The writings of the Arab, Ibn Fadlan, in the early 10th century represent the only existing documentation of the culture of the Vikings, if true, from a credible eye-witness. This material does not come to us from teams of archaeologists sifting through the detritus of time, but from a man who was actually there. What follows, excerpted from the original text translation, especially the ship burial of a Viking chieftain, may be of interest to you even if you have never heard of Fadlan or his writings. His identification of the savage people he encountered along the Volga River, 1100-years ago, as Rusiyyah, or Rus, is of particular interest because their customs most certainly identify them as Norse. Since they are in what is now Russia, they are also most certainly Swedish Vikings. Sweden did not exist during the period in question; however, without getting into unnecessary detail I think we can reference the two dominate medieval tribes that became modern Sweden as the people that Ibn Fadlan writes about. So, more correctly, the Vikings he encountered were members of the Svear or Gotar tribes. Scholars have been arguing about this contention for the last couple of centuries, with no end to the battle in sight.
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IBN FADLAN AND THE RUSIYYAH
James E. Montgomery
CAMBRIDGE
Ibn Fadlan’s account of his
participation in the deputation sent by the Caliph al-Muqtadir in the year 921
A.D. to the King of the Bulghars of the Volga, in response to his request for
help, has proved to be an invaluable source of information for modern scholars
interested in, among other subjects, the birth and formation of the Russian
state, in the Viking involvement in northern and eastern Europe, in the Slavs
and the Khazars. It has been analyzed and commented upon frequently and forms
the substance of many observations on the study of the ethnography and sociology
of the peoples concerned. Yet it is no exaggeration to say that, with a few
very conspicuous exceptions, the majority of the scholars who refer to it, who
base their observations upon it and who argue from it, are at best improperly
familiar with classical Arabic. In the case of the people known as the Rusiyyah,
for example, two modern commentators have surveyed Ibn Fadlan’s Kitab, or a
portion of it, and have all too hastily identified the Rus, variously, as the Vikings
and the Russians, a scholarly commonplace among those involved.
***
The following narrative is purported to be from the writings of the
Arab, Ibn Fadlan (ED.)
I saw the Rusiyyah when they had arrived on their trading expedition and
had disembarked at the River Atil. I have never seen more perfect physiques than
theirs—they are like palm trees, are fair and reddish. The man wears a cloak
with which he covers one half of his body, leaving one of his arms uncovered.
Every one of them carries an axe, a sword and a dagger and is never without all
of that which we have mentioned. Their swords are of the Frankish variety, with
broad, ridged blades. Each man, from the tip of his toes to his neck, is
covered in dark-green lines, pictures and such like. Each woman has, on her breast,
a small disc, tied around her neck, made of either iron, silver, copper or
gold, in relation to her husband’s financial and social worth. Each disc has a
ring to which a dagger is attached, also lying on her breast. Around their
necks they wear bands of gold and silver. Whenever a man’s wealth reaches ten
thousand dirham, he has a band made for his wife; if it reaches twenty thousand
dirham, he has two bands made for her—for every ten thousand more, he gives
another band to his wife. Sometimes one woman may wear many bands around her
neck. The jewelry which they prize the most is the dark-green ceramic beads
which they have aboard their boats and which they value very highly: they
purchase beads for a dirham a piece and string them together as necklaces for
their wives. They are the filthiest of all Allah’s creatures: they do not clean
themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of
ritual impurity and do not even wash their hands after food. Indeed they are
like asses that roam in the fields.
They arrive from their territory and moor their boats by the Atil (a
large river), building on its banks large wooden houses against possible attack.
They gather in the one house in their tens and twenties, sometimes more,
sometimes less. Each of them has a couch on which he sits. They are accompanied
by beautiful slave girls for trading. One man will have intercourse with his
slave-girl while his companion looks on. Sometimes a group of them comes
together to do this, each in front of the other. Sometimes indeed the merchant
will come in to buy a slave-girl from one of them and he will chance upon him
having intercourse with her, but the Rus will not leave her alone until he has
satisfied his urge.
