Shared (Hi)Stories: Vladimir of Rus' and Harald Fairhair of Norway

Abstract

T A he founder of Rus' was the semimythological Riurik, but the true creator of a lasting Rusian state was his supposed descendant, Vladimir, whose life and story have been extensively studied because of their importance to Rusian political and ecclesiastical history.1 A significant issue for work on Vladimir, as well as a problem for early Rusian history in general, is the veracity of the Povest' vremennykh let (PVL) as a historical source, since the earliest extant copy is from over three hundred years after Vladimir's death. Despite these source problems, the information that the PVL provides about Vladimir has been largely accepted as the basis for the major narratives of Rusian history and for further research. In pursuit of the question of the historicity of the early narratives in the PVL this article aims to investigate whether the stories told about Vladimir therein are a history of Vladimir's life, or simply stories about Vladimir.2 In particular, were Vladimir's stories appropriated from the life of Harald Fairhair of Norway, a startlingly similar figure. Harald was the founder of his medieval state and was venerated as a great historical figure, whose story was told throughout the Scandinavian world, a world that was growing dramatically more relevant to the rest of Europe during the Viking Age. As with Vladimir, there is the complication of source dating?though he lived in the ninth century, Harald's story is only extant from later histories and sagas. There are a multitude of similarities between Vladimir