Burn It All Down

When tragedy strikes, it can often define the life of those who were left behind. Some people will fall to pieces, while others carry on as best as they can. However, for one woman known as Olga of Kiev, what she did afterwards would define the history of eastern Europe for hundreds of years afterwards. 

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Transcript

1.       Saint Olga of Kiev  is known as the patron saint of widows and converts, primarily due to her work in converting many people in eastern Europe to Christianity. 

2.       However, we’re not concentrating on that part of her life. In fact, we are going to concentrate on one single event in her life: the death of her husband at the hands of a neighbouring tribe. But instead of falling to pieces as many at the time assumed that she would, Olga planned. 

3.       And what Olga planned was the single most spectacularly bloody tale of revenge, destruction, and murder heard from in that part of the world for hundreds of years to come. I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and this is What?! Explain. 

4.       Very little is known about the early life of Saint Olga of Kiev, not even the year of her birth. Various estimates have placed it as early as 890 AD, and as late as 925. 

5.       She married Prince Igor of Kiev, the heir to the throne of Kievan Rus, a federation of territories which took up parts of modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. When his uncle Oleg, the founder of Kievan Rus, passed on, Igor ascended the throne and became King.

6.       The problem soon became that many of the surrounding tribes did not have the same respect for Igor that they had for his uncle, and tributes to Kievan Rus began to reduce to a trickle. Igor needed to make a show of strength to prove that he was nobody to mess with. 

7.       The main culprits of this so-called lack of respect were a tribe called the Drevlians, who had taken up arms both with and against Oleg at various points in history, so their no longer paying a tithe to Kievan Rus was considered an offense that could not stand. 

8.       So Igor took most of the forces of Kievan Rus with him and headed to the Drevlian capital of Iskorosten to drive home the point that the tribute needed to continue. 

9.       Faced with an angry king and a very large army, the Drevlians rapidly agreed to restart the tribute paid to Kievan Rus, and for most people, that would be enough. 

10.   However, Igor felt that he had been wronged, and his wounded pride was not yet assuaged by a mere continuance of the old status quo. He wanted more. So, he headed back to the Drevlians to demand more tribute. 

11.   There was one problem, however. He didn’t take his army with him.

12.   So, approximately one day after they were essentially shaken down by the new king of Kievan Rus and his army, the Drevlians were shocked to find that same king at their gates the next day, unprotected, demanding that they pay even more. 

13.   You may have an idea of how badly that went for Igor.    

14.   What is confirmed is that Igor was captured by the Drevlians, and killed by being tied between two tree trunks, and then being torn in two. The Drevlians, now expecting a drastic change in the balance of power, sent a message to the now-widowed Olga, demanding that she marry Prince Mal, the head of the Drevlian tribe, which would consolidate both of their lands under Drevlian rule. 

15.   Twenty Drevlian negotiators arrived with the messenger to ensure Olga’s compliance. These men were confident, bold with the success of ambushing and destroying the heir of the man who had embarrassed their tribe for so long, and wasn’t anticipating any but the most token of resistances from Olga. After all, she was a woman. 

16.   The Drevlian negotiators arrived in Kiev and demanded an audience with Olga to give their ultimatum. After the message was delivered, Olga deliberated for a second, and responded

17.    “Your proposal is pleasing to me, indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead. But I desire to honor you tomorrow in the presence of my people. Return now to your boat, and remain there with an aspect of arrogance. I shall send for you on the morrow, and you shall say, "We will not ride on horses nor go on foot, carry us in our boat." And you shall be carried in your boat”

18.   Again, this was probably better than the Drevlians had hoped for, considering they just told her they killed her husband. But again, in a spectacular case of “Nah, she’s just a woman, what danger could she pose?”, the Drevlians dutifully repeated the words that Olga had told them to, and the people of Kiev did indeed carry their entire boat towards the court, as if they were royalty themselves. 

19.   They Drevlians were carried all the way up to the court, where Olga was sitting on the throne to greet them. However, the negotiators noticed one other addition to the throne room: a massive trench, freshly dug in the middle of the room. 

20.   The townspeople carrying the boat dumped the Drevlians within into the trench, and began to bury them alive. As the negotiators screamed for help, Olga left the throne and leaned over the trench, asking them “whether they found this honor to their taste.”

21.   Now, some would say that killing the 20 people who brought news of your husband’s death and were ordered to bring you to your NEW prospective husband would be enough. Olga of Kiev was not one of those people. 

