Adam of Bremen’s Gesta

Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae
Pontificum
Origins, Reception and Significance

Edited by
Grzegorz Bartusik, Radosław Biskup
and Jakub Morawiec
First published 2022
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bartusik, Grzegorz, editor. | Biskup, Radosław, 1976– editor. |
Morawiec, Jakub, editor.
Title: Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum :
origins, reception and significance / edited by Grzegorz Bartusik,
Radosław Biskup, Jakub Morawiec.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Studies in medieval history and culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022002662 (print) | LCCN
2022002663 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032121031 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032121055
(paperback) | ISBN 9781003223030 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Adam, von Bremen, active 11th century. Gesta
Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. | Catholic Church. Archdiocese of
Hamburg-Bremen—History—To 1500. | Hamburg Region (Germany)—
Church history. | Bremen Region (Germany)—Church history.
Classification: LCC BR854.A33 A33 2022 (print) | LCC BR854.A33 (ebook) |
DDC 274.3/515—dc23/eng/20220324
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002662
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002663

ISBN: 978-1-032-12103-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-12105-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22303-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003223030
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Contents

List of abbreviations ix

Introduction 1
G R Z E G OR Z BA RT USI K , R A D O S Ł AW BI SKU P A N D JA KU B MOR AW I E C

1 Imperial politics and visions of the North 13

H E N R I K JA N S ON

2 Proselytus et advena: reading the opening lines of Adam’s

prologue in the light of biblical viewpoints on foreigners
and converts 50
ŁU K A SZ N E U BAU E R

3 Sven Estridsen as Adam’s informant 61

JA KU B MOR AW I E C

4 St. Olaf and Adam of Bremen’s narrative pragmatics 81

M AC I E J LU BI K

5 Ad insulas Baltici. Role and reception of scholia in Adam of

Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum 96
CA R I NA DA M M

6 Adam of Bremen and the early (pre-995) history of Norway 108

L AU R A GA Z Z OL I

7 The eleventh- century Normans of Normandy in the view of

Adam of Bremen 121
M A RC I N B ÖH M
vi Contents
8 Religious conversions in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta
Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum and in Saxo
Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum: a comparative approach 130
J U L E S PI E T

9 On the influence of Adam’s Gesta on Yngvars saga víðfǫrla 146

A N N E T T K R A KOW

10 Adam of Bremen and visions of the state in Early Medieval

Scandinavia – a comparative approach to chiefdom, leadership,
kingship, segmental tribes 158
PIO T R PR A N K E

11 Ars moriendi and figures of power in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta

Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum 178
M A RTA R E Y- R A DL I Ń SK A

12 Female characters and the meaning of history in Adam of

Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis 189
LU K A S GA BR I E L G R Z Y B OWSK I

13 Of Gunnhildrs and Gyðas 201

K E N DR A W I L L S ON

14 At the edge of time: Adam of Bremen’s imaginary North and

Horror Vacui 217
M I R I A M M AY BU R D

15 Scythia and the Scythian Sea on the mental map of

Adam of Bremen 234
TATJA NA N. JAC K S ON

16 Harald Bluetooth and the Western Slavs: cultural interactions

in light of textual and archaeological sources 246
L E SZ E K GA R DE Ł A

17 The description of the Oder (Odra) estuary in Adam of

Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum.
The oldest accounts of the river until the
end of the twelfth century 268
PIO T R PI Ę T KOWSK I
 Contents vii
18 Est sane maxima omnium, quas Europa claudit, civitatum.
Adam of Bremen and the estimation of size and population of
early medieval Wolin 279
WOJC I E C H F I L I P OW I A K

19 Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis pontificum

as an inspiration for Polish politics of history in
Wolin after WW2 288
PAW E Ł M IGDA L SK I

Geographical Index 301

Name Index 305
15 Scythia and the Scythian Sea
on the mental map of Adam of
Bremen
Tatjana N. Jackson

