Meet Olga (or is it Helga?), bloody avenger – and saint

It is quite rare that solving a crossword inspires me to write a post, but today it happened!

Hubby and I were struggling with a clue varjagsfurste (Swedish, sorry for that) and it took me some time to work out that varjag in Swedish is Varangian in English. Once I got that far, the hitherto difficult clue was easy-peasy. (You can almost see me strutting, can’t you? Oh, Varangians! Pfff. That explains it )

The Varangians were predominantly Swedish Vikings who settled present day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Yes, where the Norse went west, our forebears went East, making a killing on capturing native people and selling them as slaves at the huge slave markets in Bagdad and Constantinople.  (And did you know the word slave comes from the fact that most of these unfortunates targeted by the Swedish Vikings were Slavic people? )

Anyway: the first king of the Kievan Rus was Rurik who died in 879. At the time, his son, Igor (Ingvar in Swedish) was an infant, so a gent called Helge/Oleg took over for a while.

To be quite honest, we don’t really know all that much about Rurik/Oleg/Igor—we don’t even know for sure that Igor was Rurik’s son, or how Oleg was related to them. Igor doesn’t really appear in recorded history until 940 or so, when he attacks Constantinople and manages to wrest a favourable treaty from the Byzantines. And then, shortly after that, Igor dies. Which is when Olga steps in—or should we call her by her Scandinavian name, Helga?

And so, dear peeps, a single crossword clue led me all the way to a rather intimidating lady. Venerated as St Olga—something of a tautology, as Helga means “hallowed”—our protagonist did not die a martyr’s death as so many other saints. No, our Olga was canonised primarily for having converted to Orthodox Christianity and making a determined effort to spread the word of the White Christ. She had little success: Everyone else in her family, including her son, remained robustly pagan. But a generation or so later, her grandson, Vladimir, would drag his entire kingdom out of paganism and into the Orthodox light.

Long before Olga was St Olga, she was merely Olga (or Helga). Supposedly born around 890, she doesn’t really enter the chronicles until just after Igor’s death in 945. This is where things get a bit murky as to our protagonists’ age. Supposely, Igor left a two-year-old son behind, which is why Olga stepped in as regent. Except if Olga was born in 890, she’d have been over fifty when her son was born, and that doesn’t really sound feasible does it? Other sources indicate she was born in the 920s. But that means Igor was more than forty years her senior. . . Or maybe the Igor who died in 945 wasn’t the same Igor who was born in 877 as son of Rurik.

Anyway: Igor did not die a peaceful death. He seems to have been a harsh ruler, given to demanding high tribute from the Slavic tribes in his realm. Should we believe the chronicles, at the ripe age of sixty-eight, Igor rode off to force the grumbling Drevlians to pay up, but the Drevlians had had it with Igor and his excessive demands, so they overpowered Igor and his men. According to legend, the Drevlians then bent down two birch trees, strapped Igor’s left leg to one, his right to the other, and then let the trees snap upright. Ouch. Anyway: Igor ended up very dead, and as his son, Sviatoslav, was only two, it fell to Olga to hold things together.

The Drevlians decided to take advantage of Olga’s recent bereavement by sending a diplomatic party to Kiev, suggesting she marry their prince. By then, Olga already knew just how her husband had been killed, and she was as likely to marry Prince Mal as she was to fly to the moon. But instead of raging, she simpered and smiled and suggested the Drevlian ambassadors meet her outside the great hall tomorrow where she would accord them a great honour.
“It’s in the bag,” one ambassador may have whispered to another with a little wink. “Soon enough, our prince will be sitting as ruler here in Kiev.”
“He, he,” said his companion, rubbing his hands. “And then we’ll make these damned Varangians pay!”

Next morning, the ambassadors were offered to step into a boat, after which Olga’s men lifted it high and slowly began to carry it inside the hall—an honour indeed, to be transported atop the shoulders of the Varangian men. Except, once in the hall, the Drevlians discovered that right in the middle of the building was a deep trench, hastily dug during the night. The boat and its occupants were thrown into it and the ambassadors were buried alive.

