Olga (or Helga to some) of Kiev, In Her Earlier And Pagan Days, Lets Her Temper Show!
A Representation of Olga of Kiev With Her Famous Birds of War
With a war going on in the nation of Ukraine as I write this in January 20, 2024 it is perhaps a good opportunity to mention a woman that was such a holy and Christianizing influence upon that land that she was elevated to the position of a Saint, and even was given the rather rarely bestowed title of 'Equal to the Apostles'. Her name was Olga, and she became known to history as Saint Olga (in some languages, Helga) of Kiev. And she was royalty in her time...Rus royalty. The Rus were a Viking people in a sense. These people, who became some of the Vikings, had left the area of the Sea of Azov and went North, forced by war and weather, during a very hard period of time. Some had gone North and then East, and became known as Varangians. Some of those, long after Olga's time, became root stock peoples of the present Russian region.
Some of the other Rus had migrated, and had gone North and then West, and settled in the Scandinavian lands around familiar people and places where they had long taken their trading boats, though it was a very distant place. To other nations, peoples, and parts of the world those North and Westward migrating Rus became more commonly referred to as Scandinavians rather than as Rus. But Olga's people, in her time, were known as Kievan Rus because they lived in and near the city of Kiev in what we now call Ukraine. The Varangians had taken over the city of Kiev in the early 880's A.D. and had been working to enlarge their footprint every since. Not until several centuries later would the more Northerly Russian Empire near Moscow and that region come to maturity and be referred to as 'Russian' and 'Russia'. In Olga's time of the mid 900's A.D. the Rus were to be found in this Ukrainian location pretty far (around 540 miles on today's roads) to the south of Moscow. And Yes, Olga was a Queen of the Rus, or a King's wife at least, for this small but expanding kingdom!
Olga's husband was named Igor and he was a fighting King, a King often away on military campaigns, who had given Olga a young son in his middle aged years. Olga was apparently quite in love and attached to her King and husband Igor.
After besieging and conquering locations in the Byzantine Empire with mixed success Igor decided in about 945 A.D. to head back to his own small Kingdom near Kiev and tend to some business with a conquered people called the Drevlians. They had been paying Igor and his Father and Grandfather tribute...but then had recently just stopped paying the tribute they owed. Igor had actually used Drevlians in his army at times but the Drevlians were not fans of the Rus. Perhaps they believed that it was a great opportunity to revolt against Igor's yoke, with only Olga in her nearby capitol city to keep things in the Rus kingdom in order and to maintain Igor's hold on local power. But an angry Igor returned unexpectedly from his distant campaigns and laid siege to the rebelling Drevlian people's cities. Igor's army was large enough that they looked over the walls of their refuge city Korosten and decided they did not want to try to withstand a siege. They asked to negotiate, and Igor offered them some terms of submission which the Drevlians reluctantly accepted. And so Igor rode away with his army towards his nearby kingdom, returning home. It is about 95 miles / 152 kilometers straight line distance from Korosten to Kiev.
But Igor had second thoughts on the way home. Reflecting on the terms he had reached with the Drevlians he decided that he should have been quite a lot tougher on them. He was, as mentioned, somewhat close to home, so he let most of his army loose to continue home and took only a small portion back with him to the Drevlian city to let them know he had decided to be more demanding of them. When he reached their city the Drevlians saw an enemy military force of a size that was a whole lot more to their liking, and they didn't care for the new terms Igor wished to impose, so they made a fight of it, and captured their oppressor King Igor. Bending two ash trees towards each other and tying ropes from the captured king's limbs to the trees, they then suddenly released the trees and watched them spring back to upright, causing their enemy King Igor be torn asunder, limbs ripped off. They must have celebrated their important victory.
Soon, not so many miles away in Kiev, Queen Olga learned her long absent husband would not be coming home after all. She was now both a young mother to her 3 year of son named Sviatoslav and now a vulnerable widow as well. The Drevlians had no idea what a terrible enemy they had just created. Where some might have felt destroyed and crushed, Olga apparently began to think and plan. Her response to these hard and painful events that had overtaken her life soon enough became a legend in that region of the world!
The Drevlians had to make some plans also. They had insulted and outraged a militarily powerful neighbor. But they were also feeling pretty good about themselves. They had thrown off the yoke of a powerful enemy, but now...how to keep that yoke off permanently? The plan they arrived at was to propose a marriage between Igor's widow Olga and their own Drevlian leader King Mal. A marriage of political opportunity that should offer both peoples peace and security, at least from each other. They decided that Olga might go for such an offer despite that she would essentially be marrying her own husband's murderer. They felt that Olga, a widow with worries and obligations in a man's world, would be under pressure to do what would work out best for her people despite her feelings. The Drevlians sent a delegation of certain of their high profile VIP's to proffer this offer of marriage to their King Mal.