Adam of Bremen, the author of the well-known chronicle History of the

Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (1070s), was a highly educated intellectual.
It was already evident to the first editor of Adam’s work, Johann Martin
Lappenberg, that few medieval historians were so well acquainted with the
written sources as he was.1 Many of his geographical images and ideas were
formed on the basis of ancient tradition, although his geographical hori-
zon was far broader than that of the ancient authors. In this chapter I will
try to show how the Scythia of the ancient sources was modified by Adam
and what his reasons for doing that could be. In ancient geography, Scythia
was an area in the northeast of the inhabited world, in the modern sense
approximately corresponding to the steppe belt of Eurasia. Scythia could
be localized as limited to the Northern Black Sea region (Herodotus) or it
could extend to Northern Asia (Pliny) or perhaps be located in Asia only
(Ptolemy). At its widest, in Europe Scythia adjoined Germany, in the south
of Asia it had the “Caucasus” (i.e. the entire mountain system from the Cau-
casus to the Himalayas) and from the east and north it was washed by the
World Ocean.2 Despite the fact that Adam’s acquaintance with the Scythia
of ancient sources is obvious, his idea of it is strikingly different.
For the convenience of further analysis, I single out four blocks of infor-
mation in Adam’s text where the ‘Scythian vocabulary’ is used, namely: 1)
literary allusions to or direct quotations from ancient authors; 2) the use of
the toponym ‘Scythia’ for the designation of the opponents of the Byzantine
Empire at the time when the Norwegian Harald the Harsh Ruler, (1046–
1066) was in the Emperor’s service; 3) a story of the missionary activity of
the Hamburg-Bremen Archbishop Unni (916–936) among the ‘peoples of
Scythia’; 4) naming of the Baltic Sea the ‘Scythian Sea’.

Literary allusions to and direct quotations from Roman writers

The first group of ‘Scythian’ fragments is not large. These are literary al-
lusions and direct quotations of Classical authors. In IV.44, in a lengthy
characteristic of northern peoples, Adam quotes a line mentioning Scythian
Diana from the Roman poet of the first century Lucan:

DOI: 10.4324/9781003223030-16
 Scythia and the Scythian Sea 235
Behold, that land of horrors, inaccessible always because of its worship of
idols,
Whose altar is no more benign
Than that of Scythian Diana,
everywhere admits eagerly, now that the native fury of its folk has been
subdued.3
In II.50 Adam writes that Bishop ‘Unwan was a very noble man’ and ‘followed
the example of Saint Ansgar and a certain Scythian bishop, Theotimus, men-
tioned in the Ecclesiastical History’,4 thus referring to the work of a Roman
writer of the sixth century, Cassiodorus. There are no more direct references
to ancient authors or their citation in connection with Scythia in Adam’s text.
All his other sources on this issue have been reconstructed by scholars.

Harald the Harsh Ruler fighting with the Scythians

The second group of ‘Scythian’ fragments relate to the Norwegian King,
Haraldr (the Harsh Ruler) Sigurðarson (1046–1066), and these fragments go
back to the time of his service in the Byzantine emperor’s retinue (c. 1034–
1043). In III.13 Adam tells us that

a certain Harold, the brother of Olaf, king and martyr, left his fatherland
while his brother still lived and went an exile to Constantinople. Becoming
there the emperor’s knight, he fought many battles with the Saracens by
sea and with the Scythians by land, and he was distinguished for his brav-
ery and much exalted for his riches.5

