Guts Glory

These were the emperor’s personal protectors, the Varangian Guard—combat-hardened, physically imposing Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian warriors imported from Viking Rus to defend the emperor with their lives against all threats foreign and domestic. Known as “the emperor’s axe-bearing foreigners” (or, when they weren’t listening, “the emperor’s wine-bags”), the Varangian Guard were a mercenary army brought in for their battle prowess and paid extremely well not only to guard the emperor but also to seek out his enemies and dispose of them as viciously and gruesomely as the Vikings saw fit.

The story of the Varangian Guard begins in 963, when a three-year-old baby named Basil assumed the throne of the Byzantine Empire. Since nobody in Byzantium really wanted to take orders from a toddler, a top advisor came in to help make decisions until Basil was old enough, and that guy brought in a Greek war hero named Phocas to put things in order. Phocas squashed out a potential uprising by a rival military commander, conquered some lands, and then refused to step down when Basil turned eighteen and was finally old enough to take over as emperor. Phocas basically told the teenage heir to the throne something to the effect of “Whatever, fools, I’m in charge now. What are you gonna do about it?”

What Basil did about it was secretly gather the support of the army, the royal administrators, and the people, launch a coup, and have Phocas arrested, stripped of his land and titles, and exiled from Byzantium forever.

After he took his rightful place on the Byzantine throne, Emperor Basil’s first real problem came in the form of a bloodthirsty band of rampaging tribal warriors known as the Bulgars. A nomadic people who migrated to present-day Bulgaria from somewhere in Central Asia, the Bulgars had been united a few years earlier by a super-scary dude amazingly known as Khan Krum the Horrible. In the past decade or so, they’d defeated three Byzantine emperors in battle and turned one of their skulls into a decorative gold-plated wine goblet that they made Byzantine diplomats drink out of every time they came to discuss politics with the khan.

Krum the Horrible was long dead, replaced by the significantly less imposingly named Khan Samuel, and the new emperor Basil was getting a little tired of these guys pillaging and plundering Byzantine lands anytime they felt like it. Basil called up the full might of the Byzantine military, decked everyone out in top-of-the-line gold-plated gear, marched several thousand warriors into Bulgar lands, and charged head-on into the enemy formation, holding a gold sword in one hand and a huge flag depicting the Virgin Mary in the other.

He got his butt kicked. Hard. As in, pretty much every man in his army was slaughtered on the field, and he barely escaped with his life by running for it like a coward.

When Basil returned home to Constantinople, guess who was sitting on the throne?

That’s right, our old friend General Phocas. As soon as that traitor heard of Basil’s miserable failure, he came walking right back to Constantinople and told everyone that Basil was worthless, and all the soldiers and nobles of Byzantium immediately accepted him as the rightful ruler of their people and threw him a huge party with lots of cake and cooked meats. “Sorry, Basil, nobody wants to see your loser face around here again.”

This, of course, just made Basil even angrier. And he was going to do something about it.

Raging like crazy, Basil headed north, and he didn’t stop until he was face-to-face with King Vladimir of Rus. Vladimir, the grandson of Saint Olga, was the Viking ruler of Rus, and he of course had a massive army of hardcore Viking warriors at his disposal. But, incidentally, he was going broke after spending a ton of money on wars against the Slavs. Basil made Vladimir an offer: “If you convert to Christianity and give me six thousand Viking warriors to retake my throne, you can marry my sister, a Byzantine princess, and have a lifelong alliance with the richest empire on earth, and I’ll send you a ton of gold once I recapture Constantinople.”

As you can probably guess, the last thing General Phocas expected to see when he woke up one morning was a Viking onslaught of six thousand blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedish berserkers screaming toward him, their bloodstained axes and swords held high above their heads in attack position.

Basil and his Viking horde swept into Phocas’s forward military base at Chrysopolis, stormed the walls, and killed every Byzantine warrior they could catch, wiping out half of Phocas’s army in one afternoon of nonstop chopping. Then they went to Constantinople, forced their way through Phocas’s defenses, recaptured the city, put the traitorous general to death, and spent the next two weeks locking up or whacking every Byzantine nobleman who had dared support the usurper.

