Saint Olga

Princess of Rus (r. 945-964)

• Born: c. 890
• Birthplace: Pskov, Kievan Rus (now in Russia)
• Died: 969
• Place of death: Kiev, Kievan Rus (now in Ukraine)

Olga was the first of the Rus ruling elite known to have converted to Christianity and among the first Rus saints of the Orthodox Church. She served as regent after her husband’s death and was instrumental in setting up tributary and trading systems that helped unite the Kievan Rus state.

Early Life

Little is known of the early life of Olga (OHL-gah). According to tradition, she was born in Pskov, a city in which the main bridge over the Velikaia River in Pskov is still named for her, and there is a cross on the nearby riverbank called Olga’s Cross. Her name probably comes from the Scandinavian Helga, and there is some confusion in the historiography as to her origin. Some historians argue she was of Slavic stock and took a Scandinavian name when she married into the Varangian (Viking) clan that ruled Rus (now Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia) in 903, but others contend that she came from among the Scandinavians who settled in northwestern Rus in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Olga is first mentioned in “Povest vremennykh let” (compiled c. 1113; The Russian Primary Chronicle, 1930), the earliest Russian history, compiled in Kiev. The chronicle states that in 903, she came to Kiev to marry Igor (r. 912-945). According to the Stepennaia Kniga (a genealogical account of the ruling dynasty compiled by Metropolitan Makarii at the court of Russian czar Ivan the Terrible, r. 1547-1584, in the sixteenth century), Igor met Olga while he was fishing along the Velikaia River in Pskov. Seeing a fish on the other side of the river, he called over a boat to carry him to the other side. Once in the boat, Igor noticed that the boatman was, in fact, a maiden (Olga), who was “very young, beautiful, and brave” and he was smitten by her appearance as “his passions were kindled and he uttered shameless words to her.”

Life’s Work

Little is known of Olga’s life, even during Igor’s reign. The chronicles focus on Igor’s attack on Constantinople in 945 and his commercial treaty with the Byzantines that ended the war. Provisions in that treaty allowed the Christians to ratify the treaty by swearing an oath at the Church of St. Elias in Kiev, indicating that a significant number of Christians inhabited Rus. The chronicle then tells how Igor died that same year while attempting to collect excessive tribute from the Derevlian tribe living northwest of Kiev along the Usa River, a tributary of the Pripet. According to the chronicle, his men were jealous of the retainers of Sveinald, the commander of the guard in Kiev, who were better dressed and armed. They asked Igor to go to the Derevlian land after the tribute was collected and gather additional tribute. After attacking the Derevlians, Igor sent his retinue back to Kiev, while he returned to raid the Derevlians yet again. Hearing of his return, the Derevlians ambushed and killed Igor. They then sent word to Olga that her husband was dead and that she should thus marry their prince, Mal.

Olga reappears in the chronicle with a cunning reply to the Derevlians, one concealing the terrible vengeance she intended for her husband’s killers. When the twenty best men of the Derevlians sailed down the Dnieper River and arrived at Kiev, she told them she wished to honor them by showing her subservience, and hence told them that when her retainers arrived the next morning to fetch them, they were to reject all offers to walk or ride to her castle and instead demand that the Kievans carry them up the hill in their boat to Olga. When they arrived, the Derevlian envoys were dropped into a ditch dug in the courtyard and buried alive. She then sent word to the Derevlian land that if they wanted her to marry their prince, the princes themselves ought to come to Kiev. When they arrived, she told them to bathe before she would see them and then had them locked in the bathhouse and burned alive. She then sent a message to the Derevlians’ main city, Iskorosten, and told them to make large quantities of honey and mead for a funeral feast she wished to hold at her husband’s tomb. When the Derevlians were drunk, her retainers slaughtered them. Returning to Kiev, she raised an army that put the Derevlian army to flight and besieged the remaining Derevlians in Iskorosten. The siege lasted a year before Olga came up with a plan to take the city. She asked for three pigeons and three sparrows from each house and on receiving them, handed them out to her soldiers and told them to tie a piece of sulfur wrapped in a cloth to each bird and, as night fell, set them free. They flew back to their nests in the city and burned it to the ground. The surviving Derevlians were killed, enslaved, or forced to pay a heavy tribute.

This elaborate story of the sack of Iskorosten is similar to accounts of sieges carried out by Genghis Khan, Hardraada (Harold III), Robert Guiscard, and others. However, the accounts of the vengeance Olga wrought on the Derevlians are probably not historically accurate; rather, they are hagiographic devices representing her behavior after baptism, demonstrating how Christianity tempered her pagan barbarism.

Olga’s cleverness is also shown in the story of her baptism, which The Russian Primary Chronicle dates to around 957. In that year, she is said to have traveled to Constantinople, where Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913-959) found her “very fair of countenance and wise as well,” and wanted to marry her. Learning of his wishes, she told him that she could not marry him because she was pagan, and that if he wanted her baptized, he would have to do it himself. The emperor, with the patriarch’s assistance, baptized her, and the patriarch himself instructed her in the faith and praised her because she “loved the light, and quit the darkness.” When Constantine again suggested marriage, she told him that it was no longer possible because she was now his goddaughter. The tale again shows her cleverness as well as her quick grasp of Christian precepts. It, too, is probably apocryphal because the emperor was, first of all, already married his wife, Helen, apparently served as Olga’s godmother, since Olga was christened Helen. However, the chronicle notes that she was named after “the ancient Empress, mother of Constantine the Great” (r. 306-337). In addition, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, one of the most educated and erudite of the Byzantine emperors, would certainly have been aware of the Church’s prohibition on marriage between a godparent and godchild. Furthermore, Byzantine sources contradict the Russian chronicle; an account in Constantine’s own De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae gives the year of Olga’s visit to Constantinople as 957 and notes that she was already a Christian when she arrived in the city.

