Everything about Askold And Dir totally explained
Askold (
Haskuldr in
Old East Norse and
Höskuldr in
Old West Norse) and
Dir (
Dyri in both dialects of
Old Norse) were, according to the
Primary Chronicle, two of
Rurik's men who ruled
Kiev in the
870s. The chronicle implies that they were neither his relatives nor of noble blood.
The
Primary Chronicle relates that Askold and Dir were sanctioned by Rurik to go to
Constantinople (
Norse Miklagard, Slavic
Czargrad). When travelling on the
Dnieper, they saw a settlement on a mountain and asked to whom it belonged. They were told that it was
Kiev and had been built by three brothers named
Kyi, Schek and Khoriv, who were the ancestors of the inhabitants, who were now paying tribute to the
Khazars. Askold and Dir settled in the town and gathered a large number of fellow
Varangians and began to rule the town and the land of the
Polyane.
The only foreign source to mention one of the co-rulers is the
Arab historian
Al-Masudi. According to him, "king al-Dir [Dayr] was the first among the kings of the
Saqaliba (Slavs)." Although some scholars have tried to prove that "al-Dir" refers to a Slavic ruler and Dir's contemporary, this speculation is questionable and it's at least equally probable that "al-Dir" and Dir were the same person. It seems that in
old Russian it was originally "askold Dir" and not "Askold i Dir" as it's known from the
Primary Chronicle. The word
askold or
oskold is derived from
Old Norse óskyldr meaning
strange, so there was probably a ruler Kiev called Dir by the Slavs and the Varangians called him something like
"óskyldr Dyri"—
stranger Dir. The Russian Varangians later forgot the meaning of
óskyldr so Nestor wrote about two rulers of Kiev—about Askold and Dir.
The
Rus' attack on Constantinople in June
860 took the Greeks by surprise, "like a thunderbolt from heaven," as it was put by
Patriarch Photius in his famous oration written for the occasion. Although the Slavonic chronicles tend to associate this expedition with the names of Askold and Dir (and to date it to 866), the connection remains tenuous. Despite Photius' own assertion that he sent a
bishop to the land of Rus
which became Christianized and friendly to Byzantium, most historians discard the idea of Askold's subsequent conversion as apocryphal.
When Rurik died he was succeeded by
Oleg who was of his kin and in whose care was Rurik's son
Igor. Oleg attacked and conquered Kiev around
882. According to the Primary Chronicle he tricked and killed Askold and Dir using an elaborate scheme.
Vasily Tatischev,
Boris Rybakov and some other Russian and Ukrainian historians interpreted the 882 coup d'etat in Kiev as the reaction of the pagan
Varangians to Askold's baptism. Tatischev went so far as to style Askold "the first Russian
martyr".
A Kievan legend identifies Askold's
burial mound with Uhorska Hill, where
Olga of Kiev later built two churches, devoted to
Saint Nicholas and to
Saint Irene. Today this place on the steep bank of the Dnieper is marked by a monument called
Askold's Grave
.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Askold And Dir'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://askold_and_dir.totallyexplained.com">Askold and Dir Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
