[muawiyah]

You really don't know your Swedes do you. There's a really great book out there called History of the Vikings. It reports a traditional Viking Chief's burial ~ burning boat and sacrifical virgin included ~ in the 1700s on the Volga!

Now how do you imagine those ol'boys got away with that right under the nose of the Orthodox Church?

It's clearly because much of Russia itself was only nominally Christian.

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“You really don’t know your Swedes do you.”

Yeah, actually I apparently know them better than others here.

“There’s a really great book out there called History of the Vikings.”

Which one? The one from Gwyn Jones? Read it. The one from Else Roesdahl? Read it. Viking Age Iceland by Jesse Byock? Read it. I also have in storage and read the encyclopedia of Medieval Scandinavia (great cure for insomnia). Oh, and did I mention I took Old Norse in graduate school and read some of the sagas in the original? Yeah.

“It reports a traditional Viking Chief’s burial ~ burning boat and sacrifical virgin included ~ in the 1700s on the Volga!”

What you’re apparently alluding to is the report of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, an early 10th century Arab assistant emissary, who traveled from Baghdad to the Volga Bulgars in 921. It was he who witnessed the chief’s funeral. I read his book more than 15 years ago. For kicks you might want to read Michael Cricton’s Eaters of the Dead which is a novelization of the old Beowulf story which takes its beginning from Fadlan’s chronicle. It was later made into a movie called 13th Warrior.

Your most glaring error is that you said there were Vikings on the Volga in 1700. Peter was the Tsar of Russia then. Do you really think the Vikings for contemporary to the Romanov dynasty?

“Now how do you imagine those ol’boys got away with that right under the nose of the Orthodox Church?”

They didn’t. BECAUSE RUSSIA WOULD ONLY BE CONVERTED 60 YEARS AFTER THE EVENT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!!! There was no Orthodox Church on the Volga yet. Unreal!

“It’s clearly because much of Russia itself was only nominally Christian.”

(sigh) No, it’s because Russia wasn’t Christian AT ALL YET. Please get your chronology straight.

Look in Gwyn Jones’ book, page 425, and see the appendix on the ship burial on the Volga and you’ll see it is based on Ibn Fadlan’s 10th century account.