Slavic Warrior Women, pt. 13: Olga of Kyiv

Link to my full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy: Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore: https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787

Are you ready for this? Because you should get ready. After presenting this section of my dissertation, my enthusiasm prompted one of my committee members to ask, “Now, I just have to know...what exactly is your opinion on violence?”

I may have referred to Olga’s revenge at one point as “spectacular,” by which I meant a spectacle...but also, yes, a little bit of the colloquial meaning, too.

Anyway, this brings us to Slavic Warrior Women, part 13 for a discussion of none other than Olga of Kyiv (who my band is named for, no big deal).

Further east, approximately a century after the Maidens’ War in Bohemia had concluded, another warrior queen featured in the origin myth of a nation. At that time, Rus’ was only just beginning to coalesce into a recognizable state, and its population represented a constant flux of Vikings, Slavs, Finns, and Turanic nomads from the steppes.^[1] Whether she was Scandinavian or Slavic, the details of Olga’s life are veiled in layers of myth, legend, and folklore, all heavily edited by Christian clerics.^[2] She first appears in written record in the Russian Primary Chronicle, which assembles her narrative from preexisting oral traditions.^[3] Several centuries after the Primary Chronicle’s composition, her hagiographic biography, Life of Grand Princess Olga, provides an elaborated account. Yet, like her Scythian predecessor Tomyris, Olga’s story is unremarkable until the moment she becomes a widow. Though her hagiography stresses that she was wise and pure even in her youth, her active life does not truly begin until after her husband’s death.^[4] Indeed, her husband’s death frees her to embrace decidedly unladylike qualities and achieve a military greatness that outshines her late husband’s most daring endeavors.^[5]

Both the Primary Chronicle and her Life agree that Olga grew up in Pskov, possibly as a Varangian princess, or possibly as a commoner, according to her hagiography. Interestingly, at that time Pskov was home to predominantly Finns, so she may even have been Finnish, especially considering that some scholars posit the word ‘Rus’’ comes from the Finnish name for the Swedes.^[6] Other sources claim, based on local legends from the areas around Pskov and other medieval chronicles, that she may have yet another origin.^[7] Whatever her origins, in the year 903 Olga moves to Kyiv and marries Prince Igor.^[8] Olga’s own age at the time is subject to debate, but some have suggested that, given the unreliability of dates during the reigns of the princes of early Rus’, Olga may have been as young as ten or as old as 35 at the time of her wedding.^[9] The Primary Chronicle implies that prior to her arrival in Kyiv, Olga had not met her betrothed. However, according to her hagiographer, Olga first meets Igor when he makes a trip to Pskov in his youth. During this brief encounter, Olga’s purity and intelligence so impress Igor—she cleverly and politely rebuffs his amorous advances—that when it comes time for him to find a wife, he sends for her by name.^[10] 

With Olga beside him, Igor succeeds Oleg, and in the following year, he conquers a neighboring Slavic tribe, the Drevlians.^[11] He then extracts a heavier tribute than that previously established by Oleg.^[12] At that time the Drevlians occupied a resource rich territory, known especially for their iron ore and black marten pelts, which may explain the appeal of their subjugation and the subsequent tribute increase.^[13] However, after Igor raises the tribute requirements yet again in 945, the Drevlians rebel, killing him when he comes to collect it.^[14] Since Igor’s son Sviatoslav is too young to rule, Olga rules as regent in his stead. Olga properly laments her husband’s death and undergoes a period of mourning, but as soon as her required mourning ends, she sets in motion the events that establish her as a successful war leader and earn her the role in Russian Orthodoxy as the Patron Saint of Vengeance. Olga knows that her opponents underestimate her because of her gender, and she uses that fact to her advantage.

Olga’s epic four-act revenge begins when she receives a delegation of twenty Drevlian emissaries, informing her of the death of her unworthy husband and proposing that she now marry their worthy prince.^[15] Olga feigns contemplation of the proposal, instructing the emissaries to return to the boat in which they had arrived and await her summons the next day, at which point she would give them an official answer. As soon as they leave, Olga commands her people to dig a trench large enough to hold the Drevlian boat. When she sends for the emissaries the following morning, they demand—as she had instructed them—to be carried to her in their boat. Olga’s guards deposit the emissaries, boat and all, into the trench, where she buries them alive.