In III.17, claiming that Harald, having returned to his country, ‘never ceased
from warfare’, Adam pays homage to his past military service: ‘he was a
mighty man and renowned for the victories he had previously won in many
wars with barbarians in Greece and in the Scythian regions’.6
Adam’s information might be compared with the stories of other sources
talking about Harald to understand what people were designated in his text
by the ethnonym Scythians. The eleventh-century Byzantine commander,
Kekaumenos, in his Strategikon (c. 1078), despite a number of inaccuracies,
gives a noteworthy description of Harald’s stay in Byzantium, to which he,
as is evident from his text, was an eyewitness. He points to two military
enterprises of Harald (whom he calls Ἀράλτης) in the service of Michael the
Paphlagonian. The first one was a campaign against Sicily where ‘a Roman
army was fighting for the island’, while the second one started when ‘Delyan
rebelled in Bulgaria’ and Harald ‘went on campaign with the emperor’ and
participated in ‘subjecting Bulgaria’.7
Sagas about King Harald, based on skaldic verses and oral tradition,
tell of his participation in several military operations during his time in
the service of the Byzantine Emperor, namely in the Aegean Sea, in Sic-
ily, and elsewhere. Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241), in his separate Óláfs saga
236 Tatjana N. Jackson
and in Heimskringla, quotes the eleventh- century Icelandic skald Þjóðólfr
Arnórsson who calls Harald Bolgara brennir (‘Burner of Bulgars’), which
might indicate that there had existed in Iceland some information on
Harald’s participation in hostilities in Bulgaria.8 So, Harald’s participation
in two campaigns during his Byzantine service (in Sicily and in Bulgaria) is
known to both Kekaumenos and the saga authors. One version of a miracle
of St. Olav in a battle against some pagans (preserved in Morkinskinna and
Hulda) might also reflect the participation of Harald’s detachment in the
military campaign against Petar Delyan’s army.9 It has been suggested that
the participation of Norwegian mercenaries in suppressing the uprising is
reflected in a runic inscription on the Piraeus Lion (now in Venice) which
mentions several names, Harald the High being one of them.10 In light of
available evidence, the Bulgarian campaign in the spring and summer of
1041 appears as the most well-known military enterprise of Harald.11 As
Mikhail Bibikov points out, in most Byzantine texts of the late tenth and
early eleventh centuries the name Scythians referred to Bulgarians.12 Corre-
spondingly, in accordance with the typical for ancient literature opposition
of Scythians (i.e. northern barbarians) and the Mediterranean civilization,
as well as with the consequent ‘Byzantine archaizing tradition’,13 Adam des-
ignated with the term Scythians those enemies of the empire that Harald
happened to fight against, namely Bulgarians.

Hamburg-Bremen Archbishop Unni, a legate to Scythian

people
The third group of ‘Scythian’ fragments belongs to the story of the mis-
sionary activity of the Hamburg-Bremen Archbishop, Unni (916–936).14 He
is the central figure of the concluding part of Book One (I.54–I.63) which
depicts the prehistory of northern mission in the Carolingian era. Adam
writes of the foundation of the northern mission and the first voyage of Ans-
gar, about the emergence, rise and fall of the Archbishopric of Hamburg,
about its unification with Bremen and, finally, about Unni’s mission. This
early period is presented as a time of confrontation between the Christians
and northern pagans, mainly the Danes. Denmark appears in Book One
as a goal of Christian mission and as the main territory where the events
take place.15 Adam, of course, writes about this time in retrospect. However,
there are a number of sources, close to the events, on the basis of which one
can say with confidence that missionary activity in the northern countries
began soon after the campaign of Henry the Fowler (934) and that Arch-
bishop Unni, who had been sent on this mission, died there, according to
Annales Corbeienses, in 936.16
Scythia and the Scythians are mentioned here in the following way. In I.60,
in the story of how Unni, ‘following in the footsteps of the great preacher
Ansgar’, crossed the Baltic Sea and came to Björkö, ‘a town of the Goths’,
Adam names those who regularly visited that trading place:
 Scythia and the Scythian Sea 237
In this haven, the most secure in the maritime regions of Sweden, all the
ships of the Danes and Norwegians, as well as those of the Slavs and Sembi
and the other Scythian people, are wont to meet at stated times for the
diverse necessities of trade.17

It is likely that this passage was written by Adam based on Rimbert’s Vita
Anskarii (composed between 869 and 876),18 whose mission to the Svear
(Sveones) brought him in the first place to Birka. A similar list of peoples
can be found in the opening of Rimbert’s vita:

Here begins a book describing the vita, or gesta, and death of Ansgar, the
frst archbishop of Nordalbings and legate of the Holy Apostolic See to the
Sveones or Danes, as well as to the Slavs and other peoples of the Nordic
countries that still adhere to a pagan custom.19

What allowed Adam to replace Rimbert’s ‘peoples of the Nordic countries’