Emperor Basil II

Realizing that his own citizens were not to be trusted, Basil kept the six thousand Vikings on as his Varangians, meaning “sworn men.” These hulking Norsemen would serve as the bodyguards of Byzantine emperors for the next five centuries, remaining loyal to their ruler not because of any patriotism or sense of honor, but because he was the one paying their salaries, and because he was paying them three times what he was paying any other warrior in the Byzantine military.

The six thousand Varangians were organized into twelve companies of five hundred men each. Each company was commanded by a Greek officer, and the entire guard was commanded by a Greek officer known as the akolouthos. This guy was so important that he got to walk right behind the emperor anytime there was a procession or a parade, which is a way bigger deal than it sounds. The guardsmen were stationed throughout the city, ordered to secure public buildings and entrances to the imperial palace, and called in as iron-faced Viking riot cops to break up everything from pirate attacks to fistfights between fans of different chariot-racing teams. They were equipped with the best weapons and armor in the Byzantine Empire, were decked out in the finest clothing, and earned two and a half pounds of gold per year, making them by far the highest-paid mercenaries in Byzantium. If they traveled with the emperor to battle, they were given the honor of being the first to plunder a captured city. It was a good deal for the Vikings all around, and when they returned home they were all super-rich celebrities. Plus the Viking women were into it. According to the Laxdaela Saga, when one Varangian Guardsman named Bolli returned home, “his companions were all wearing scarlet and rode in gilded saddles; they were all fine-looking men, but Bolli surpassed them all. He was wearing clothes of gold-embroidered silk which the Greek emperor had given him, and over them a scarlet cloak. He was girt with the sword ‘leg-biter,’ its pommel now gold-embossed and the hilt bound with gold. He had a gilded helmet on his head and a red shield at his side on which a knight was traced in gold. He carried a lance in his hand, as is the custom in foreign lands. Wherever they took lodging for the night, the womenfolk paid no heed to anything but to gaze at Bolli and his companions in all their finery.”

The rowdy Varangians were also infamous for causing trouble: getting into fights in bars, in gambling dens, or at racetracks; drinking too much wine; and trying to make extra money by fighting wild animals in the coliseum. Even though they were pagans, they had to accompany the emperor to church on Sundays, and the only rule was that they weren’t allowed to swear or sing while they were there, although one guy named Halfdan carved his name into the balcony of the world’s biggest church—the Hagia Sophia—with a knife while he was bored during one service. It’s still visible today.

Once the guard was set up and Basil’s iron grip on the Byzantine throne was firmly established, there was still that whole thing to deal with about getting revenge on the Bulgars. Basil accomplished this in 1014, his Varangian shock troopers destroying the Bulgars’ forces and capturing over fifteen thousand prisoners.

Basil decided to let his captives go free. But first he ordered his men to divide the prisoners into groups of one hundred. One man in each of these groups would get to keep one eye. The other ninety-nine in every group lost both.

The 150 lucky dudes with one eye remaining had to lead the rest of them home. When the procession got back to the castle, Khan Samuel had a heart attack and died on the spot. By 1018, Basil had conquered the entire Bulgar Empire.

From that point on, he became known as Basil the Bulgar-Slayer.

The Varangians would continue serving Basil until his death in 1025, and then would serve the emperors for the next two hundred years. They’d fight Fatimid Arab warriors in the Middle East, Persians, and Muslims; launch an invasion of Sicily; and once accidentally knock Emperor Michael VII unconscious after a night of partying too hard during his coronation.

The Varangian Guard stood strong as powerful protectors of the Byzantine Empire for hundreds of years. They fought their last stand during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when a big army of super-pious Catholic Crusaders took one look at Constantinople and figured, “Hey, forget the Holy Land—let’s just destroy this place instead.” The Varangian Guard went down fighting, defending the gates and holy sites and helping the emperor escape the city with his life, before finally falling under an onslaught of Crusader knights.

KNOW YOUR VIKINGS

THE VARANGIANS’ LAST STAND