The second act of Olga’s revenge follows much the same pattern: she receives Drevlian emissaries, pretends to take them seriously, and then brutally executes them. It is the details of the second act that set it apart from the first. Following the burial of the first batch of emissaries, Olga sends a message to the Drevlians that, if they want her people to release their beloved queen from her duties, they should send a properly distinguished delegation as befits her station.^[16] When this second delegation arrives, she demands that they bathe before appearing in her court. Like the first group, the emissaries fall for the ruse. They enter the bathhouse, upon which the doors are locked and the bathhouse, set on fire.^[17] By burning, or perhaps boiling, her victims alive, this second act of revenge continues the elemental theme established by the first – a decidedly pagan motif for a woman who would become a Christian saint.

In the third act of her revenge, Olga takes a contingent of guards and visits the Drevlians in person, rather than waiting for emissaries to come to her. Ahead of her arrival, she instructs the Drevlians to prepare massive amounts of mead so she can hold a fitting funeral for her murdered husband, after which she will consent to marry their prince.^[18]  Naturally, she makes no mention of the emissaries she already dispatched, lest the Drevlians be suspicious of her intentions. The unsuspecting Drevlians comply with her requests, and, suggestive of the ruse by which Cyrus slew a third of Tomyris’s army, Olga has the drunken Drevlians slaughtered at Igor’s belated funeral feast.^[19] According to the Primary Chronicle, 5000 Drevlians were massacred, yet the number is likely symbolic, indicating that there were too many to count.^[20] 

As Alexandr Koptev suggests, taken together the first three acts of Olga’s revenge are reminiscent of an elaborate funeral rite reserved for pagan royalty.^[21] In this interpretation, the murder of the two Drevlian delegations followed by the massacre of the Drevlian celebrants at the funeral feast constitute human sacrifices. Perhaps the motive of revenge is assigned to Olga because it was more palatable than the enactment of a pagan funeral rite. According to Scandinavian common law, only death can pay for death; physical injury and insult should be met in like kind.^[22] Koptev rightly compares the sacrifices of the Drevlians to the funeral of the Russian prince described by the Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan, as well as Scythian royal burial practices as demonstrated through evidence in excavated kurgans and corroborating descriptions by Herodotus and other ancient authors.^[23] Significantly, in addition to the prevalence of ship burials among Scandinavian nobility—one of Olga’s possible origins—Vikings frequently included drinking mead as part of their funeral practices.^[24] Thus, one could argue a connection between Olga’s revenge and the combined funerary traditions of the Rus’, Scandinavians, and Scythians.

From a military standpoint, however, these events beg a practical interpretation. The first three acts of Olga’s revenge are usually interpreted as just that: revenge. Yet, they are more than just clever ruses to punish the people who murdered her husband; they are strategic military actions. By slaughtering the two groups of Drevlian emissaries, she not only depletes her enemy’s manpower, she disrupts his ability to gather intelligence. Presumably, the emissaries the Drevlian king would have sent to treat on his behalf would have come from the nobility and would thus have strategic value as advisors as well as spies. Thus, Olga prevents them from taking intelligence back to their king about her fortifications, personnel, potential weaknesses, and other information vital to planning an attack. With the emissaries dispatched, Olga is free to choose the location of her next confrontation before the Drevlians have a chance to realize she played them for fools.

Although the fourth and final act of Olga’s revenge differs in pattern and timeframe from the first three, it, too, relies on a ruse and concludes with a massacre. Sometime later, still dissatisfied by her husband’s murder, Olga gathers her army and lays siege to Iskorosten’, the Drevlian capital city. The siege lasts for a full year, with neither the Drevlians able to expel the prospective conquerors nor the Rus’ able to breach the city defenses.^[25] Eventually tiring of the stalemate, Olga informs the Drevlians that her revenge is complete and that she will settle for a tribute of three pigeons and three sparrows per each Drevlian household. Relieved, they comply. That evening, Olga’s forces tie burning strips of cloth to the birds’ feet so that once they return to their roosts, the whole city erupts in flames. As Iskorosten’ burns, Olga’s forces bar the gates. They kill or enslave most who manage to escape, sparing only a small population to pay an even steeper tribute than that for which they had originally murdered Olga’s husband.^[26] 

