The theme of the longest amusement of Russian historians - the dispute about the Varangians, is one of my favorites, to which I have devoted twenty works for twenty years. At first, my attention was focused on the historiography of the controversy: who claimed what and why. The result of these works was an extensive collected material and an equally extensive manuscript, which, however, remained unfinished. Perhaps it will still be completed, but I was interested in another aspect of the case.
No matter how you judge the participants in this lengthy dispute, from Gerhard Miller, Mikhail Lomonosov to the present day, you still have to express your point of view on what it was. I moved away from historiography and started developing my own theory, studying for this the vast archaeological material accumulated over more than a hundred years of intensive excavations.
Archaeologists, summarizing the materials of the excavations, drew attention to one curious pattern. In the Varangian era of the 8th-11th centuries (it began around the middle of the 8th century, judging by the finds in Staraya Ladoga, and ended in the first half of the 11th century), large settlements and burial grounds with rich Scandinavian material coexisted with large settlements of the Slavs, which later became large Old Russian cities. There were several such pairs: the Rurik settlement (Scandinavians) - Novgorod (Slavs), Timerevo (Scandinavians) - Yaroslavl (Slavs), Gnezdovo (Scandinavians) - Smolensk (Slavs) and Shestovitsy (Scandinavians) - Chernigov (Slavs).
After long disputes, even the most zealous anti-Normanists, under the pressure of archaeological finds, had to admit that there were decent Scandinavians on the territory of future Russia, they lived for a long time, with families and children. And not far away, 10-15 km, that is, a couple of hours of horseback riding, large Slavic settlements arose from the settlements. Moreover, if at the beginning of the Varangian era the Slavic population was extremely rare, small in number and extremely poor, as indicated by materials from the settlements and from the kurgans, then in the Varangian time the Slavic population increased sharply in number, swelled almost by leaps and bounds. In addition, the Slavs became very rich, and their material culture at the beginning of the Old Russian period was already developed, with clear signs of prosperity: pottery vessels, silver coins and jewelry, an abundance of iron products, leather shoes, various imports, not to mention well-equipped cities. Then the Scandinavians disappeared, their settlements were almost all abandoned and did not renew, and the Slavic ones remained and became the ancestors of the ancient Russian cities, from which modern cities also began.
Researchers have tried to interpret this interesting fact this way and that, but in my opinion, not very well. The question remained unresolved: what connected the Scandinavians and the Slavs (and this connection was strong and long-lasting), and why did the Slavs rise so much in their development?
To resolve this issue, I put forward the following hypothesis about why the Scandinavians needed the Slavs. They were tied together by bread.
How much bread did you take on the hike?
Historians, when they write about military campaigns, usually pay almost no attention to military-economic issues, in particular, to the food supply of the troops. Meanwhile, the army, that of the ship crews, that on foot, that on horseback, consumes a very significant amount of food. I was most interested in ship supplies, since the Vikings used to go on long voyages on ships.
How much supplies did the Vikings take on board? There is no mention of this in the written sources known to us. But this question can be solved approximately using data from a later period. It is known that the daily ration of a sailor in a galley fleet was approximately 1.4 kg of bread. However, I was able to locate the exact composition of the ship's supplies, indicating the types and weights of food, which were taken by German whaling ships of the 18th century, which went fishing to the coast of Greenland. They were at sea for five months, that is, about the same as the Vikings spent on long sea voyages. The German book contained a list of supplies for a ship with a crew of 30, that is, as many as there were Vikings on a military drakkar.
Calculations made on these data showed that 2.4 kg of food was required per crew member per day: bread, rusks and meat products. It is unlikely that during the Viking Age, supplies were less, since sailing, especially with the need to go on the oars, was quite difficult, and the Vikings still had to fight afterwards. Thus, their food must be very good, otherwise the enemy would easily have defeated the emaciated and weakened Vikings in battle.
And what supply of bread was required for a long-distance campaign of a large army? As an example, I calculated the necessary reserves for the 860 campaign against Constantinople. It is known that the chronicle of John the Deacon lists 350 ships that attacked the capital of Byzantium. In the 12th century Brussels Chronicle, 200 ships were mentioned. Most likely, these are approximate data. The ships could have been less, for example, about a hundred, but even this was a lot for the Byzantines.
The capacity of ships used for cruises on rivers and seas is known - about 15 people. Large drakkars did not enter the rivers due to the large precipitation. Therefore, the Vikings on the rivers used smaller ships. If there were 350 ships of 15 people each, then the number of the troops was 5250 people. This is maximum. If there were 100 ships, then the number of troops was 1500 people.