with the ‘Scythian people’? Without a doubt, Adam inherited his percep-
tion of the northern lands as Scythia from works of antiquity and the early
Middle Ages that were well-known to him. Scholars emphasize that drawing
information from ancient works and poetry corresponded to the practice of
Adam’s time and, as a result, he has quotes from Sallust, Horace, Virgil and
Lucan.20 A specialist on ancient Scythia, Marina Skrzhinskaya notes that
for the majority of ancient writers, Scythia was a symbol of the far north, an
icy and snowy country.21 Adam’s literary knowledge could have formed the
image of Scythia, among the nations of which, as follows from I.60, he reck-
ons the Swedes, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Slavs, and the Prussians.
That is, Adam depicted the entire European North and the area around the
Baltic Sea as Scythia.
In I.62, Adam tells how Unni fell ill and died in Birka, his body was buried
there and his head was brought to St. Peter’s Cathedral in Bremen. Further,
once again mentioning the death of the preacher, Adam specifies its place and
time: ‘When he had fought the good fight, Unni died in Scitia, as stated above,
in the year of our Lord’s Incarnation nine hundred and thirty-six, the ninth
Indiction, about the middle of September’.22 It is unlikely that here (within
two neighbouring chapters on one and the same topic) Scitia was used by
Adam in a different, narrower, meaning, namely, as a designation of Sweden.
And it is hardly worth replacing one place-name with another, as happened in
the English translation. Moreover, in the next chapter (I.63), Adam, instruct-
ing the negligent bishops, once again emphasizes that Archbishop Unni, hav-
ing overcome the great dangers of the sea and land, ‘went among the ferce
peoples of the north and with such zeal discharged the ministry of his mission
that he died at the confnes of the earth, laying down his life for Christ’.23
But where did Unni travel, according to Adam? Having decided ‘to go
in person through the length and breadth of his diocese’,24 Unni began
his missionary feat among the Danes, where he won by his preaching
238 Tatjana N. Jackson
Harold, the son of King Gorm, so that the latter ‘permitted the public
profession of Christianity that his father always hated’ and so Unni ‘went
into all the islands of the Danes, preaching the Word of God to the hea-
then’.25 Correspondingly, in Adam’s eyes, it was not Sweden that was the
goal of the Christian mission of Archbishop Unni. Later, in II.1 Adam
will again call Unni ‘a legate to the Scythians’,26 while Francis Tschan
translated it so that ‘our Unni was on his mission to the Swedes’.27 I
am inclined to think on the basis of this tranche of information that
the Scythia of Adam was synonymous not with Svealand, the land of
the Svear, but rather, as a result of his being well-read in ancient liter-
ature, the northern outskirts of the inhabited world. However, Adam’s
‘northern lands’ lay much farther north than those that locked the hori-
zon of the ancient world.

The Scythian (Baltic) Sea

The fourth group of ‘Scythian’ fragments includes the name and description
of the Baltic Sea. Adam employs a variety of names for this. Along with
Balticum mare (the Baltic Sea),28 Balticus sinus (the Baltic Gulf ), Balticum
fretum (the Baltic Strait), Barbarum mare (the Barbarian Sea), Barbarus si-
nus (the Barbarian Gulf ), and Barbarum fretum (the Barbarian Strait) Adam
applies to this sea four names connected with Scythia. These are Scithicum
mare/pelagus (the Scythian Sea), Sciticum littus (the Scythian shore), Scythi-
cae paludes (the Scythian swamp), and Meoticae paludes (the Maeotic swamp).
Mentioning in II.18 the Scythian Sea (pelagus Scithicum) as a border
of Saxony, Adam refers to his source of knowledge about this sea: ‘Of the
nature of this body of water Einhard made brief mention in his Gesta of
Charles when he wrote of the Slavic war’,29 and in II.19 the former gives a
lengthy quote from Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni:

There is a gulf, he says, that stretches from the Western Ocean toward
the east, of unknown length, but nowhere more than a hundred miles in
breadth, and in many places much narrower. Many nations live along the
shores of this sea. The Danes and the Swedes, whom we call Northmen,
hold both its northern shore and all the islands off it. The Slavs and various
other nations dwell along the eastern shore. Among them the most impor-
tant are the Wilzi against whom the king at that time waged war.30

