Olga (; ; – 11 July 969) was a regent of Kievan Rus' for her son Sviatoslav from 945 until 957. Following her baptism, Olga took the name Elenа. She is known for her subjugation of the Drevlians, a tribe that had killed her husband Igor. Even though it was her grandson Vladimir who adopted Christianity and made it the state religion, she was the first Rurikid ruler to be baptized.
Olga is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church with the epithet "Equal to the Apostles". Her feast day is 11 July.
Early life While Olga's birthdate is unknown, it could be as early as 890 AD and as late as 925 AD.Michael S. Flier, "St Olga," in The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Robert E. Bjork (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). According to the Primary Chronicle, Olga was of Varangian (Viking) origin and was born in Pleskov. Little is known about her life before her marriage to Prince Igor I of Kiev and the birth of their son, Sviatoslav. According to historian Alexey Karpov, Olga was no more than 15 years old at the time of her marriage. Igor was the son and heir of Rurik, founder of the Rurik dynasty. After his father's death, Igor was under the guardianship of Oleg, who had consolidated power in the region, conquering neighboring tribes and establishing a capital in Kiev.Thomas Noonan, "European Russia, c. 500–c. 1050," in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, ed. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 508. This realm became known as Kievan Rus', a territory covering what are now parts of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
The Drevlians were a neighboring tribe with which the growing Kievan Rus' empire had a complex relationship. The Drevlians had joined Kievan Rus' in military campaigns against the Byzantine Empire and paid tribute to Igor's predecessors. They stopped paying tribute upon Oleg's death and instead gave money to a local warlord. In 945, Igor set out for the Drevlian capital, Iskorosten, to force the tribe to pay tribute to Kievan Rus'. Confronted by Igor's larger army, the Drevlians backed down and paid him. As Igor and his army rode home, however, he decided the payment was not enough and returned, with only a small escort, seeking more tribute.
Upon his arrival in their territory, the Drevlians murdered Igor. According to the Byzantine chronicler Leo the Deacon, Igor's death was caused by a gruesome act of torture in which he was "captured by them, tied to tree trunks, and torn in two." Historian D. Sullivan has suggested that Leo may have invented this sensationalist version of Igor's death, taking inspiration from Diodorus Siculus' account of a similar killing method used by the robber Sinis, who lived near the Isthmus of Corinth and was killed by Theseus.
Regency
After Igor's death in 945, Olga ruled Kievan Rus' as regent on behalf of their son Sviatoslav. She was the first woman to rule Kievan Rus'. Little is known about Olga's tenure as ruler of Kiev, but the Primary Chronicle does give an account of her accession to the throne and her bloody revenge on the Drevlians for the murder of her husband. It also gives some insight into her role as civil leader of the Kievan people.
According to archeologist Sergei Beletsky, Knyaginya Olga, like all the other rulers before Vladimir the Great, was also using the bident as her personal symbol.
Drevlian Uprising
After Igor's death at the hands of the Drevlians, Olga assumed the throne because her three-year-old son Sviatoslav was too young to rule. The Drevlians, emboldened by their success in ambushing and killing the king, sent a messenger to Olga proposing that she marry his murderer, Prince Mal. Twenty Drevlian negotiators boated to Kiev to pass along their king's message and to ensure Olga's compliance. They arrived in her court and told the queen why they were in Kiev: "to report that they had slain her husband... and that Olga should come and marry their Prince Mal." (line 6453). Olga responded:Your proposal is pleasing to me, indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead. But I desire to honor you tomorrow in the presence of my people. Return now to your boat, and remain there with an aspect of arrogance. I shall send for you on the morrow, and you shall say, "We will not ride on horses nor go on foot, carry us in our boat." And you shall be carried in your boat.When the Drevlians returned the next day, they waited outside Olga's court to receive the honor she had promised. When they repeated the words she had told them to say, the people of Kiev rose up, carrying the Drevlians in their boat. The ambassadors believed this was a great honor as if they were being carried by palanquin. The people brought them into the court, where they were dropped into a trench that had been dug the day before under Olga's orders, where the ambassadors were buried alive. It is written that Olga bent down to watch them as they were buried and "inquired whether they found the honor to their taste."
Olga then sent a message to the Drevlians that they should send "their distinguished men to her in Kiev, so that she might go to their Prince with due honor." The Drevlians, unaware of the fate of the first diplomatic party, gathered another party of men to send "the best men who governed the land of Dereva." When they arrived, Olga commanded her people to draw them a bath and invited the men to appear before her after they had bathed. When the Drevlians entered the bathhouse, Olga had it set on fire from the doors, so that all the Drevlians within burned to death.
