scratched but one dirham has the name ‘Zacharias’ scratched in Greek-style letters,
perhaps with reference to a temporary owner (Mel’nikova 2001 : 107 , 115 – 19 ). The
coins in the hoard, probably deposited early in the ninth century, will mostly have
passed through the Khazars’ dominions, which housed enough Christians of the eastern
orthodox rite for a metropolitanate to be devised for them by the Constantinopolitan
authorities, probably in the second quarter of the ninth century (Darrouzès 1981 : 31 – 2 ,
241 – 2 , 245 ). Later in the century, the well-informed Abbasid director of posts and
intelligence Ibn Khurradadhbeh noted that northern traders brought furs and swords
down to the Black Sea coast and paid customs duties to the Byzantines, probably at
Cherson in the Crimea (Lewicki 1956 : 76 – 7 ). He terms them ‘Ru ̄s’, and in fact persons
‘stating that they, that is their people (gens), were called Rho ̄s’ were already at the
Byzantine emperor’s court by 838. Reportedly, their ‘king called chaganus’ had sent
them ‘for the sake of friendship’. These envoys are best known for what befell them later,
at the court of the western emperor, Louis the Pious. After making enquiries Louis
identified them as ‘of the people of the Swedes (Sueoni)’ and detained them on suspicion
of espionage. The episode provides a central plank in the case for regarding the Ru ̄s/Rho ̄s
who appear in the eastern lands as incomers, a ‘people’ of Nordic stock (Grat et al. 1964 :
30 – 1 ; Shepard 1995 a). But it also suggests that exchanges of embassies and other marks
of recognition with the Byzantine emperor mattered to the Rus from the moment
that an elite group tried to establish hegemony over populations between the Gulf of
Finland and the fringes of the steppes. The likeliest location for the Rus chaganus’ base
is Riurikovo Gorodishche, at the hub of several long-distance waterways radiating out
from Lake Il’men. A Byzantine official’s seal of the first half of the ninth century has
been found there as well as a copper coin of Theophilos, the Byzantine emperor visited
by the forementioned embassy. These form part of a trail of copper coins and of seals
belonging to another official found at Hedeby, Ribe, Tissø and Birka, hints of Byzantine
as well as Rus emissaries moving between Nordic courts and kingly halls around this
time (Shepard 1995 a: 48 – 55 ; Bulgakova 2004 : 53 – 4 ; Duczko 2004 : 50 – 9 , 101 – 4 ).
Byzantine emperors’ gifts and greetings could bolster the status of would-be dynasts
near and east of the Baltic, while the emperor was ever alert for allies and potential
‘barbarian’ recruits for his armies, the further-flung and fiercer the better.
One unintended by-product of the Byzantine emissaries’ probings may have been
to whet Nordic arms-bearing groups’ appetite for fame and wealth from long-range
ventures to the inland seas. Viking expeditions harried Spanish and Italian coastlines in
the 840 s and 850 s, and in June 860 a sizeable fleet bore down on Constantinople from
the north – like ‘a thunderbolt’ according to Patriarch Photios. They reportedly amassed
‘immense wealth’ from looting the suburbs and other coastal settlements, and in activ-
ities that lasted no more than a few weeks, they made a point of terrifying Constanti-
nople’s citizens. Photios describes them as sailing past the walls and raising their
swords, ‘as if threatening the city with death by the sword’ (Laourdas 1959 : 44 ; Mango
1958 : 101 ). Such displays and the desecration of altars showed up the shortcomings of
the God whom the Christians claimed was their protector, while the terrified Greeks’
failure to respond militarily gained further kudos for the expedition’s leaders. Photios’
rhetorical claim that what had been a rabble had now gained fame may hit upon one of
the reasons for the undertaking: a couple of hundred or so boatloads of even the bravest
warriors stood little chance of storming Constantinople’s walls, while the amount of loot
they could ship back north was finite. But a notably bloody, destructive raid served
–– chapter 37 : The Viking Rus and Byzantium––