Yggdrasil · Humankind

Ibn Faḍlān: Witness to a Funeral on the Volga

A Muslim envoy’s 922 report of a Rus funeral on the Volga, not evidence about Hel.

Myth and literature

The story

Content notice: this entry mentions enslavement, sexual violence and the killing of a person and of animals. It is told without graphic detail.

Eyewitness account from outside: a Muslim envoy from Baghdad, writing in 922, describes the funeral of a Rus chieftain among traders on the Volga. The account is translated and interpreted, and it was written by an outsider.

Ibn Faḍlān travelled in 921 and 922 with an embassy from the caliph to the Volga Bulgars. Among the Rus traders he met, he reports the death of a chieftain and the ceremonies that followed, including the death of an enslaved woman. She must not be reduced to a willing sacrifice or a romantic reunion. Her position was restricted: she was held, watched and surrounded by others, and the violence done to her stays at the centre of the account.

Myth and literature · Context

What we know, and what we do not

What is recorded: an outsider, Muslim and writing with his own religious judgments, reports one Rus funeral on the Volga in 922. His harsh opinions of the Rus colour the text, and a translated word for paradise in it must not be turned into Valhöll. The Utah page itself asks how voluntary the woman’s death can have been.

What is not recorded: anything about Hel, Valhöll or any afterlife of the myths. One Rus funeral on the Volga is not a script for Scandinavian burial, and scholars are unsure who the Rus were; Wikipedia says they are generally taken to be Scandinavian traders, perhaps with Finns and Slavs among them. The account tells us what a visitor saw and understood, and through later translation, and no more.

Historical evidence

The evidence

The source is the Risala, Ibn Faḍlān’s report of the embassy sent by Caliph al-Muqtadir; Wikipedia gives the years as 921 to 922 and the embassy’s arrival at the Bulgar capital as May 922. No complete text survives. For a long time only passages quoted by the geographer Yaqut were known, published by Frähn in 1823. In 1923 Zeki Velidi Togan found a fuller thirteenth-century copy in Mashhad, which breaks off during the Khazar section. Later passages are quoted by Amin Razi. The University of Utah archive presents an excerpt from Johannes Brøndsted’s The Vikings, translated by Kalle Skov (Penguin, 1965). No exact location is given here; Wikipedia says one suggestion is uncertain.