It is worth noting that Adam, after mentioning pelagus Scithicum, quotes

Einhard. Einhard does not give any name to the sea and does not mention
Scythians at all. However, according to him, ‘the Danes and the Swedes …
hold both its northern shore and all the islands off it’, but, as we have seen
above, Adam has designated Unni’s mission to the northern peoples (the
Danes and Swedes) as preaching the Word of God to the Scythians. So, for
Adam the inhabitants of this region are not the Northmen, as Einhard calls
 Scythia and the Scythian Sea 239
them, but the Scythians and, correspondingly, the sea on whose shores they
dwell is the Scythian Sea. In IV.10, Adam engages in this practice of nam-
ing bodies of water after the inhabitants of the adjacent territories and his
comment refers directly to the Baltic Sea: ‘It is also named the Barbarian
Sea or Scythian Lake, from the barbarous peoples whose lands it washes’.31
Accordingly, in II.18 pelagus Scithicum (the Scythian Sea) is a term invented
by Adam (and not derived from one of his sources).32 This is confirmed by
his comments in the next two chapters (II.19–20) where he once again em-
phasizes that that was Einhard’s description but that he is going to speak
on his own account, and immediately names the Scythian Sea (mare Scyth-
icum) as the northern border of Slavia (Sclavania), ‘a very large province of
Germany’.33
Another characteristic of the Baltic Sea in Einhard’s text gave rise, in
my opinion, to another of Adam’s mental constructions. I have in mind the
words of Einhard, quoted by Adam in II.19, that ‘a gulf … stretches from
the Western Ocean toward the east, of unknown length’. In IV.10, writing, as
he himself says, ‘in the manner of a commentator’, that is, ‘setting forth …
in greater detail’ what Einhard ‘discussed in abridged form’,34 Adam inter-
prets the name of this sea as follows:

This Gulf is by the inhabitants called the Baltic because, after the manner
of a baldric, it extends a long distance through the Scythian regions even
to Greece. It is also named the Barbarian Sea or Scythian Lake, from the
barbarous peoples whose lands it washes.35

Indeed, Latin balteus is a ‘belt’ and such folk-etymological interpretation

by Adam is quite understandable.36 There is discussion above of why the
sea stretches ‘through the Scythian regions’ and is called the Scythian Sea.
But why does it extend ‘even to Greece’? This latter assertion is not a slip of
the pen and it is not the only case when Greece is mentioned in this context.
In IV.1 it is said of Schleswig that ‘from this port ships usually proceed to
Slavia or to Sweden or to Samland, even to Greece’37 and in IV.16 Adam
points out that an island called Holm (either Gotland or Bornholm) is ‘a
safe anchorage for the ships that are usually dispatched to the barbarians
and to Greece’.38
The reason for this may be that information present in an established
scholarly tradition concerning Scythia was fused in Adam’s work with con-
temporary knowledge about the possible links between the Baltic Sea and
the east, namely that one could sail from the Baltic Sea both to Rus’ and to
Greece. As a result, Schleswig, Bornholm, Iumne (Wolin), Ostrogard Ruz-
ziae, and Greece were all stations on the same waterway. Adam states in
II.22 that

beyond the Leutici, who are also called Wilzi, one comes to the Oder River,
the largest stream in the Slavic region. At its mouth, where it feeds the
240 Tatjana N. Jackson
Scythian swamp, Jumne, a most noble city, affords a very widely known
trading center for the barbarians and Greeks who live round about. …
From the latter city it is fourteen days’ sail up to Ostrogard of Russia. The
largest city of Russia is Kiev, rival of the scepter of Constantinople, the
brightest ornament of Greece.39

This contamination of heterogenous information (coming both from

learned tradition and from contemporary travellers), most likely, became
the main reason for the identification of the Baltic Sea with the Scythian
swamp (= Maeotis, the Sea of Azov). This was unique to medieval ge-
ographical literature. Indeed, in addition to information received from
travellers of his time, Adam had the works of ancient and early medieval
authors that contributed to the creation of such an assumption. To use
them, Adam had to admit that since none of the learned men, with the
exception of Einhard, had written anything of what he wrote about the
Baltic Sea, that sea might have had different names and the names might
have changed. Place-name changes were not uncommon in antiquity, so
ancient and early medieval authors often noted them.40 In listing the dif-
ferent names in IV.20, Adam refers only to Martianus Capella as a source
of his information, but several other written sources are believed to be
indicated in the following text:

No mention, I have learned, has been made by any of the learned men
about what I have said concerning this Baltic or Barbarian Sea, save only
Einhard of whom we have spoken above. But since the names have been
changed, I am of the opinion that this body of water was perhaps called by
the ancient Romans the Scythian or Maeotic swamp, or ‘the wilds of the
Getae’, or the Scythian shore, which Martian says was ‘ full of a multifar-
ious diversity of barbarians’.41