They cannot, of course, avoid washing their faces and their heads each
day, which they do with the filthiest
and most polluted water imaginable. I shall explain. Every day the
slave-girl arrives in the morning with a large basin containing water, which
she hands to her owner. He washes his hands and his face and his hair in the
water, then he dips his comb in the water and brushes his hair, blows his nose
and spits in the basin. There is no filthy impurity which he will not do in
this water. When he no longer requires it, the slave-girl takes the basin to
the man beside him and he goes through the same routine as his friend. She
continues to carry it from one man to the next until she has gone round
everyone in the house, with each of them blowing his nose and spitting, washing
his face and hair in the basin.
The moment their boats reach this dock every one of them disembarks, carrying
bread, meat, onions, milk and alcohol and goes to a tall piece of wood set up in
the ground. This piece of wood has a face like the face of a man and is surrounded by small figurines behind which are
long pieces of wood set up in the ground. When he reaches the large figure, he
prostrates himself before it and says, “Lord, I have come from a distant land, bringing so many slave-girls priced at such and such per head and
so many sables priced at such and such per pelt.” He continues until he has mentioned
all of the merchandise he has brought with him, then says, “And I have brought
this offering,” leaving what he has brought with him in front of the piece of
wood, saying, “I wish you to provide me with a merchant who has many dinar and
dirham and who will buy from me whatever I want to sell without haggling over
the price I fix.” Then he departs. If he has difficulty in selling his goods
and he has to remain too many days, he returns with a second and third
offering. If his wishes prove to be impossible he brings an offering to every
single one of those figurines and seeks its intercession, saying, “These are
the wives, daughters and sons of our Lord.” He goes up to each figurine in turn
and questions it, begging its intercession and groveling before it. Sometimes business is good and he
makes a quick sell, at which point he will say, “My Lord has satisfied my request,
so I am required to recompense him.” He procures a number of sheep or cows and slaughters them, donating a portion of the meat to
charity and taking the rest and casting it before the large piece of wood and
the small ones around it. He ties the heads of the cows or the sheep to that
piece of wood set up in the ground. At night, the dogs come and eat it all, but
the man who has done all this will say, “My Lord is pleased with me and has eaten
my offering.”
When one of them falls ill, they erect a tent away from them and cast
him into it, giving him some bread and water. They do not come near him or speak
to him; indeed they have no contact with him for the duration of his illness, especially if he is socially inferior or is a slave. If he
recovers and gets back to his feet, he rejoins them. If he dies, they bury him,
though if he was a slave they leave him there as food for the dogs and the
birds.
If they catch a thief or a bandit, they bring him to a large tree and
tie a strong rope around his neck. They tie it to the tree and leave him hanging
there until the rope breaks, rotted away by exposure to the rain and the wind.
I was told that when their chieftains die, the least they do is to
cremate them. I was very keen to verify this, when I learned of the death of
one of their great men. They placed him in his grave and erected a canopy over it for ten days, until they had finished making and sewing his funeral
garments. In the case of a poor man they build a small boat, place him inside
and burn it. In the case of a rich man, they gather together his possessions
and divide them into three, one third for his family, one third to use for his funeral garments, and one third with which they purchase alcohol which
they drink on the day when his slave-girl kills herself and is cremated
together with her master. They are addicted to alcohol, which they drink night
and day. Sometimes one of them dies with the cup still in his hand.
When their chieftain dies, his family asks his slave-girls and
slave-boys, “Who among you will die with him?” and some of them reply, “I
shall.” Having said this, it becomes incumbent upon the person and it is
impossible ever to turn back. Should that person try to, he is not permitted to do
so. It is usually slave-girls who make this offer. When that man whom I
mentioned earlier died, they said to his slave-girls, “Who will die with him?”
and one of them said, “I shall.” So they placed two slave-girls in charge of
her to take care of her and accompany her wherever she went, even to the point
of occasionally washing her feet with their own hands. They set about attending
to the dead man, preparing his clothes for him and setting right all he needed.
Every day the slave-girl would drink alcohol and would sing merrily and cheerfully. On the day
when he and the slave-girl were to be burned I arrived at the river where his
ship was. To my surprise I discovered that it had been beached and that four
planks of birch and other types of wood had been erected for it. Around them wood
had been placed in such a way as to resemble scaffolding. Then the ship was
hauled and placed on top of this wood. They advanced, going to and fro around
the boat uttering words which I did not understand, while he was still in his
grave and had not been exhumed. Then they produced a couch and placed it on the
ship, covering it with quilts made of Byzantine silk brocade and cushions made of Byzantine silk
brocade. Then a crone arrived whom they called the “Angel of Death,” and she
spread on the couch the coverings we have mentioned. She is responsible for having his garments sewn up and putting him in order and
it is she who kills the slave-girls. I myself saw her: a gloomy, corpulent woman,
neither young nor old.
