R&I KC
It’s the year 1066 in the year of your lord and the Normans have just conquered your English homeland. You now face one of two options, resist or surrender. Many of your comrades choose to surrender and lose a bit of their culture for it. Those who resist suffer greatly. You feel that this is the end of true Anglo-Saxon culture. Or maybe not. You hear whisper of a few mad lads who propose a third option. Instead of surrendering or dying fighting against the Normans…why not try out your luck across the seas as mercenaries fighting for Christendom abroad?
Such a proposition sounds insane by our modern perspective. English refugees abandoning their island in exchange for servitude under the Byzantines sounds like bad historical fiction. There is evidence though that many Englishmen who did not wish to bow before the Normans chose instead to go abroad and join the Eastern Roman empire under the Varangian Guard.
The Varangian Guard was made up of immigrants who served the Eastern Romans (Byzantines) and protected them from “heathens” such as Arabs, Turks, and Tartars. For a time the Varangian Guard was made up of mostly Danes, Germans, and Norsemen. However near the end of the 11th and 12th centuries the ethnic makeup of the Varangians had changed from predominantly Scandinavian to including some Englishmen.
What is known for a fact is that the Byzantines did indeed employ some Englishmen as mercenaries in their ranks. What is more hotly debated is what happened to these mercenaries afterwards. One zany theory is that after proving themselves as proud warriors the Emperor of Eastern Rome allowed these rogue English refugees access to the Black Sea.
The theory has two main primary sources, the Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga and the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis. Due to the scant source material some historians excuse the story as being an overly romanticized exaggeration of the English Varangian Guards. Other historians however site real world examples of eyewitnesses of the time referencing English speaking soldiers and guards inhabiting the Crimean portion of the Black Sea.
The way the story goes, after aiding the Byzantines against invading Turks the English refugees turned mercenaries were allowed to in turn conquer land in the Black Sea. The reason for this charitable behavior was likely not Christian goodwill on the Byzantine’s part but rather just plain old diplomatic practicality. On the one hand, the Byzantines wanted the hectic regions surrounding the Black Sea to be pacified. On the other, they didn’t want to waste good manpower doing it themselves. Why not then just let those weird Englishmen do it? Especially since the Byzantines were almost always too distracted with Arabic and Turkic invaders pounding at the gates to worry about their northern borders.
Sending the English mercenaries to colonize the Black Sea would have served a lot of purposes for the Byzantines. It would have helped to keep their wild northern frontier relatively tame. It would have kept their English mercenaries happy as opposed to risking them going rabid and raiding through Byzantine territory. And it enabled the Byzantines to not have to waste as much energy north when their real problems lay eastward. Win-win.
The English themselves were happy to have a new home (assuming this story really happened), and were quick to name the region “New England”. So hundreds of years before the American colonies were referred to as New England the Crimea had already gone under the title. The Byzantines were happy that these weird foreign soldiers were fighting their northern enemies for them and the English were just happy to have a New England that wasn’t under the boots of the Normans.
Some evidence suggest that this New England was an ample source for new Englishmen to fill the gaps of the Varangian Guard for centuries. The Varangian Guard continued to record Englishmen filling their ranks right up until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. It is a possibility that New England served as a sort of human stockyard for mercenaries in the Byzantine military.
Now as sexy as this story is some of it must be taken with a huge grain of salt. While there were indeed Englishmen in the Varangian Guard the theory that those same mercenaries colonized the lands beyond the Black Sea is not a universally accepted theory amongst historians. There are only two credible sources to back the claim with concrete evidence. Having said that, the theory has its supporters and there were medieval sources who mention Saxon speaking individuals in the region…so who knows?
Whatever the case, if a New England did exist it did not last forever. Not much is said about New England beyond the fall of Constantinople so it is possible that New England fell in much the same way, assuming it existed at all. The Varangian Guard housed soldiers from all over the known world at the time and indeed had Englishmen in its ranks, and serves as a testament to just how diverse the genetic makeup of the Byzantine Empire was. Perhaps for a short while then the early English did indeed find a new home abroad.
Some Sources: Be sure to look up the subject yourself. This is one of those dicey subjects that you shouldn’t just take my word on.
https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Saga_J%C3%A1tvar%C3%B0ar_kon%C3%BAngs_hins_helga_(GV)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7829243/Norman-Conquest-fugitives-built-version-England-Black-Sea-historian-reveals.html
https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2020/07/01/nova-anglia-the-anglo-saxon-refugees-who-built-the-original-new-england-on-the-black-sea/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_(medieval)
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/anglo-saxons-eastern-odyssey-fleeing-william-conqueror-black-sea/
Some Questions:
- Do you think this story sounds credible or is it just another medieval romantic fantasy to you?
- Had the English remained successful in their colonization attempt it might have reshaped the history of Christendom in the East. How much of a butterfly effect do you think this colonization would have had if it had continued?
- What effect do you think religious differences had between the Byzantines and English considering how different their churches were?
Dollarmenu Jesus