jonathan shepard
widow, Ol’ga, albeit unsuccessfully. By this time, however, a new treaty had
been negotiated with the Byzantines and commerce resumed. Princess Ol’ga,
acting as regent, took measures to regularise the payment of tribute and set up
hunting lodges where birds – probably of prey – could be caught for shipping
to Byzantium together with furs, wax, honey and slaves. Ol’ga herself sailed
to Constantinople, partly to confirm or improve the terms of the foresaid
treaty. She was received at court ‘with princesses who were her own relatives
and her ladies-in-waiting’ as well as ‘emissaries of the princes of Rh
¯
osia and
traders’.
17
During her stay Ol’ga was baptised and took the Christian name of
the emperor’s wife, Helena. However, no bishop accompanied Ol’ga-Helena
back to Rus’, and by autumn 959 she was asking Otto of Saxony for a full reli-
gious mission. Eventually a bishop, Adalbert, was sent but he soon returned
together with his followers, describing the venture as futile.
18
Evaluation of these events is difficult. Even the date of Ol’ga’s visit to the
emperor is controversial. The year 946 is one possibility but the main alter-
native, 957, has its merits, not least in more or less reconciling chronological
pointers in the Rus’ and Byzantine sources. What is certain is that Ol’ga made
her journey against a background of economic boom and competent organ-
isation. Constantine VII himself describes the marshalling of convoys at Kiev
every spring. Slaves, together with the tribute collected over the winter by
‘their princes (archontes) with all the Rh
¯
os’, were loaded aboard for a voyage
tailed by opportunistic nomads: if a boat was wrecked in the Black Sea, ‘they
all put in to land, in order to present a united front against the Pechenegs’.
19
The underlying stability of the princely regime is suggested by its survival
through major setbacks and challenges in the 940s, although this owed some-
thing to Ol’ga’s personality. A concentration of wealth and weaponry in the
middle Dnieper region is also suggested by the finds of chamber graves at Kiev
and Shestovitsa. Their occupants were equipped for the next world with arms
and riding gear – sometimes horses or slave girls, too – while their dealings
in trade are signalled by the weights and balances accompanying them (see
Plate 1). Most were probably the retainers of the princes and other leading
notables. The number of chamber graves on the middle Dnieper is not vast,
but this tallies with Constantine VII’s indication that Rus’ military manpower
was finite, further grounds for self-discipline.
17 Constantine VII, De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, ii.15, ed. J. J. Reiske, vol. i (Corpus scrip-
torum historiae byzantinae) (Bonn: E. Weber, 1829), pp. 594–5.
18 Adalbert, Continuatio Reginonis, ed. A. Bauer and R. Rau, in Quellen zur Geschichte der
s
¨
achsischen Kaiserzeit (reprinted Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002),
pp. 214–19.
19 Constantine VII, De administrando imperio,ch.9,pp.62–3.
58
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