Olga sent another message to the Drevlians, this time ordering them to "prepare great quantities of mead in the city where you killed my husband, that I may weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him." When Olga and a small group of attendants arrived at Igor's tomb, she did indeed weep and hold a funeral feast. The Drevlians sat down to join them and began to drink heavily. When the Drevlians were drunk, she ordered her followers to kill them, "and went about herself egging on her retinue to the massacre of the Drevlians." According to the Primary Chronicle, five thousand Drevlians were killed on this night, but Olga returned to Kiev to prepare an army to finish off the survivors.
The initial conflict between the armies of the two nations went very well for the forces of Kievan Rus', who won the battle handily and drove the survivors back into their cities. Olga then led her army to Iskorosten (what is today Korosten), the city where her husband had been slain, and laid siege to the city. The siege lasted for a year without success, when Olga thought of a plan to trick the Drevlians. She sent them a message: "Why do you persist in holding out? All your cities have surrendered to me and submitted to tribute, so that the inhabitants now cultivate their fields and their lands in peace. But you had rather die of hunger, without submitting to tribute." (line 6454).
The Drevlians responded that they would submit to tribute, but that they were afraid she was still intent on avenging her husband. Olga answered that the murder of the messengers sent to Kiev, as well as the events of the feast night, had been enough for her. She then asked them for a small request: "Give me three pigeons... and three sparrows from each house." The Drevlians rejoiced at the prospect of the siege ending for so small a price, and did as she asked.
Olga then instructed her army to attach a piece of sulphur bound with small pieces of cloth to each bird. At nightfall, Olga told her soldiers to set the pieces aflame and release the birds. They returned to their nests within the city, which subsequently set the city ablaze. As the Primary Chronicle tells it: "There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught fire at once." As the people fled the burning city, Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them, killing some of them and giving the others as slaves to her followers. She left the remnant to pay tribute.
Governance Olga remained regent ruler of Kievan Rus' with the support of the army and her people. She changed the system of tribute gathering (poliudie) in the first legal reform recorded in Eastern Europe. Tributes were regularised under her rule. She continued to evade proposals of marriage, defended the city during the Siege of Kiev in 968, and saved the power of the throne for her son.
After her dramatic subjugation of the Drevlians, the Primary Chronicle recounts how Olga "passed through the land of Dereva, accompanied by her son and her retinue, establishing laws and tribute. Her trading posts and hunting reserves are still there." As queen, Olga established trading-posts and collected tribute along the Msta and the Luga rivers. She established hunting grounds, boundary posts, towns, and trading posts across the empire. Olga's work helped to centralize state rule with these trade centers, called pogosti, which served as administrative centers in addition to their mercantile roles. Olga's network of pogosti would prove important in the ethnic and cultural unification of the Rus' people, and her border posts began the establishment of national boundaries for the kingdom.
During her son's prolonged military campaigns, she remained in charge of Kiev, residing in the castle of Vyshgorod with her grandsons.
She set up hunting lodges where birds (probably birds of prey) were caught to be shipped to Byzantium.
Conversion
In the 950s, Olga traveled to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, to visit Emperor Constantine VII. There are three primary sources about this event: a prescriptive account of formalities and etiquette in De Ceremoniis or Book of Ceremonies ( 950s, written or commissioned by Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos in Greek), a brief passage in the Synopsis of Histories (written 1070s by Byzantine historian John Skylitzes in Greek), and a long adventurous story in the Primary Chronicle (compiled in Kiev 1110s in Old Church Slavonic by an unknown Rus' monk). All three sources disagree on why Olga went to Constantinople, when, what happened there, and how it happened.
According to the Book of Ceremonies The Book of Ceremonies is concerned with etiquette at the Byzantine imperial court, describing all the formalities during ceremonies such as embassies, receptions and dinners, and uses various practical examples to illustrate established protocol. Olga's visit is used as an example of how to receive a Rus' prince(ss), portraying her in a positive manner. Olga's entourage consisted of various representatives of other Rus' princes, as well as 43 merchants, and one priest named Gregory. Olga's ladies-in-waiting and princesses who were her relatives were also present. There is no mention of baptism, nor of her taking on the Christian name 'Helena', in the Book of Ceremonies.
According to John Skylitzes' Synopsis of Histories John Skylitzes recorded only a very brief passage in chapter 11, section 6 of his Synopsis of Histories: Olga 'came to Constantinople after her husband died. She was baptized and she demonstrated fervent devotion, then she went back home.' Unlike the Book of Ceremonies, Olga is said to have been baptised in Constantinople and being devout, but not doing anything else.
According to the Primary Chronicle Once in Constantinople, Olga converted to Christianity with the assistance of the Emperor and the Patriarch Polyeuctus. While the Primary Chronicle does not divulge Olga's motivation for her visit or conversion, it does go into great detail on the conversion process, in which she was baptized and instructed in the ways of Christianity.