When they came to his grave, they removed the soil from the wood and then
removed the wood, exhuming him still dressed in the clothing in which he died. Meanwhile,
the slave-girl who wished to be killed was coming and going, entering one
pavilion after another. The owner of the pavilion would have intercourse with
her and say to her, “Tell your master that I have done this purely out of love
for you.”
At the time of the evening prayer on Friday they brought the slave-girl
to a thing that they had constructed, like a door-frame. She placed her feet on
the hands of the men and was raised above that door-frame. She said something and
they brought her down. Then they lifted her up a second time and she did what
she had done the first time. They brought her down and then lifted her up a
third time and she did what she had done on the first two occasions. They next
handed her a hen. She cut off its head and threw it away. They took the hen and
threw it on board the ship.
I quizzed the interpreter about her actions and he said, “The first
time they lifted her, she said, ‘Behold, I see my father and my mother.’ The second
time she said, ‘Behold, I see all of my dead kindred, seated.’ The third time
she said, ‘Behold, I see my master, seated in Paradise. Paradise is
beautiful and verdant. He is accompanied by his men and his male slaves. He
summons me, so bring me to him.’ So they brought her to the ship and she
removed two bracelets that she was wearing, handing them to the woman called
the “Angel of Death,” the one who was to kill her. She also removed two anklets
that she was wearing, handing them to the two slave-girls who had waited upon
her: they were the daughters of the crone known as the “Angel of Death.” Then
they lifted her onto the ship but did not bring her into the pavilion. The men
came with their shields and sticks and handed her a cup of alcohol over which
she chanted and then drank. The interpreter said to me, “Thereby she bids her female
companions farewell.” She was handed another cup, which she took and chanted
for a long time, while the crone urged her to drink it and to enter the pavilion
in which her master lay. I saw that she was befuddled and wanted to enter the
pavilion but she had only put her head into the pavilion while her body
remained outside it. The crone grabbed hold of her head and dragged her into
the pavilion, entering it at the same time. The men began to bang their shields
with the sticks so that her screams could not be heard and so terrify the other
slave-girls, who would not, then, seek to die with their masters. Six men
entered the pavilion and all had intercourse with the slave girl. They laid her
down beside her master and two of them took hold of her feet, two her hands.
The crone called the “Angel of Death” placed a rope around her neck in such a
way that the ends crossed one another and handed it to two of the men to pull
on it. She advanced with a broad-bladed dagger and began to thrust it in and
out between her ribs, now here, now there, while the two men throttled her with
the rope until she died. Then the deceased’s next of kin approached and took
hold of a piece of wood and set fire to it. He walked backwards, with the back
of his neck to the ship, his face to the people, with the lighted piece of wood
in one hand and the other hand on his anus, being completely naked. He ignited
the wood that had been set up under the ship after they had placed the
slave-girl whom they had killed beside her master. Then the people came forward
with sticks and firewood. Each one carried a stick the end of which he had set
fire to and which he threw on top of the wood. The wood caught fire, and then
the ship, the pavilion, the man, the slave-girl and all it contained. A
dreadful wind arose and the flames leapt higher and blazed fiercely.
One of the Rusiyyah stood beside me and I heard him speaking to my interpreter.
I quizzed him about what he had said, and he replied, “He said, ‘You Arabs are
a foolish lot!’” So I said, “Why is that?” and he replied, “Because you
purposely take those who are dearest to you and whom you hold in highest esteem
and throw them under the earth, where they are eaten by the earth, by vermin
and by worms, whereas we burn them in the fire there and then, so that they
enter Paradise immediately.” Then he laughed loud and long. I quizzed him about
that, the entry into Paradise, and he said, “Because of the love which my
Lord feels for him. He has sent the wind to take him away within an hour.”
It took scarcely an hour for the ship, the firewood, the slave-girl and
her master to be burnt to a fine ash. They built something like a round hillock
over the ship, which they had pulled out of the water, and placed in the middle
of it a large piece of birch on which they wrote the name of the man and the
name of the King of the Rus. Then they left.
***
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