Olga is also credited with establishing law, building towns and trading posts, establishing hunting preserves, and setting tribute in Rus. In addition to the heavy tribute she exacted from the Derevlians, she is said to have established laws in the Derevlian land and to have set up trading posts and hunting preserves there. She also traveled to Novgorod in northwestern Rus to collect tribute and to establish trading posts along the Msta River and collect tribute along the Luga River. The chronicle, completed in 1116, notes that “Her hunting grounds, boundary posts, towns and trading posts still exist throughout the whole region, while her sleigh stands in Pskov to this day.” It also notes that her fowling preserves along the Dnieper and Desna Rivers and her village of Ol’zhich still existed into the twelfth century.

Olga also served as regent for her son, Svyatoslav, during his minority because he was only a child of two at the time of his father’s death in 945. The chronicle’s discussion of her collection of tribute and establishment of trading posts demonstrates her activities as regent. Presumably, she also governed the country during Svyatoslav’s frequent absences from Kiev after he attained his majority in 964.

A quintessential warrior, Svyatoslav campaigned against the Jewish-led khanate of Khazaria on the lower reaches of the Volga and Don Rivers in 963 (the khanate was eventually destroyed by the Russians in 968), sacked Bulgar-on-the-Volga near what is now Kazan in 965, and invaded Danubian Bulgaria in 967. While he was campaigning in Bulgaria in 968, the Petchenegs, a tribe inhabiting the Pontic steppe, besieged Kiev and forced Svyatoslav to return and break the siege (in part to rescue his mother and sons). He then made it known that he wished to move his capital to Bulgaria because of the many goods that flowed through the country to Constantinople. His mother begged him not to go until after her death; she died three days later at the age of 79, having forbidden the Rus from holding a pagan funeral feast for her. Instead, a priest celebrated a Christian funeral. Svyatoslav then returned to Bulgaria but was defeated in a series of battles by the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimisces (r. 969-976), and was forced to sue for peace and to withdraw in July, 971. En route back to Kiev, Svyatoslav was ambushed and killed by the Petchenegs while fording the cataracts on the Dnieper River south of the city, having never accepted Christianity.

Although she was the first of the ruling elite to convert, she was not able to convince her own son, Svyatoslav, to become Christian: The Russian Primary Chronicle explains that, “when any man wished to be baptized, he was not hindered, only mocked.” Thus Svyatoslav told his mother that he could not accept Christianity by himself because his retinue would laugh at him. In spite of this failure in her personal life, the chronicle notes that Olga “prayed night and day for her son and for the people.”

Significance

Olga is praised for laying the groundwork for the ultimate Christianization of Rus under her grandson, Vladimir (r. 980-1015). Western European sources indicate that in 959 Olga sent a request to the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (r. 962-973) and asked for priests to help convert Rus. Two German monks were consecrated bishops for Rus: the first, consecrated in 960, died in 961 while still in Germany; the second, Adalbert of St. Maxim’s Monastery in Trier, had gone to Kiev, but he was not accepted, so he returned to Germany in 962.

The description of Olga’s death in The Russian Primary Chronicle is followed by a glorification of her for being among the first Rus converts to Christianity. She is called “the wisest of women” and is further praised because “she shone like the moon at night, and she was radiant among the infidels like a pearl in the mire.” Whereas the chronicler recognized her sanctity, and Grand Prince Vladimir had her body re-interred in a church in the early eleventh century, she was probably not formally canonized until the fourteenth century, and is the third Rus saint to be venerated by the Orthodox Church (after her great grandsons, Boris and Gleb, martyred in 1015). Her feast day is July 11, and she is known as “equal to the apostles” because of her efforts to convert Rus.

Rulers of Kievan Rus, c. 862-1167

Reign

• Ruler

c. 862-879

• Rurik

879-912

• Oleg

912-945

• Igor

945-964

• Saint Olga (regent)

964-972

• Svyatoslav I

972-980

• Yaropolk

980-1015

• Vladimir I (with Anna)

1015-1019

• Sviatopolk I

1019-1054

• Yaroslav

1054-1073

• Iziaslav

1073-1076

• Svyatoslav II

1076-1078

• Iziaslav (restored)

1078-1093

• Vsevolod

1093-1113

• Sviatopolk II

1113-1125

• Vladimir II Monomakh

1125-1132

• Mstislav

1132-1139

• Yaropolk

1139-1146

• Vyacheslav

1146-1154

• Iziaslav

1149-1157

• Yuri I Dolgoruky

1154-1167

• Rostislav

Bibliography

Cross, Samuel Hazzard, and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, ed. and trans. The Russian Primary Chronicles, Laurentian Text. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1973. An English translation of the first Russian chronicle compiled in Kiev in the early twelfth century, traditionally by the monk and chronicler Nestor but probably by several authors.

Labunka, Miroslav. “Religious Centers and Their Missions to Kievan Rus: From Ol’ga to Volodimir.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 12/13 (1988-1989): 159-193. Discusses early efforts to Christianize Russia (Rus) up to the official baptism in 988.

Lenhoff, Gail. Early Russian Hagiography: The Lives of Prince Fedor the Black. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1997. A discussion of early Russian saintly veneration, with some discussion of the saintly cult surrounding Olga.

Vernadsky, George. Kievan Russia. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976. A very readable work on the earliest period of Russian history, from the ninth to the mid-thirteenth century.