Because of the differences in tone, structure, and time between the first three acts of Olga’s revenge and the razing of Iskorosten’, some have suggested the latter was a late addition to her narrative that did not appear in the original manuscript of the Primary Chronicle.^[27] This argument is underscored by the use of sparrows and pigeons with burning brands, which is a common strategy employed by heroes of Scandinavian as well as other medieval European literature.^[28] While employing birds is recognizably a fabrication meant to mythologize Olga’s uncommon cleverness, there is no reason to doubt that the Rus’ did indeed lay siege to Iskorosten’, nor that the city burned. By that point, Olga had already proven she had a clever military mind, no birds necessary. Perhaps their inclusion in the narrative is meant to soften the militant aspects of razing a city, as if using birds to do the deed makes the execution more feminine.

After her revenge is finally complete, the nature of Olga’s narrative alters entirely. Despite, or perhaps because of, such a spectacularly violent start, Olga’s subsequent reign is relatively peaceful.^[29] The primary anecdotes illustrating the rest of her tale in the Primary Chronicle and her hagiography involve her conversion to Orthodox Christianity. Given its genre, Olga’s Life is concerned primarily with the religious aspects of Olga’s later years, detailing the good works she does in the name of the Christian god, such as caring for orphans, the ill, the poor, and those widows who do not share her exalted status. Notably, she continues to rule long after she relinquishes her official role as regent when her son comes of age, for while Sviatoslav is away waging war, she reigns in his absence. For reasons of brevity and relevance, I will not go into further detail about her conversion, apart from observing that even in her adoption of the Christian faith, she manages to outwit any man who would subdue her: in this case, the Byzantine emperor.

Though supposedly the first Christian in Rus’ and sainted accordingly, earning her comparisons to Saint Helen, Olga’s early reign has strikingly pagan and violent overtones that even her hagiographer could not erase.^[30] Her elaborate and bloody revenge undercuts the repeated declarations that she exemplifies the modest, meek Christian woman. Olga may have been a regent for an underage prince, but she was a regent in title only. Functionally, she was a warrior queen, no less capable than Amage, and no less fierce than Tomyris or Vlasta. However, whereas Vlasta’s militarism is demonized, Olga’s is celebrated. Had she not transformed into the ideal Christian woman, her primary legacy would remain one of violence. Perhaps, then, Olga would not have been so revered by her chroniclers. As it is, her violence is downplayed and reduced to a display of uncommon cleverness in executing a necessary act to ensure the safety of her people; she did what any good leader would do, she just happened to be a woman.

Next installment, I’ll discuss another maligned-by-history-but-shouldn’t-be figure, Sigrid the Proud.

Citations:

[1] Ion Tentiuc, “On the Viking Enclaves and their Relations with the Inhabitants of the Carpathian – Dniester Region between the 9th and the 11th Centuries,” Dacia: Revue d’Archéologie et d’Histoire Ancienne (2019): 250.

[2] Jesch, Women in the Viking Age, 111.

[3] Ekaterina I. Sulitsa, “Zhenskie personazhi drevnerusskoi slovesnosti: poteicheskaia obraznost’ i printsip sinkretichnosti,” Vestnik Riazanskogo gosudarstvenogo universiteta im. S. A. Esenina 4, no. 45 (2014): 77.

[4] O. P. Aikhacheva, ed., Zhitie velikoi kniagini Ol’gi, narechennoi vo sciatom kreshchenii Elenoi, Institute of Russian literature (Pushkin House): “От младаго бо возраста блаженная Олга искаше премудрости паче всего на свѣте сем.”

[5] A. O. Lozhkina, “‘Zhitie sviatyia blazhennyia i ravnoapostol’nyia i v premudrosti preslovyshchiia Velikiia Kniagini Olgi…’: K voprosy o zhenskoi sviatosti v zhitiinoi literature,” Vestnik Cheliabinskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 27, no. 165 (2009): 75.