As the delegation from the Drevlians moved on their riverboats towards Kiev they were spotted as expected, and persons were sent out by Olga to see what they wanted. Finding out they were a delegation of emissaries with an offer they were allowed to approach Kiev on foot. Soon she had them stopped at a distance and they explained their people's offer to Olga. King Mal wished to honor her with an offer of marriage, and if she thought about the matter she would see how it would strengthen the position of both of their peoples.
Olga considered the matter, probably conferring with her political and military advisors, and to the delight of the Drevlians she returned the following private answer:
The offer was pleasing to her because her husband was, after all, dead and gone. The delegation should return to where they had left their boats and stay there until the next day. She would prepare to receive them as proper dignitaries and to honor them in the sight of her people. She would send a group of her people to their boats on the morrow and she instructed the Drevlians to instruct her people to literally carry them in their boats as they sat in their boats and bring them in that manner to be seen and honored by her people as they were brought within the walls of her city to receive the message from their Queen that she was open to this marriage proposal from Mal.
The next day went as described and the highly honored Drevlians sat in their boats as they and the boats were lifted up onto the shoulders of Olga's people. Then they were carried with pomp and dignity across the land to the city of the Rus and through their gates to the vicinity of Olga's royal court. But suddenly as they entered Olga's presence they were dumped unceremoniously into a deep trench that had been dug hastily the night before. Rocks and dirt were dumped down upon them, burying them alive. As they disappeared beneath the dirt of their unexpected grave Olga was said to have leaned over, looked down upon them, and asked if the 'honor they were receiving was to their liking?' And just like that, a young and still pagan Olga had begun her revenge. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, the Christians know. But Olga was not yet Christian.
What next? There was no one left alive to race back home to warn the Drevlians about what had happened to their envoys sent to the Rus. For the moment the Drevlians had no reason for suspicion, but that would not last long as Olga knew. So, she quickly sent messengers of her own to the Drevlians to make a request. She asked that a good sized group of the principal persons from among the Drevlians be sent to Kiev to greet her with the proper honor and to accompany her back as she traveled to her meeting with King Mal. It would be a meaningful show of respect to Olga in front of the eyes of her people. The Drevlians understood and quickly chose and dispatched just such an august body of their principal people to travel the 95 miles to Kiev as Olga requested.
In a short enough time the new delegation of Drevlians, esteemed pillars of their society, arrived at the gates of Kiev to meet Olga and accompany her back to a wedding with their king. It was quite understandable after their fairly long 95 mile walk that the Rus invited them into a bath house to bathe and freshen up prior to their meeting with Olga. Any delegation wants to look their best in such circumstances. This was a very important truce they were arranging for their eagerly waiting Drevlian people! And so they entered the large wooden bath house, at which time the Rus blocked the doors and, to the dismay of the duped Drevlian dignitaries, set the building on fire. All of the Drevlian delegation died in the flames and smoke. And once again there was no one to warn the distant Drevlians that things were not as they suspected.
Next, Olga went even further. She readied her military forces but sent her own fast messengers ahead to Korosten, the capitol city of the Drevlians and King Mals royal city, to say that she, Olga, would like to hold a feast to honor her dead husband Igor when she arrived very shortly in Korosten. Could they be ready with plenty of mead to drink and with good food to share together when she arrived with a chosen retinue of her military security forces to meet with Mal? It apparently made sense to the Drevlians that she would wish to honor her husband in such a way, even there in the city of those who had killed Igor. Maybe they realized it would perhaps quiet talk among the Rus that Olga betrayed the memory of her husband to engage in this advantageous political marriage? After all, she was insisting that Igor's name be honored even there in the presence of his enemies. And so the Drevlians prepared just such a feast as Olga asked for. But, perhaps as Olga anticipated, the Drevlians helped themselves to a fair amount of the alcohol mead as they awaited her arrival.
Then Olga's retinue arrived at Korosten and were graciously received. She somehow managed to explain to their satisfaction why it was that their two different delegations wouldn't be along for a couple of hours more. But in the meantime everyone sat in the Korosten royal court vicinity and began feasting - and drinking - together. Except, the Drevlians did not notice that the Rus went very lightly on the drinking as Olga had instructed them to do. And so the Drevlians became more and more drunk, but the Rus drank very much less. Suddenly, at some pre-arranged signal, the Rus rose and began to kill Drevlians on every side. Though they had not brought a large enough force to take the city the Rus did a huge amount of damage before they were driven out. And at this point a large dent had been made in the ruling class and the leadership of the Drevlians, along with whomever was killed at the feast.
Olga's main military forces quickly gathered in the Drevlian lands and began to war against and destroy their cities. Most of the smaller cities fell quickly, but Korosten held out bravely, and even a year later it was still surrounded and besieged, but not breached. The rest of the Drevlian lands were subjugated, however.
