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Testing lj crosspost, also troll story infodump.

Circa 970 AD, a young man named Griss Saemingsson travelled from his home in Iceland to Constantinople, where he joined the army of John I Tzimiskes (which is a totally badass name), and presumably took part in Tzimiskes’ reconquest of Damascus and other parts of the holy land, and was on hand when Tzimiskes died of dysentery in 976.  Griss returned to Iceland by 986.

Between 976 and 987 in Byzantium  Basil II became emperor (surprising everyone, since he was a blood heir to the throne, and the last few emperors had been of the usurping general variety), and fought a losing war with Bulgaria. Meanwhile, to the north, Prince Vladmir of Kiev (who was a russian viking, more or less) shipped an army of 6000 vikings “from across the sea,” which is to say “Sweden or Norway” and used them to beat his brother in a civil war, and set himself up as king of the Kievan Rus… Eventually he no longer needed the army of Swedish vikings, and evidently couldn’t pay them either, so he negotiated a deal with Basil II whereby he’d send them south to Byzantium and also he would convert to christianity (which is why Prince Vladimir is also known as St. Vladimir) . In return, the Byzantines would marry off the imperial princess Anna to Prince Vladimir.

The 6000 vikings showed up in Byzantium in the winter of 987-88, and went on to form the famed Varangian Guard.  Anna eventually did marry Vladimir, and he eventually did convert to christianity (but not before he sacked a Byzantine city just to show everyone he was serious about being a blood soaked medieval dictator…)

The interesting thing here  is that it seems that the preferred route from Iceland to Constantinople went via Russia. The Mediterranean route may be a possibility, and the vikings certainly went on raids in the Mediterranean, so they were willing to sail that far, but it had the disadvantage that the people on that route were all victims of viking raids, and the Russian route had the advantage of same culture, same language.

So anyway, Griss arrives back in Iceland in 986, and he apparently is quite wealthy. He immediately becomes a landowner, persuades someone to marry their daughter to him (despite his middle age, failing vision, and the fact that the daughter already had a serious suitor (who wrote a saga about it, which is one reason why we know about Griss at all)). Supposedly he also had some kind of byzantine army sword,  a spear inlayed with gold (I assume this is a ceremonial spear that was, like, a gold watch for good service), and an in with the King of Norway.

If  Griss Saemingsson travelled back to Iceland in the mid 980’s, as Vladimir’s civil war was dying down, he may well have met the guys who went on to form the Varangian guard. If he did, he would have been able to tell them what it was like to serve with the Byzantines (and his stories would have been pretty incredible and contained a lot of looting and pillaging, presumably, what with him taking part in Tzimiskes’ reconquest and all. )  Which is neat, and has some fun fiction possibilities.

Here a really cool thing:  Griss’ farm was at Geitaskarð in Langadalur, which is tiny, and still has the same place name. And you can stay at a farm there, if youever  find yourself in northwestern Iceland. There are some interesting hikes nearby too. Ancient ruins and whatnot. 

Hmm. I don’t like that it defaults to single posts in the previous/next buttons. I seem to recall that I didn’t like that behavior the first time I tried to set up a wordpress comics blog… Nope. Hates it. Hates it forever.

That’ll do for today.