The Rus on the Volga, 922 AD – the oldest detailed eyewitness account of Northmen.
In the year 921 an embassy of the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir set out from Baghdad – its destination was the king of the Volga Bulgars, far in the north. Among the party was a secretary named Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who kept a precise record of the journey. On the Volga he encountered Norse traders, whom he calls the Rusiyya – and thereby left us the oldest detailed eyewitness account of Northmen we possess.
Ibn Fadlan was no warrior and no adventurer, but an educated secretary and legal scholar in the caliph's service. His mission was diplomatic: he was to bring gifts, money and scholars to the king of the Bulgars on the middle Volga, who had just converted to Islam. His report, the Risala, is sober, curious – and time and again honestly horrified by what he sees.
For a long time the text was known only in fragments, quoted by the geographer Yaqut in the 13th century. Only in 1923 did a far more complete version surface in a manuscript in Mashhad (Iran). Only since then can we read what Ibn Fadlan really wrote about the Rus.
Ibn Fadlan describes the Rus as traders who travelled the river routes with furs and slaves – from the Baltic across the Russian river systems to the Caspian Sea and on to Baghdad. His picture fits strikingly well with what we know of Scandinavian Varangians. Even so, it remains disputed to this day whether the Rus were pure Northmen or already a mixed Slavic-Scandinavian layer.
Ibn Fadlan was impressed by their appearance: tall as palm trees, fair-skinned, ruddy-blond. Every man always carried an axe, a knife and a long sword – they never laid down their weapons. From fingernail to neck they were covered in dark-green patterns, trees and figures – what he describes sounds like tattoos or painted skin.
The women, according to Ibn Fadlan, wore at the breast a capsule of iron, silver, copper or gold – depending on the wealth of the man. With it, neck-rings: for every ten thousand dirham a man owned, one ring for his wife. Some women were hung all over with green glass beads, which the men apparently prized especially highly.
As for cleanliness, Ibn Fadlan as a pious Muslim took little joy in the Rus – he calls them the filthiest of God's creatures. His chief annoyance: in the morning a maidservant would bring a great bowl of water. The master washed his face and hair in it, cleaned himself and spat into it – and then the girl passed the same bowl on round the circle, from man to man. To him a horror; to the Rus apparently entirely normal.
He also describes their camp life on the Volga: great houses of wood in which ten or twenty lived together, each with his bench and his trade goods – and the slave girls they meant to sell.
When a ship arrived, the merchant first went to a tall wooden post with a carved face, surrounded by smaller figures. He threw himself down, laid bread, meat, onions, milk and strong drink before it and asked that a merchant be sent to him with many dinars and dirham, one who would buy whatever he wished without haggling. If business went badly, he came again with further gifts and begged the lesser gods – the wives and children of the great one – for intercession.
If it went well, he gave thanks with a sacrifice: sheep or cattle were slaughtered, part distributed, the rest laid before the posts. At night dogs came and ate it – and the Rus was content: his lord had been gracious to him and had consumed his gift.
Ibn Fadlan devotes the greatest part of his account of the Rus to a burial he witnessed himself – the funeral of a man of rank. It is the most famous passage of the whole Risala.
When an ordinary man died, he tells us, they laid him in a small boat and burned him. With a man of rank, however, they proceeded elaborately: his property was divided into three – one part for the family, one for his death-clothes, one for the death-ale. The corpse was placed for the time being for ten days in a sealed grave, until everything was prepared.
Then it was asked among his slave girls: who wishes to die with him? Usually one volunteered – and from then on she was bound. She was guarded and pampered, and drank and sang during these days. An old, grim woman conducted the whole ceremony; they called her the Angel of Death. It was she who would do the killing.
On the day of the burial the dead man's ship was drawn ashore onto a wooden frame. In the middle they set a tent with a couch, covered with precious cloths and cushions. They took the dead man from the grave, clothed him in gold and fur and set him upright in the tent, surrounded by food, fruit, fragrance and his weapons.
Then the killing began: a dog was cut in two and thrown into the ship, two horses were driven until they sweated and then dismembered, along with two cattle, a cock and a hen. All of it went to the dead man in the ship.
The slave girl meanwhile went from tent to tent, and the master of each tent lay with her and said: tell your lord, I did this out of love for him. Towards evening she was led to a frame like a door-lintel. Three times the men lifted her up so that she could look over it.
The first time she said: Lo, there I see my father and my mother. The second time: Lo, there I see all my dead kinsfolk sitting together. The third time: Lo, there I see my lord, he sits in paradise, and paradise is green and fair, and with him are men and boys. He calls me – so bring me to him.
– a faithful English rendering after Ibn Fadlan, Risala (922)
They led her to the ship. She gave up her jewellery, drank two cups and sang. Then six men drew her into the tent to the dead man. While some outside beat on their shields with sticks – so that her cries would not be heard and no other slave girl would take fright – the Angel of Death looped a cord about her neck; two men pulled on it, and the old woman drove a broad dagger between her ribs again and again.
Last of all the nearest kinsman of the dead man stepped forward, naked, took a burning brand and – walking backwards, the fire behind him – kindled the pyre beneath the ship. A wind sprang up, and in scarcely an hour ship, dead man and girl were burned to ash. Over the spot they heaped a mound and set upon it a post of birch wood, into which they carved the name of the man and of the king of the Rus.
Ibn Fadlan stood by with an interpreter. Beside him a Rus laughed and had it translated: you Arabs are fools. You take those you love most and lay them in the earth, where worms and soil devour them. We, however, burn them in an instant, and that very hour they pass into paradise. Then he laughed louder still. For Ibn Fadlan it was heathenry – for the Rus the superior way to die.
Much in Ibn Fadlan agrees astonishingly well with archaeology: boat graves are real (Oseberg, Gokstad in Norway), and in some Viking graves – for instance at Birka or in the double grave at Flakstad – there are signs of human sacrifice or retainer burials. The breast clasps, beads and neck-rings also match women's graves.
And the prayer that many know – "Lo, there I see my father …" – has two faces: the slave girl's brief vision at the door-frame is genuine and stands in Ibn Fadlan. The embellished, often-quoted warrior version (with father, mother, sisters and brothers calling one) comes instead from the 1999 film The 13th Warrior. Beautiful all the same – just modern.
Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Risala (travel account), 922 AD; transmitted by Yaqut al-Hamawi (13th c.) and in the Mashhad manuscript (discovered 1923). For context see, among others, J. E. Montgomery, "Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyya", as well as archaeological literature on Oseberg, Gokstad and Birka. This page is an original, faithful English rendering of the Rus sections – not a reprint of any copyrighted translation. Disputed points are marked as myth or uncertain.