In either the winter of 1041 or the spring of 1042, a Viking chieftain perished in the deserts of Khwarezmia, thousands of miles from his home port of Old Uppsala, Sweden. His name may or may not have been Ingvar, the Far-Traveller, who is last recorded in sagas, local chronicles, and in surviving runic inscriptions as battling Saracens in the territory of modern Georgia. While his feats are comparatively well known in contrast to earlier Viking journeys, it is worth a look at his career to estimate how far Viking and pre-Viking raiders could have travelled.
As told in Yngvars saga víðförla, Ingvar was the Norse trader and raider Eymundr, whose maternal great-uncle was the legendary king Erik the Victorious, although runestones raise the possibility that he was instead the son of he Christian king of Sweden, Anund Jacob. Whatever the case, the young Ingvar (or Yngvarr) rose through the ranks as a renowned warrior, and was appointed the commander of a leidang, or military company, by King Anund, to spearhead an expedition to the Caspian Sea. Their objective was to force open the old trade routes between the Swedes and the Islamic world that had blossomed in the 9th and 10th centuries, but due to nomadic raiding and the collapse of the Khazar confederation, had wilted in recent decades. The choice of Ingvar was a political one; around 1019, his purported father Eymundr had helped the Novgorodian ruler Yaroslav capture Kiev from his brother Sviatopolk. Nevertheless, this was a major undertaking as the leidang recruited men from all parts of Sweden, with the exception of Attudaland, a coastal region close to modern Stockholm.
An army at his heel, Ingvar sailed into Lake Ladoga and the Volkhov river, and marched his expedition to the banks of the Dnieper, where they took the waters into the city of Kiev, defending the fortress against renewed raids by the Pechenegs, a leaderless nomadic confederation. Presumably aiming to return to their target - the lower Volga - they were diverted by a contract agreed with the King of Georgia, Bagrat IV, a favourite of the Byzantine court who was styled nōbelissimos and sebastos, among other titles. Bagrat was facing a looming Seljuk invasion and recruited Ingvar to defend his frontier. In late 1041 or early 1042, this culminated in the disastrous Battle of Sisreti, not against the Seljuks but against a disorganised group of rebels unhappy with Bagrat's regime. The rebels won a crushing victory, and Ingvar himself was apparently captured. The runestones and sagas agree that the Viking force - the last of its kind - was annihilated by battle and disease. The Varangians finally had had their day.
But was this the end for Ingvar? Possibly not, as several runestones suggest. The Stora Rytterne Runestone has been classified by some as belonging to the Ingvar Runestones, a group of runestones across east-central Sweden which poetically recount some part of Ingvar's life. The stone was erected by a man called Guðleifr to commemorate his son Slagvi, who, intriguingly, had died in an place called Karusm. The lettering and the style of the accompanying image stone suggests a contemporary date of the mid-11th century, the same time as the Ingvar expedition. Slagvi, then, could have been a survivor of the Battle of Sisreti, following Ingvar in a new escapade.
Karusm is interesting for several reasons. The closest match for the name is the Middle Persian qarusm, a rendition of the historical Khwarezmian Empire (1077 - 1231), a state which had its origins in the 4th century CE but consolidated its hold over Central Asia and eastern Iran during the 12th and early 13th century. The idea therefore is that Slagvi, possibly with an escaped Ingvar, had travelled to Khwarezm - a land renowned for material wealth and mercenary opportunity - in search of fortune. That Slagvi is not commemorated as a leader of any capacity implies that either Ingvar or Ingvar's subordinates were still alive. Alternatively, Ingvar and Slavgi may have travelled to Khwarezm before the fateful battle, on another short-term contract, or Slavgi could have been part of an entirely separate but contemporary expedition. Regardless, the stone is testament to the extraordinary distances that the Viking world permeated, and the normality with which the East was seen. Slavgi may have not been the first or the last Swede to visit lands beyond the Caspian Sea.
Runestone Vs 1: 'Guðleifr placed the staff and these stones in memory of Slagvi, his son, (who) met his end in the east in Karusm.'
What else can the historical sources tell us? Ingvar, if he visited Khwarzm before 1041, may have visited the court of the Ghaznavid governor of the province, Isma'il Khandan, or the Turkic warlord Shah Malik, who usurped control of the land until late 1042. Depending on how long Ingvar (and presumably Slagvi) spent in Georgian captivity, they may have hired themselves to the Seljuks, who absorbed Khwarezm into their control in 1043. How long they spent in Khwarezm and their ultimate end is unknown, but the arrival of Seljuk forces (the same empire which Ingvar had been contracted by Bagrat to fight against) might have a role to play. Ingvar - as a commander of the palace guard - may have been seen as a bounty to be hunted. In characteristic Norse fashion, Ingvar could have betrayed the reigning Khwarezmshah to the Seljuks, being executed as a result. All we know is that this was not a total massacre, as someone survived to return to Sweden and tell Slavgi's tale.
It is probable that Ingvar's journey is the tip of an iceberg of a lost world of contact between Scandinavia and Central Asia. Correspondences have been noted between the geometric designs of textiles from Sweden and the south Caspian coast, particularly the kilims of Dagestan, which are often decorated with box-like ships with dragon masts. The Kyrkås tapestry, for example, dates to the early 11th century, and exhibits close similarities to textile art from the eastern Caucasus. Potentially, therefore, Dagestani weavers were familiar with Varangian visitors from the 10th century onward, and vice versa regarding Swedish weavers. Additionally, the textile burial shroud of the Danish King, Canute the Holy (1080 - 1086), has bird motifs almost identical to contemporary silks woven in the trading town of Zandara, near Bukhara. The later date of these examples might indicate that Ingvar's, or another's foray into the Caspian, was in fact a success, reinvigorating a flagging connection to the East.
The Far-Traveller's fate can then be reconstructed. Either he died in captivity in a Georgian camp, having once been in the service of the Khwarezmshah, or he died in the service of the Khwarezmshah as the Seljuks invaded and besieged the capital of Gurganj, with a few lone survivors able to flee to tell the tale. Beyond the sagas, archaeology in these regions might be able to tease out more adventurers like Ingvar, and, possibly, if a Central Asian warrior accomplished the reverse.
References:
Böhm, M. (2019). Ingvar the Far-Travelled: between the Byzantium and Caucasus. A Maritime Approach to Discussion. Studia Ceranea. Journal of the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe, 9, 143–155.
Shepard, J. (1982). Yngvarr’s Expedition to the East and a Russian inscribed Stone Cross. Saga-book, 21, 222-292.
Larsson, Mats G. (1986–1989), "Yngvarr's Expedition and the Georgian Chronicle" (PDF), Saga-Book, vol. XXII, pp. 98-
Larsson, M. G. (2011). Early Contacts between Scandinavia and the Orient,“. The Silk Road Journal, 9, 122-142.
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