No sooner was the first batch of Drevlians dead but Olga sent a message to the Drevlian prince, requesting he send her an adequate escort of his best men so that she could come to him in style. When this second batch of Drevlians showed up, Olga invited them to use the bath house, saying she would not greet them properly until they were adequately clean. Once the Drevlians were in the bath house, Olga had it set on fire.

By now, The Drevlians should have cottoned on to the fact that Olga was out for revenge—and that, compared to her, Igor had been but a mild summer breeze. And yet, according to the chronicles, when she asked them to make vast quantities of mead because she wanted to hold a funeral feast for Igor where he was killed, they agreed. With the feast in full swing, Olga invited the Drevlians to join in. But where the Drevlians guzzled mead as if there was no tomorrow, Olga’s men remained sober (well, relatively) and soon enough they began to murder the drunk Drevlians, with Olga cheering them on. Supposedly, five thousand Drevlians died that night.

One would have thought Olga would have considered Igor adequately avenged by now, but nope, this lady wanted to utterly destroy the Drevlians. So she returned to Kiev to raise an army which routed the Drevlians and forced them to seek their refuge in their cities. One by one, the cities submitted to Olga, and after a year, it was only Iskorosten, the Drevlian capital, that held out. Olga sent them a message wondering why they didn’t submit and pay tribute so that they could go back to their normal lives.
“Oh, we’re happy to pay tribute, but we fear you intend to exact more revenge for the death of your husband on us, seeing as it happened here.”
“What? Me?” Olga replied. “No, no, I’ve had my revenge.”
But, she added, she wanted some sort of tribute, so she requested that each household in the city give her three of their sparrows and three of their doves (I am a bit doubtful re the sparrows: I’ve never heard of domesticated sparrows, but maybe they were eating them?)

The people of Iskorosten were sick of being hungry and besieged. So they did as Olga requested, sending out the birds. And what did Olga do? She ordered her men to tie a scrap of cloth containing sulphur to each bird, and come nightfall, the scraps were set on fire and the birds released. The frantic birds flew back to their homes, effectively firebombing the entire city. Houses burst into flames, and the desperate inhabitants threw their gates open to flee the inferno. Outside, stood Olga’s men. Many, many were killed, many were enslaved. After this, Olga decided Igor had been adequately avenged and went on to do other things.

One of the first things she did was revise the system of tribute, effectively converting a system of “legal” pillaging into a primitive form of taxation. She was an active and competent ruler and she seems to have enjoyed having power, as she skilfully sidestepped the many marriage proposals that came her way. This is also an indication that it is likelier she was born in the 920s rather than in 890—even if the men proposing were probably more interested in the Principality of Kiev than in Olga herself.

In the 950s, Olga visited Constantinople. She was received with full honours, making Constantine VII’s day when she converted and was baptised, taking the name Helena as her baptismal name. Armed with a blessing from the patriarch, Olga returned home, determined to so some serious converting.

The Rus were less than enthusiastic. Her teenaged son, the official Rus ruler, was not having it, stoutly refuting her efforts to bring him into the new faith. Olga found herself increasingly marginalised, in some cases even viewed with suspicion by the people who still held to the old gods. Frustrated, she reached out to Holy Emperor Otto, hoping he would send her some forceful men of the church to help with the proselyting. But when a German bishop finally arrived, he was more or less chased out of the country by Sviatoslav and his supporters.

Despite mother and son not agreeing on religion, the young ruler of Kiev trusted his mother to handle things back home when he was out on campaigns. And when she passed in 969, he respected her wishes and had her buried according to Christian rituals. A few centuries later, she, together with her grandson Vladimir, were canonised for their efforts to Christianise their people.

I rather like the fact that Olga was canonised despite not being torn apart by lions, pierced by multiple arrows, burned to death, broken on a wheel, having her eyes plucked out –you know, all the “normal” martyrdom suffered by other saints. I do, however, suspect that any surviving Drevlian would protest loudly—very loudly—at the notion that this forceful, determined woman was in any way saintly. I tend to agree. . .