22.   After the deed was done, on the very same day, she sent word to the Drevlians that they should “send their distinguished men to her in Kiev, so that she might go to their Prince with due honor.” The Drevlians, who had absolutely no idea what happened to their FIRST diplomatic party, and in fact assuming that the party had met with success, set about collecting the great and the good of the Drevlian tribe, and sending them to Kiev. 

23.   When these Drevlian nobles arrived at court, Olga commanded her people to run a bath in the bathhouse for their distinguished guests, and informed them that she would see them after they had bathed. 

24.   The Drevlians, maybe realizing that they did smell a little bit rank from a long ride, and almost definitely not noticing the mysteriously turned-over dirt in the throne room, went out to the bathhouse to enjoy a relaxing soak poured for them by their gracious host, who definitely absolutely posed no threat. 

25.   Olga then had the doors to the WOODEN bathhouse barred from the outside and the whole building set aflame, trapping the Drevlians inside. All the Drevlian nobles perished in that house, burned alive. 

26.   Was Olga done? I think you know the answer.

27.  She sent yet another message to the Drevlians, this time asking them to “prepare great quantities of mead in the city where you killed my husband, that I may weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him.” 

28.  This is where I begin to wonder about the Drevlians. They sent two parties to Kiev, each having not been heard from since, but they still assumed all was going according to plan, so they ended up legitimately stockpiling mead and meat for the funeral feast. 

29.  When Olga and her retinue arrived in Iskorosten, she did indeed weep over the grave of her husband, and began holding a funeral feast. The presence of that much mead and food attracted many of the Drevlian nobility and upper-class, who began to join in the feast, and began to drink heavily. 

30.  Once the Drevlians were absolutely plastered, Olga signaled to her retinue, who drew out blades and began hacking the Drevlians to pieces. 

31.  According to the Primary Chronicle, a manuscript created in 1113 that detailed much of the history of Kievan Rus, Olga danced around the ceremony, egging on her retinue to further slaughter the Drevlians. Over 5,000 Drevlians died that night, and Olga and her retinue returned to Kiev to draw up an army to wipe Iskorosten from the face of the earth. 

32.  Over the next year, Olga and the armies of Kievan Rus drove the Drevlians all the way back to their capital, where they lay siege to the city for months. After all this time without being able to coax a surrender of the city, Olga decided to try and trick the Drevlians one last time. 

33.  She sent a message into the city, asking them “Why do you persist on holding out? All of your cities have surrendered to me and submitted to tribute, so that their inhabitants now cultivate their fields and lands in peace. But you would rather die of hunger, without submitting to tribute.”

34.  The Drevlians responded that they would submit, but they were afraid that Olga would enact further retribution for the murder of her husband. Presumably taking a deep breath to calm herself before answering, Olga answered that the murders of the messengers sent to Kiev, as well as the revenge on the feast night was sufficient for her. 

35.  She then asked that three sparrows and three pigeons be given to her from each house in Iskorosten, and when those were received, she would end the siege. 

36.  After almost a year of barely scraping by under siege, the people of Iskorosten immediately jumped at this deal, and the birds were sent to Olga posthaste. 

37.  Then Olga delivered her finishing blow. She instructed her army to attach to each bird a piece of suphur and several small pieces of cloth. The night after the siege ended and the birds were received, she instructed her army to set the pieces of cloth alight and release the birds. 

38.  Each of the birds went back to the nests they had in Iskorosten, just in time for the sulphur to catch fire. The city burned almost completely to the ground, with Olga instructing her soldiers to capture and kill whomever managed to escape the burning city. Olga’s revenge against the Drevlians was complete. 

39.   Olga did remain ruler of Kievan Rus for over twenty years, only ceding control to her son when she believed he would be able to rule. She established a network of trade centers in which she could consistently maintain a source of tribute, as well as creating marketplaces for goods to be sold, giving Kievan Rus the economic center it had lacked before. 

40.   She turned to Christianity in her later years, with her work towards converting the people of Kievan Rus towards Christianity warranting a posthumous sainthood for her in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Interestingly, the church tend to gloss over the spectacular revenge of a woman wronged, underestimated, and maligned when they talk about her. 

41.  I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and I’ll talk to you in a couple weeks. 

42.   Theme music and Audio mixing for this episode was done by Craig Murdock, who tells me that stockpiling pigeons, cloth, and sulphur is generally frowned upon in this day and age, and that I should probably cancel that Amazon order. 

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