Marcianus here is the author of the words about the barbarians inhabiting
the Scythian shore and of the enumeration of them that follows (De Nuptiis.
VI.663). Adam is likely to have borrowed the wilds of the Getae from the
Georgics by Virgil (III.462), while the Maeotic swamp could also have come
to him via Orosius (I.2, I.5.52) or Jordanes (V.38, V.44). The Scythian swamp
is not found in any known source of Adam, but one should pay attention to
the following passage in Jordanes’ Getica (V.38):

We read that on their frst migration the Goths dwelt in the land of Scythia
near Lake Maeotis. On the second migration they went to Moesia, Thrace
and Dacia, and after their third they dwelt again in Scythia, above the Sea
of Pontus.42

Getica, not mentioned by Adam but disclosed by scholars, could have

given Adam grounds for the ‘creation’ of the Scythian swamp identical with
 Scythia and the Scythian Sea 241
both his own Scythian Sea (i.e., the Baltic) and with the Maeotis of ancient
authors.
In my opinion, the extensive inquiries of his contemporaries, and espe-
cially his Scandinavian informants, were to open for Adam specific spa-
tial ideas of the early medieval Scandinavians.43 These ideas, as the source
material demonstrates, are as follows. The world consists of four quarters,
according to the four cardinal directions. The set of lands in each segment
of this ‘mental map’ is invariable. The western quarter includes the Atlantic
lands, such as England, the Orkney and Shetland Islands, France, Spain,
and even Africa. The southern lands are Denmark and Saxony, Flanders and
Rome. The northern quarter is formed by Norway and its northernmost part
Finnmark. The eastern are the Baltic lands and the territories far beyond
the Baltic Sea which in Old Norse written sources is called the Eastern Sea
(Eystrasalt or Austan haf ). In the east, where one can get along the Austrvegr
(the Eastern Way), lie Sweden, the lands of the Finns, Estonians, Curonians,
Karelians, Baltic Slavs, as well as Poland, Rus’, and Constantinople. Move-
ment from one segment into another, as well as within segments, is defined
not according to the compass points but according to the accepted naming
of these segments. Any movement within the eastern quarter, for instance,
is nearly always claimed to be a movement austr (east) or austan ( from the
east). This particular vision of the world, supported by the knowledge of the
existence of an actively used waterway along which one could get ‘from the
Varangians to the Greeks’, was, I am sure, refected in the work of Adam of
Bremen in the form of the Baltic Sea/Scythian Sea/Scythian swamp/Maeotic
swamp, going from Scandinavia in the eastern direction as far as Old Rus’
and Greece.

Conclusion
My aim in this chapter was to answer the question as to how the Scythia
of the ancient sources was changed under the pen of Adam of Bremen and
what grounds there were for this transformation. Based on Graeco-Roman
models, Adam placed Scythia in the northeast of the inhabited world. How-
ever, the ‘north’ of his time was already much farther north than that of the
ancient authors. In addition, his Scythia retained ‘otherness’ and ‘barbarity’
as components of its meaning. Taken together, this resulted in the fact that
Adam designated the territories of those northern pagans that were the ob-
ject of the missionary activity of Archbishop Unni in the early tenth century
with the choronym Scythia. Correspondingly, Adam depicted the entire
European North and the vast circum-Baltic lands, where those pagans/
barbarians lived, as Scythia. The next logical step in the formation of his
picture of the world was to term the Baltic Sea – after the inhabitants of its
shores – not only the Barbarian, but also the Scythian Sea. But the Scythi-
ans, as had been known since the time of Aeschylus, the Greek playwright
of the sixth-fifth centuries BC, lived at the outskirts of the inhabited world
242 Tatjana N. Jackson
near the Maeotic Lake. All this, together with the (contemporary to Adam)
information that from Scandinavia one could get through the Baltic Sea as
far east as to Rus’ and Greece, enabled him to add the Maeotis to his names
of the Baltic Sea. As a result, it became not only the Barbarian or Scythian
Sea, but also the Maeotic swamp. Thus, having creatively combined book
knowledge with oral information, a highly educated intellectual of the elev-
enth century, Adam of Bremen, created his new Scythia stretching from the
European North to the Sea of Azov.

