This is a once-off free taster lecture offered as part of our Taster Week January 2024.

Islamic travellers in the medieval period encountered tall and fair-haired northerners along eastern European rivers, they called them al-Madjus: ‘fire worshipers’ – heathens. In these accounts the northerners are no longer Vikings but have morphed seamlessly into the Rus. This is the group we will follow. We will look at the term itself, which is intricately linked with modern-day politics. The question of whether the Vikings are the Rus is of national importance in eastern Europe and echoes in the current war in Ukraine.  We will examine the relationship of Rus to the Byzantium world and the arrival of Christianity. The creation of this empire, part of European Christendom, that had wide and lasting repercussions.