscated my lands and my wealth, but I still have a modest allotment of the wines from my vineyards brought to me weekly by boat. This, however, is foreign wine, from the Negev. I am to be treated like a member of the imperial family in my libations, it seems, if not my habitation.” He settled himself in the chair and closed his eyes, as if nothing else mattered except this wine.

“Did the last emperor have such fine wine before he died?” Sven commented acerbically.

“You wound me. I had no hand in the death of the Emperor John. Some say he dug his own grave with too much food and too much drink. It was no doing of mine. Indeed, even thought I knew whose hand was in it, I would not have stayed it. He was far too eager to halt my climb to power. Still,” and he chuckled “It would be an amusing joke, would it not, for me to assassinate the assassin?” He plucked a grape from the bowl and chewed on it thoughtfully. “I do have poison at hand however. I kept it for my own use, should my exile prove to be too unbearable. If you are to kill me, I would prefer that you poison me. Knives and such make an extraordinary mess.”

We have no evidence to link the Imperial Chamberlain Basilios Lakepenos with any of the deaths around him. But as a powerful man with much to lose, he might have been quite willing to turn to poison to eliminate his equally powerful enemies.

Sources: An Analytical Dictionary of the English Etymology, an Introduction by Anatoly Liberman

Writer’s Guide to Poisons

Big Bad Book of Botany by Michael Largo

Vikingaliv (Viking Lives) by Dick Harrison and Kristina Svensson

 

Byzantine Cuisine – Drink and Tavernas

An example of a Roman thermopolium

The poor of the cities were often discouraged from cooking in their own homes, often shabby flats, for fear of fire. For this purpose, Roman fast food joints known as thermopolia, sprang up. Here common people could obtain a hot meal for a cheap price. The tavernas also catered to the common people. Here you could buy alcohol as well as a hot meal. For a bronze follis or two you could obtain salted fish, beans and coarse black bread, washed down with cheap acidic wine. If you had a few extra folles you might also be able to obtain the attentions of the dancing girls, as prostitution was often one of the services offered by the tavernas, in spite of the supposed prudery of the times. An effort was made to limit the time tavernas could be open to prevent mischief especially on Sundays and during Lent. Even so, tavernas continued to offer diversions such as dice, singing, cock fights and of course sexual entertainment.

If you had enough coin, you could afford a specialty drink such as phouska. Those who catered to foreign tastes, might offer the drinks of their choice. The Norse Varangians from Russia and Scandinavia as well as Anglo Saxons, disenfranchised after the Norman Conquest in England, favored the strong fermented honey drink, mead and so as men from the northern lands flooded Constantinople in search of a position in the famed Varangian Guard, honey mead came to be a popular offering in the tavernas. A Varangian might have lingered for a while in such a taverna, as Sven does here:

Sven found himself again in a taverna as the late afternoon light lengthened the shadows. He hurt all over. He turned again to wine for solace, as well as a favorite past time of his: listening to the conversations of others. The taverna keeper lit the oil lamps swaying from the rafters on their chains. Sven basked in the glow they cast over the well-worn wooden tables and benches. He liked tavernas. They stank of wine and reeked of the odor of unwashed humanity. But they were pleasant places overall for people watching. Two infantrymen played at dice in a corner for bronze coins. Men creaked over the wooden floor boards, rattling the tables and making the wine slosh in his cup. Behind him, three men sat down at a bench opposite the door. Without looking at them, he could tell they were better educated and better paid than most of the men within the confines of the establishment. He could tell that one man was quite a bit younger than the others, but higher in status. They all spoke a higher dialect of Greek, not the peasant variety spoken by most others there. They ordered better wine than he himself drank. It was phouska, a drink flavored with cumin, anise, fennel and thyme. It had never been to his taste. He closed his eyes and sipped his own harsh wine. 

The ambassador, Liutprand of Cremona mentioned in a previous post who objected to garum,  also did not care for Byzantine wine which he described as “mixed with pitch, resin, and plaster was to us undrinkable”.  Perhaps the ambassador was merely difficult to please.   He must have been alone in his assessment, as Byzantine wines were much favored by Western Europeans.  He may have been referring to Retsina, a type of wine that got its unique flavor from sealing the wine jars with pine resin.

Next we will look at dessert, everyone’s favorite! Let me know your thoughts below.

Sources:

The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona (Medieval Texts in Translation) Liudprand (Bishop of Cremona)

Tastes of Byzantium : The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire by Andrew Dal

Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire by Marcus Rautman