Varangian Guard

The Varangian Guard was an elite force serving as the Byzantine emperor’s personal bodyguard from the late tenth century until the empire’s final centuries. Its members came first largely from Scandinavia and later increasingly from England and other northern European lands.

Byzantine emperors: The rulers of the Byzantine Empire, who held supreme political and military authority. The Guard served these rulers directly as a personal bodyguard and palace force.
Rus'–Byzantine relations: Political, commercial, and military relations between the Byzantine Empire and the Rus' peoples. Early Varangian service grew from the contacts and alliances linking Byzantium with the Rus'.
Harald Hardrada: King of Norway from 1046 to 1066 who earlier served as a mercenary in the Byzantine Empire. His career exemplifies the Guard’s appeal to ambitious Scandinavian warriors.
Battle of Dyrrhachium (1081): A 1081 battle in which the Normans under Robert Guiscard defeated Alexios I Komnenos’s Byzantine army. The Varangian Guard fought in the battle and suffered heavily during the Byzantine defeat.
Anglo-Saxon migration to Byzantium: The movement of some English exiles and warriors to Byzantine lands after the Norman Conquest. Their arrival reshaped the Guard’s membership from a predominantly Scandinavian force.
Varangian axe: A large, long-handled axe associated with Varangian warriors in Byzantine service. The axe became a distinctive weapon of the Guard’s northern European fighters.
Rus' people: A medieval people associated with eastern Europe and the networks centered on Kyiv and other Rus' centers. Rus' warriors and travelers formed part of the northern world from which early guardsmen came.
Egil Skallagrimsson: A tenth-century Icelandic poet and warrior whose life is recounted in a medieval saga. The saga tradition offers a northern literary contrast to the Guard’s surviving Byzantine records.
Battle of Beroia (1122): A 1122 battle in which John II Komnenos defeated the Pechenegs in the Balkans. Accounts credit the Varangian Guard with a decisive attack against the Pecheneg wagon fort.
Byzantine mercenaries: Foreign soldiers hired to serve in the armed forces of the Byzantine Empire. The Guard was a durable and unusually prestigious example of Byzantine reliance on foreign troops.

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