29: 3. Kievan Rus Assimilation and the Unsolved Mystery of the Salme Ships Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age In the east, Rurik and his company founded what became Kievan Rus, shifting their power base south from Nov
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Eleanor Barraclough
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
In the east, Rurik and his company founded what became Kievan Rus, shifting their power base south from Novgorod (862) to Kiev. Although people of Norse heritage controlled the area initially, they were a minority who mastered cultural assimilation with Slavic groups. Norse names like Ingvar and Helga became Slavicized as Igor and Olga, demonstrating extensive cultural mixing. The text also covers the mystery of the Salme ships in Estonia, recently discovered. These two ship burials, dated around 750 AD and predating Lindisfarne, contained the remains of dozens of high-status individuals from Sweden who died violently, likely on a diplomatic mission. One leader was buried with the king piece of the popular board game Hnefatafl placed in his mouth—an intentional act of storytelling.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. |
| 0:06.8 | I'm John Batchel with Eleanor Barracloff, the professor, |
| 0:10.5 | who is also the author of Embers of the Hands, |
| 0:13.8 | Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. |
| 0:16.1 | Eleanor is helping us understand that the Vikings, |
| 0:18.9 | who have this very large reputation in America because they got to North America, they got to Greenland that the Vikings, who have this very large reputation in America, because |
| 0:21.8 | they got to North America, they got to Greenland in the news, they got to Iceland, always in the |
| 0:27.1 | news, they got to England, yes, of course, but they also reached all the way into what is now |
| 0:33.6 | Russia and Eastern Europe. Eleanor, please continue. You had them at Novgorod around the middle |
| 0:40.0 | of the 9th century. Yeah, so pretty similar, just a couple of years before this great heathen army |
| 0:45.8 | lands in England. There is Rourik and his company in Novgorod in 862. This then becomes the starting point for what becomes known as |
| 0:57.9 | Kiev and Rus as a sort of cultural group. But the reason it becomes known as Kiev and |
| 1:03.9 | Rus is that a couple of decades later, their power base shifts south to Kyiv. But what's really interesting is that although you have |
| 1:13.9 | people of Norse descent and Norse heritage very much controlling this cultural area early on, |
| 1:21.1 | there are always a minority. And there are lots of other Slavic groups in particular who are very much operating within this |
| 1:29.8 | cultural sphere. And so what you end up with, a bit like sort of elsewhere in the North |
| 1:34.5 | world, in the North diaspora, you end up with a cultural melting pot where you have |
| 1:40.4 | Scandinavian elements, you have Slavic elements, and you have all sorts of other elements there too. |
| 1:46.8 | And what you find is that the Norse are, in a way, masters of cultural assimilation. |
| 1:52.6 | And so before too long, you see names, sort of in the rulers, for example, |
| 1:58.0 | that we might think of as being quite Slavic. |
| 2:00.2 | So we have names |
... |
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