Notes
1 MGH SS, 1846, VII, 267.
2 Chekin, ‘­Скифия’ [‘Scythia’], 2014.
3 Gesta, 280: ‘Ecce patria illa horribilis, semper inaccessa propter cultum ydo-
lorum, — et Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae, deposito iam naturali furore pred-
icatores veritatis ubique certatim admittit’ (my italics in quotations here and
further on); Tschan, 223.
4 Gesta, 111: ‘Unwanus igitur cum esset vir nobilissimus’; ‘secutus exemplum
sancti Ansgarii et cuiusdam in Ecclesiastica Hystoria Theotimi, Scytarum epis-
copi’; Tschan, 89–90.
5 Gesta, 153–154: ‘Haroldus quidam, frater Olaph regis et martyris, vivente adhuc
germano patriam egressus Constantinopolim exul abiit. Ubi miles imperatoris
effectus multa prelia contra Sarracenos in mari et Scitas in terra gessit, fortitu-
dine clarus et divitiis auctus vehementer’; Tschan, 124.
6 Gesta, 159: ‘nunquam quietus fuit a bellis’; ‘Erat [autem] vir potens et clarus vic-
toriis, qui prius in Grecia et in Scythiae regionibus multa contra barbaros prelia
confecit’; Tschan, 127–128.
7 Kekaumenos, tr. North; Greek text: Sovety i rasskazy, ed. Litavrin, 282, 284: ὁ
Ρωμαϊκὸς στρατός, πολεμῶν τὴν νῆσον; τεμουλτεῦσαι τὸν Δελιάνον εἰς Βουλγαρίαν;
ἐσυνεταξίδευσε καὶ ὁ Ἀράλτης μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως; ὑποτάξας τὴν Βουλγαρίαν.
8 Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, 112–113.
9 Melnikova, ‘­Культ Св. Олава в Новгороде и Константинополе’ (‘The Cult of
St. Olav in Novgorod and Constantinople’).
10 Litavrin, Болгария и Византия в XI–XII вв. (Bulgaria and Byzantine in the elev-
enth and twelfth centuries), 386.
11 Jackson, ‘Harald, Bolgara brennir, in Byzantine Service.’
12 Bibikov, Византийские источники (Byzantine sources), 187.
13 Bibikov, Византийские источники (Byzantine sources), 80.
14 Unni is also mentioned in II.1.
15 Garipzanov, ‘Christianity and Paganism in Adam of Bremen’s Narrative.’
16 Annales Corbeienses, 4.
17 Gesta, 58: ‘vestigia secutus magni predicatoris Ansgarii’; ‘oppidum Gothorum’;
‘Ad quam stationem, quia tutissima est in maritimis Suevoniae regionibus, so-
lent omnes Danorum vel Nortmannorum itemque Sclavorum ac Semborum
naves aliique Scithiae populi pro diversis commerciorum necessitatibus sollemp-
niter convenire’; Tschan, 52.
18 Palmer, ‘Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii and Scandinavian Mission in the Ninth
Century.’
19 Vita Anskarii, 18: ‘Incipit libellus continens vitam vel gesta seu obitum
domni Anskarii primi Nordalbingorum archiepiscopi et legati Sanctae Sedis
 Scythia and the Scythian Sea 243
Apostolicae ad Sueones seu Danos necnon etiam Slavos et reliquas gentes in
aquilonis partibus sub pagano adhuc ritu constitutas’ (my translation).
20 Trillmich, ‘Einleitung,’ 11.
21 Skrzhinskaya, Скифия глазами эллинов (Scythia through the eyes of the Hel-
lenes), 9.
22 Gesta, 60: ‘Obiit autem peracto boni certaminis cursu in Scitia, ut scribitur,
anno dominicae incarnationis DCCCCXXXVI, indictione IX, circa medium
Septembrem’; Tschan, 50 (with my emendation in translation: Scitia instead of
Sweden).
23 Gesta, 60: ‘feroces aquilonis populos ipse pertransiens ministerium legationis
suae tanto impleret studio, ut in ultimis terrae fnibus exspirans animam suam
poneret pro Christo’; Tschan, 53.
24 Gesta, 57 (I.58): ‘latitudinem suae diocesis per se ipsum elegit circuire’; Tschan, 50.
25 Gesta, 58 (I.59): ‘ut christianitatem, quam pater eius semper odio habuit, ipse
haberi publice permitteret’; ‘omnes Danorum insulas penetravit, euangelizans
verbum Dei gentilibus’; Tschan, 51.
26 Gesta, 61: ‘noster Unni ad Scythas legatus’.
27 Tschan, 54.
28 By the way, Adam was the first to use this name.
