Sviatoslav of Kiev slept on a saddle and toppled two empires
Sviatoslav travelled without wagons, cooking pots or even a tent. On campaign he slept on a horse blanket with his saddle for a pillow and ate strips of meat roasted over coals. Living this way, the tenth-century prince of Kiev helped bring down Khazaria and the First Bulgarian Empire, building Europe's largest state.
Born around 943, he was still a child when the Drevlians killed his father, Igor, around 945, so his mother Olga governed Kiev as regent until he came of age. A Varangian named Asmud tutored him. The chronicles record him as the first Kievan ruler with a Slavic rather than Norse name, built from roots meaning holy and glory, though Norse speakers rendered it Sveinald and a Byzantine emperor wrote it as Sfendostlabos.
He showed little interest in administration, preferring permanent war alongside his retinue, the druzhina. He conquered many East Slavic tribes, defeated the Alans and struck the Volga Bulgars, sometimes allying with the Pechenegs and Hungarians. His campaigns pushed Rus' power into the Volga valley, across the Pontic steppe and into the Balkans, and in 969 he shifted his capital to Pereyaslavets, a Danube town.
Leo the Deacon, who witnessed his meeting with Emperor John I Tzimiskes, left a vivid portrait: a sturdy man of average height, bright-eyed, with a shaved head apart from a sidelock marking his nobility, a bushy moustache and a single gold earring set with a carbuncle and two pearls. He dressed in white, noticeably cleaner than his men. Although Olga became an Orthodox Christian in Constantinople in 957, he stayed pagan, fearing his warriors would mock a Christian leader, and in a 971 treaty with Byzantium the Rus' swore by the gods Perun and Veles.
In 970 he divided his lands among his sons, making Yaropolk prince of Kiev, Oleg prince of the Drevlian land and Vladimir, his son by the servant Malusha, prince of Novgorod. His death in an ambush in 972 left his conquests unconsolidated. Without a settled succession, the brothers fought until only Vladimir survived to rule alone.
Source: Sviatoslav I