The detachment left, most likely from Gnezdovo on the Dnieper. Gnezdovo already existed in the 860s, while there were no Scandinavians in Kiev yet, they appeared there later. Down the Dnieper to the mouth - four weeks, further along the sea 420 nautical miles - 84 running hours or 5-6 days, including stops. And another week for the fighting. The return journey is about 500 miles by sea - about 166 running hours, or 10-11 days, and up the Dnieper. Going up with the oars is more difficult and slower, so it would take 675 hours of sailing to climb, or about 75 days including stops. Total for the entire trip - 129 days.
In total, for each in such a campaign, it was necessary to take a rounded 310 kg of food per person, which is 465 tons for an army of 1500 people and 1627 tons for an army of 5250 people. In food, approximately 50% by weight is bread. Total for 1500 people would need 278, 3 tons of bread and for 5250 people - 1008, 8 tons of bread, taking into account the consumption of grain for the preparation of crackers.
How many peasants do you need for a sea voyage?
This is a lot. It is not so easy to collect a thousand tons of bread. The peasant farm cannot give away the entire harvest, since the peasant needs grain to feed himself and his family, to feed the horse and to sow. What is left on top of that, the peasant can give as tribute or sell. It is impossible to take all the grain, because after that the peasant will not sow or reap anything.
The materials of the Russian peasant economy in the non-chernozem provinces of the 19th - early 20th centuries, as well as the data of the scribes of the 16th-17th centuries for the same territory, show how much grain a peasant economy could supply without prejudice to itself. The volume of marketable grain ranged from 9 to 15 poods for an average peasant farm. Since farming methods and yields without the use of fertilizers stood at about the same level for centuries, the Slavic peasants received the same results in the Varangian era.
Further calculation is simple. 278, 3 tons - this is 17, 6 thousand pounds, and 1008, 8 tons - 61, 8 thousand pounds.
And it turns out that to equip an army of 1500 people with bread required from 1173 to 1955 peasant farms, and for an army of 5250 people - from 4120 to 6866 farms. Since in those days there were an average of 10 households per settlement, according to the first option the Vikings needed grain from about 200 villages (from 117 to 195), and according to the second option - up to 700 villages (from 412 to 686).
Hence the conclusions. Firstly, there were about a hundred ships and the army did not exceed 1500 people. The Vikings collected grain from the vicinity of Gnezdovo, and in the 9th century the total number of agricultural settlements in the upper reaches of the Western Dvina and Dnieper did not exceed 300. There was simply not enough grain resources for a larger army. Secondly, the campaign was clearly preceded by a powerful grain procurement campaign, which took many months and lasted, probably, throughout the autumn and winter of 859. The bread had to be collected, taken to Gnezdovo, processed into bakery products. The Scandinavians most likely bought bread for jewelry, iron tools and silver, for the simple reason that the next year the army had to be fed, and since the robbed peasants could not and would not want to give bread again. I also think that there were hardly more than 300-500 people on the campaign of the Scandinavians proper, and the rest were rowers and workers to serve this rati, who needed firewood, cooked food, water, and the ships could require repairs. The Scandinavians, obviously, recruited the auxiliary crew from the local population for a fee or a share in the production.
Seemingly simple consideration that on a sea voyage you need to eat well, but how it turns the whole story upside down. Only one approach under the walls of Constantinople required the peasants of a vast area to be strained. And yet the army had to be fed on the bunker. It is easy to calculate that a detachment of 100 soldiers a year ate about 5, 3 thousand poods of grain, and to feed it, it took about 600 households or 60 villages. In addition, there were other needs for bread: fur trade, extraction of iron ore and ironmaking, construction and equipment of ships, various transportation, procurement and transportation of firewood. Firewood was also harvested on a large scale. A dwelling with a black-burning stove burns about 19.7 cubic meters of firewood or about 50 large pines per year. If we assume that four Vikings lived in one hut, then an army of 100 people required about 500 cubic meters of firewood for a year. All this required working hands, because the Scandinavians did not cut firewood themselves and carried it from the forest. Workers also demanded grain, and transportation also required horses, which also relied on grain fodder, especially in winter.
In general, my conclusion is simple: the Scandinavians needed Slavic peasants in the most extreme degree. Without them and without their grain, the Vikings could do nothing: neither live, nor get furs, nor rob anyone. Therefore, as soon as the Scandinavians found enough numerous Slavs in the upper reaches of the Dnieper, their affairs went uphill, and they did everything for the Slavs to multiply and settle with their arable lands wherever there was a good land. Then the Scandinavians moved out, and the Slavic peasants remained, and on this economic basis, Ancient Russia arose.