[6] N. V. Lopatin, “K etnogeografii Skazaniia o prizvanii variagov,” Goroda i vesi srednevekovoi Rusi: Arxeologiia, istoriia, kul’tura (Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk, 2015): 287; Mägi, Viking Eastern Baltic, 16-17; Bagge, Cross and Scepter, 22-23. The extrapolation that Olga may have been Finnish due to the ethnicities prevalent in Pskov during the ninth and tenth centuries is mine.

[7] A. S. Korolev, “Sviataia Ol’ga: Neznatnaia Pskovitianka ili mogushchestvennaia kniaginia Vyshgoroda?” Vestnik Smaraskogo universiteta 24, no. 3 (2018): 9. Korolev delineates the numerous origins put forth for Olga in assorted medieval sources from the Primary Chronicle through the early sixteenth century, including as a princess from Vyshgorod or a city located close to Kyiv, or as Oleg’s daughter, which would make her Igor’s foster-sister.

[8] Constantine Zuckerman, “On the Date of the Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor,” Revue des études byzantines 53 (1995): 269. Zuckerman provides a compelling argument for adjusting the dates of Igor’s reign, which would in turn affect the dates of Olga’s arrival in Kyiv. Based on comparisons with non-Russian sources about Oleg and Igor’s reigns, the year given in the Primary Chronicle for Olga’s arrival in Kyiv likely predates her birth by at least a decade. If her marriage to Igor shortly before he began his reign, as the internal chronology of the chronicles implies, she would have arrived in Kyiv around 939-940.

[9] Leonid V. Voitovich, Genealogiia dinastii Riurikovichiv i Gediminovichiv, ed. by Jaroslav D. Isaevich (Akademii nauk Ukraini, 1992): 16; Dushin, “Priglashenie variazhskix kniazei,” 9.

[10] Zhitie velikoi kniagini Ol’gi.

[11] Zuckerman, “On the Date of the Khazars’ Conversion,” 265-269. The chronology of Oleg and Igor’s reigns, as they are presented in the Primary Chronicle and the Novgorod Chronicle, do not align with non-Russian sources written about the same period. Zuckerman suggests that, in contrast with the 33-year reign allotted for each of the early kings of Rus’ in the Primary Chronicle or the 24-year reign allotted for Igor in the Novgorod Chronicle, Igor actually reigned for only three to four years, beginning in 941. Thus, Oleg would have ruled as king, not regent, from approximately 911 until then, with Igor succeeding him after the failed invasion of Byzantium. Zuckerman argues that Igor returned to Kyiv immediately after their defeat at Byzantium, while Oleg continued on to attack Persia, dying in Azerbaijan in 944-945 without ever returning to Kyiv. Zuckerman centers his analysis on an anonymous Khazar Letter from the Genizah of Cairo, which describes Oleg’s expedition to Byzantium and Persia. Other scholars, as Zuckerman points out, have dismissed the contents of the Letter as a fabrication due to its contradiction of the chronology in Russian sources, but the Letter aligns closely with Byzantine and Persian accounts of the attempted invasion of Byzantium.

[12] Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, trans and eds., Russian Primary Chronicle, 78.

[13] Androshchuk, “From Vikings to Rus,” 98.

[14] Korolev, “Sviataia Olga: Neznatnaia,” 8. Though not included in official canon as it would significantly contradict her characterization, some legends suggest that Olga either killed Igor herself or had someone else kill him so that she could claim power.

[15] Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, trans and eds., Russian Primary Chronicle, 78-79.

[16] Ibid., 79.

[17] Ibid., 80.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Koptev, “Pagan Rites,” 36.

[21] Ibid., 13.

[22] Bagge, Cross and Scepter, 94.

[23] Koptev, “Pagan Rites,” 8.

[24] Duczko, Viking Rus, 145.

[25] Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, trans and eds., Russian Primary Chronicle, 80.

[26] Ibid., 81.

[27] Alexey A. Gippius, “Reconstructing the original of the Povest’ vremennyx let: a contribution to the debate,” Russian Linguistics 38, no. 3 (2014): 348.

[28] Raffensperger, “Shared (Hi)Stories,” 577.

[29] Clements, History of Women in Russia, 7.

[30] Sulitsa, “Zhenskie personazhi drevnerusskoi slovesnosti,” 78.