29 Gesta, 74: ‘De cuius freti natura breviter in Gestis Karoli meminit Einhardus,
cum de bello diceret Sclavanico’; Tschan, 64.
30 Gesta, 75: ‘Sinus, ait, quidam ab occidentali occeano orientem versus porrigi-
tur, longitudinis quidem incompertae, latitudinis vero, quae nusquam C milia
passuum excedat, cum in multis locis contractior inveniatur. Hunc multae cir-
cumsident nationes. Dani siquidem ac Sueones, quos Nortmannos vocamus, et
septentrionale litus et omnes in eo insulas tenent. At litus australe Sclavi et aliae
diversae incolunt nationes, inter quos vel precipui sunt, quibus tunc a rege bel-
lum inferebatur, Wilzi’; Tschan, 64.
31 Gesta, 238: ‘idemque mare Barbarum seu pelagus Sciticum vocatur a gentibus,
quas alluit, barbaris’; Tschan, 193.
32 The hydronym Scythian Sea occurs in Lucan’s Pharsalia (I.18: Scythicus Pontus),
though not as a designation of the Baltic Sea. After Adam, this term was used to
refer to the Baltic Sea by Otto of Freising (mid-twelfth century) and by Helmold
of Bosau (before 1177) as a result of direct borrowing from Adam.
33 Gesta, 75–76 (II.21): ‘amplissima Germaniae provincia’; Tschan, 64– 65.
34 Gesta, 238: ‘explanationis more utor, ea, quae ille per compendium dixit, plen-
iori calamo nostris scienda proponens’.
35 Gesta, 238: ‘Sinus ille ab incolis appellatur Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei
longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam, idemque mare
Barbarum seu pelagus Sciticum vocatur a gentibus, quas alluit, barbaris’;
Tschan, 193.
36 Svennung, Belt und Baltisch.
37 Gesta, 228: ‘ex eo portu naves emitti solent in Sclavaniam vel in Suediam vel ad
Semland usque in Greciam’; Tschan, 187.
38 Gesta, 243: ‘fida stacio navium, quae ad barbarous et in Greciam dirigi solent’;
Tschan, 197.
39 Gesta, 79– 80: ‘ultra Leuticios, qui alio nomine Wilzi dicuntur, Oddara flumen
occurit, ditissimus amnis Sclavaniae regionis. In cuius ostio, qua Scyticas alluit
paludes, nobilissima civitas Iumne celeberrimam prestat stacionem barbaris et
Graecis, qui sunt in circuitu. … Ab ipsa urbe vela tendens XIIIIcimo die ascendes
ad Ostrogard Ruzziae. Cuius metropolis civitas est Chive, aemula sceptri Con-
stantinopolitani, clarissimum decus Greciae’;Tschan, 66– 67 (with my emenda-
tion in translation: swamp instead of marshes).
244 Tatjana N. Jackson
40 For example, see the discourse of Anonymous of Ravenna (late seventh century)
on how the barbarians, coming to new places, gave those places new names:
‘…a propriis cespitibus transmetatae sunt et, ut barbarus mos est, forsitan ut
olim nominatae sunt patriae civitates vel flumina, nuper aliter appellentur…’
(Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia, 3– 4).
41 Gesta, 248–249: ‘Haec habui, quae de sinu illo Baltico [vel Barbaro] dicerem, cuius
nullam mentionem audivi quempiam fecisse doctorum nisi solum, de quo supra
diximus, Einhardum. Et fortasse mutatis nominibus arbitror illud fretum ab anti-
quis [Romanis] vocari paludes Scithicas vel Meoticas, sive deserta Getharum, aut
litus Scithicum, quod Martianus ait confertum esse multiplici diversitate barbaro-
rum’; Tschan, 201 (with my emendation in translation: shore instead of swamp).
42 Jordanes, Getica, 136: ‘Quos tantorum virorum formidavit audacia, quorum
mansione prima in Scythiae solo iuxta paludem Meotidem, secundo in Mysiam
Thraciamque et Daciam, tertio supra mare Ponticum rursus in Scythia legimus
habitasse’; Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, V.38.
43 For more details see my paper: Jackson, ‘On the Old Norse System of Spatial
Orientation.’

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