The elite Byzantine bodyguards who swore loyalty to the throne, not the man.
In short: For centuries, the Byzantine emperors entrusted their lives to the Varangian Guard, a band of foreign mercenaries from Scandinavia and later England. These axe-wielding warriors were prized for their lack of local political ties, serving as a brutal, oath-bound insurance policy against the shifting loyalties of the native Byzantine factions.
Formally established in 988 by Emperor Basil II, the Varangian Guard originated from a military assistance treaty with Vladimir I of Kiev, who sent 6,000 warriors to secure his alliance. These men, initially Norsemen from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, were chosen specifically because they were outsiders. By lacking local political loyalties, they could be relied upon to suppress domestic revolts, a task they performed with legendary, often terrifying, efficiency. Their reputation for ferocity was cemented in 989, when they pursued the fleeing troops of the rebel general Bardas Phokas and 'cheerfully hacked them to pieces'.
The composition of the Guard shifted significantly after the Norman conquest of England in 1066. As Anglo-Saxon warriors lost their lands and masters, they flocked to Constantinople, eventually becoming so numerous that the unit was sometimes called the Englinbarrangoi. These men, like their Norse predecessors, were defined by their use of the broad-bladed Dane axe and a tradition of absolute, oath-bound service. Whether fighting in Sicily, Italy, or against the Pechenegs at the Battle of Beroia in 1122, they were typically deployed at the most critical moments of a battle, often serving as the final line of defense.
Despite their reputation for unshakable loyalty, the Guard’s allegiance was to the imperial office rather than the individual occupant. In 969, they failed to avenge the assassinated Emperor Nikephoros II, instead immediately kneeling to his murderer, John Tzimiskes. In 1071, they were even used by usurpers to depose the absent Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes. This distinction between the man and the throne defined their existence until the very end; even as late as 1453, up to 3,000 Varangians stood alongside their Byzantine Greek comrades in the final defense of Constantinople against the Ottoman Turks.
The legacy of these warriors is etched into the landscape of Scandinavia through hundreds of 'Greece runestones,' which commemorate those who died in the service of the Byzantine Empire. While some accounts, such as the 13th-century Icelandic sagas, claim the guards enjoyed a unique privilege of looting the imperial treasury upon an emperor's death, modern historians remain skeptical of these tales. Nevertheless, the Guard remained a fixture of the Byzantine world for centuries, a testament to the empire's reliance on distant, axe-bearing outsiders to maintain its internal order.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Varangian Guard
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