At this point Olga launched perhaps the most cunning part of her strategy. She sent a message into Korosten saying that they were not wise to resist coming to terms. She pointed out that the citizens of Korosten were inside living like captives and animals, starving and dying, living in great hardship. But the Drevlian cities that had already surrendered to her were out plowing their fields and were back to living a pretty normal life as subjects to the Rus. Why, she wondered, would the citizens of Korosten not prefer to seek such reasonable terms?
The hard pressed citizens of Korosten read her message and conferred among themselves, and decided that it was smarter if they also sought terms of surrender as their countrymen in the smaller cities and villages already had. So they sent a message back to Olga telling her they were ready to talk terms, but they feared she still wanted more revenge. She in turn replied that she had already had much revenge. She said they must return to paying tribute to the Rus each year, and as a show of respect she demanded 3 sparrows and 3 pigeons from each home in Korosten. That seemed a small price to pay for their lives and inside the city there was great relief and happiness that the siege would soon be over as they gathered and trapped the birds she requested.
When the birds were captured they were sent over the walls or out the gates, perhaps in cages, sent to Olga as the gift she requested. She promptly had her men tie strings to the birds feet, strings holding cloth wraps containing lumps of sulfer tied in wraps of flammable cloth. They were all lit at once, and then the birds were released. What is a bird supposed to do, once released, but fly back home to your nest? And so, in only a few minutes almost all of the wooden buildings inside the hard pressed city of Korosten were going up in flames, everywhere, all throughout the city. The citizens of Korosten opened their gates to flee for their lives from the great fire and Olga's waiting troops killed a great many, took many others as slaves, and ultimately left many behind in their traditional Drevlian lands to farm, trade, and pay tribute to the Rus for year after year. And so ended the once very famous story of the revenge that Olga of Kiev took upon the kingdom of the Drevlians that had killed her well loved husband Igor.
And at this point in her life she was a shoe in to be a famous name in the region, but by no means as likely to be canonized as a Saint. But as we know, you can never know who God has decided to use and for what, because He is God and can work with anyone who turns to Him, using them for such purposes as He sees fit. And truth be told, He can use those who will not turn to Him for his purposes just as well. Wasn't the pagan Pharaoh of Egypt used like that in Moses' day, to give just one instance?
After the defeat of the Drevlians, Olga had to take on the business of ruling her Rus kingdom until her toddler age son Sviatoslav grew up and could be the next king of the Rus in Igor's line of succession. For about 15 years she ruled the Rus as their Queen Regent and she did a respectable job and was apparently well thought of. But in the mid 950's A.D. she took a trip to Byzantium and there she decided to be baptized as a Christian, and took on the Christian name of Elena. She may not have been the gentlest and most lamb-like of all prospective Christians, but she was sincere! And she changed her ways to reflect this. She went home from Byzantium to a very non-receptive Rus population who had almost no interest in being converted to Christianity. In fact, she could not even convince her own son Sviatoslav, the new king, to convert! But she had a lot of clout among the Rus and in that whole region, and so she was given funds to build several Christian churches and had permission to do her best to convince whoever she could to adopt Christianity. She made it "OK" to be a Christian because of her fame and high status. Yet in her own lifetime it seemed a pretty fruitless task as she reportedly preached to many but convinced few. Still, she was a well known person that planted a great many seeds in the hearts of her Rus people.
After Olga died in 969 A.D., her grandson, Vladimir the Great, eventually became king and it is said that he became baptized a Christian much through the influence that his grandmother Olga had on his life. And during his time many of the Rus became Christian believers and over time many of the Russians became members of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church which has greatly impacted both Russian history and the history of their geographical neighbors. And though Olga had more the role of a seed planter she planted those seeds in some pretty high places...among the Rus royalty of her day, to mention one group...and the magnitude of her influence was noted and mentioned by a great many over the course of time. She is one of the noted founders of Christianity among the Russian people. Once she had became a Christian, God used this woman Olga skillfully and well, but she has the odd reputation of being one of the most cunning, vengeful, and perhaps even murderous of all women to ever later decide to hang up her spurs and become a daughter of God and a bride of Jesus. To the Russian and Roman Catholic church she is known even today as St. Olga of Kiev. She was reburied in the Tithe Church in Kiev, Ukraine which was built by Grand Prince Vladimir, Olga's grandson, in 996 A.D. That church was destroyed in wars some 900 years ago but churches were built nearby in its likeness. And thus ends one telling of the life of Olga of Kiev, who had a noted temper prior to becoming a Christian woman.
A more modern statue of Olga of Kiev, made to honor her impact on Christianity in her region of the world. The last part of her life was more dove-like than the first some might say.