Slavs in Scandinavia Part 3 – Slavic Knights among Vikings

Marek Kalisinski photography

We suggest reading the previous article before this one: Slavs in Scandinavia, part 2 

It is crucial to find out the nationality of Tyrker and Wyzdarwoda since they were non-Viking knights who joined the Vikings on their way to Greenland. Both of them were knights, probably from the same country, and they brought their troops along with them. If at least one of them was Slavic, that would mean that there were Slavic soldiers who joined Norman expeditions to Greenland.

I will start with Tyrker, because we are not so sure about his origin, and his name doesn’t quite sound Slavic. Considering that great many Western sources assume that Tyrker was a German, and there is nothing in the Norse sources to support that assumption, what evidence is there to support the claim that Tyrker was a Slav, and perhaps even a Pole, or Pomeranian, to be more precise? In order to check, that I have to break down the assumption that he was German.

To take a look at this issue, one must realize that there is no very solid basis to assume the claim that he was a German – his “German origin” is more assumed than really proven. Here is what the Tale of the Greenlanders (also known as the Saga of the Greenlanders) has to say about Tyrker/ Tyrkir and who he really was:

“Tyrkir, a ‘Southerner’ in Leif’s crew, wandered off on his own and found vines, from which Leif named the country.”

The land to which the saga was referring to, was of course Vinland. But that is a very interesting passage in another way, for as the reader can see, Tyrkir is not called a German but rather a Southerner, and this particularity certainly does not rule out his possible Slavic origin. If he was Germanic, he probably would not have been called a Southerner, that is, foreigner.
All the Western Slavs, including Poles, Pomeranians, and Polabians, just happen to live directly to the south of Scandinavians, so there should be nothing surprising for the Norsemen (funny how we refer to them in the same way) to refer to Western Slavs as “Southerners”. You can check this by glancing at any map of Europe.

There is another fragment of the Tale of the Greenlanders which indirectly suggests Tyrker’s Slavic origin. Tyrker became “immortalized” as the one who allegedly discovered “grapes” in the land that the Norsemen would go on to call Vinland.

Whether he found genuine grapes, or rather some wild berries that were much more suitable to growth in a cooler climate (such as Scandinavia or Poland) is hotly disputed by many scholars, although so far all evidence points out to the fact that the Vinland “grapes” were no real grapes at all. For instance, Merrit L. Fernald, a professor of botany at the Harvard University, put forward a very plausible explanation to the whole mystery of the “Vinland grapes” already in 1910 in a paper published in the magazine Rhodora. He pointed out that vinber, the word in the sagas usually translated as “grapes”, really meant “wineberry”, which might be the wild red currant, the goose-berry, or the mountain cranberry (quite common in Poland).

Also, according to Dr. Helge Ingstad, the Norsemen might have intentionally spread a false rumor about grapes being present on Vinland, or at least they misrepresented some wild berries as “grapes”, so as to entice more settlers to go there. In fact, even the very names of Iceland and Greenland might be a trick, the first one to deter any other Europeans from visiting this rather close island, and the second one, to entice fellow Vikings to settle it. And in the case of Vinland, one must add that among Norsemen, wine was greatly valued, especially the one made from grapes, and to them it was a symbol of great wealth and affluence.

In this case, and all the archaeological evidence gathered on the Norse settlement in the continental North America supports this stance, Tyrker did not have had to originate in the Rhineland, as many supporters of his alleged “German” origin claim, but he could very well have come from a more northerly and colder area like Poland, Pomerania, or Slavia in general.

The Tale of the Greenlanders speaks that he (Tyrker) returned very jubilant and enthusiastic to the bewildered Normans, and started to speak to them in his own native language which none of the Norsemen could understand.

Therefore, Tyrker’s native tongue was apparently not a Germanic one. That is very interesting, because the Norse language and German are universally recognized as being related, and in fact, back in the Norse days, they must have been mutually understandable (and they likely still are to a certain degree even today). Then, why did the Normans fail to understand him?

If he had been really speaking in German, then he still should have been understood.

Apparently Tyrker’s native language was not Germanic in origin, and as a result no Norseman could understand what Tyrker was saying in his own native speech. One must remember that Slavic and Germanic languages were not mutually understandable; therefore, was it a Slavic language that Tyrker was speaking to the bewildered Normans?

Considering the account as it is related in the Tale of the Greenlanders, that might be an entirely likely scenario.

Tyrker was usually mentioned with his friend Wyzdarwoda, so we assume that they were both of the same people. I can’t see Wyzdarwoda as not being Slavic (the name just sounds way too West Slavic).

At last, we have to face the question of Tyrker‘s name, since skeptics might point out that it does not sound Slavic. There is no such problem with Wyzdarwoda or Wyzdraw since both of these names, or rather variations of the same name, sound unquestionably West Slavic.

Yes, even though Tyrker does not really sound Slavic, that does not mean that it was his original name, since name translation was not an uncommon thing among scholars. It is entirely likely that Tyrker was in fact originally known by the Slavic name of Tyrko or Tvrtko, but after he had spent many years in Scandinavia, his Slavic name was “Normanized” to Tyrker. Having all that in mind, it is certain that Tyrker, or what ever his real name was, was not German. Another theory claims that he was Hungarian, but there are not many theses to support this theory.

Furthermore, it is even acknowledged in Western sources that, according to the Icelandic sagas, some Norse-age settlers on Iceland did in fact claim to have been descended from royal lineages of some Slavic countries – which is by no means an outlandish claim considering the fact that there was frequent intermarriage between the various princely Polabian families, the Dukal family of Pomerania, and even the ruling Piast Dynasty of Poland, with the ruling houses of the Scandinavian countries. There is no mentioning of any Hungarian or Turkish knights or families joining the Normans, therefore, since Tyrker was a knight, he had to have noble lineage, which would mean that Tyrker belonged to West Slavic royals.

I believe that Tyrker was Pomeranian, which would explain why the name sounds Germanic at first. This slightly dreary and rather lengthy article might have produced feelings of boredom in you, but it was needed to explain their origin of these two famous heroes. Our next article will be more interesting, and it will explore the fact about Slavs in Iceland and whether Slavic knights joined Vikings on their voyage to North America as well.

We would like to thank Marek Kalisiński who has contributed to Slavic Chronicles by sharing his photos. Please check out his other work by following his linked name.

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