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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 7931740, member: 110504&quot;]Please receive belated thanks, [USER=44316]@Valentinian[/USER], for a terrific thread, about some of the stuff I always wanted to collect.</p><p>And, [USER=84905]@Tejas[/USER], sorry to have taken this long even to like your second post.&nbsp; Especially since, having been trawling aimlessly for examples of Mstislav, your wealth of examples, and historical context,&nbsp; served to accelerate the process.&nbsp; ...With further thanks to [USER=92212]@philologus_1[/USER] and [USER=99412]@PeteB[/USER].</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s some of what I just won.&nbsp; It was a Very Big Day (yes, dealers&#039; pics).</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1371484[/ATTACH]</p><p>The prototype miliaresion of Basil II and Constantine VIII.&nbsp; I was happy for a more affordable example of this, with this much of the legends --something that gets a high premium, especially from someone whose collecting history, for Byzantine, runs that heavily to anonymous folles.&nbsp; But otherwise, the condition kind of sets off this example of the Rus&#039; imitation, attributed by the dealer to Mstislav (with renewed thanks to [USER=91609]@PlanoSteve[/USER], for your qualifications, and your acquaintance with the available literature more generally).</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1371488[/ATTACH]</p><p>By way of adding to [USER=91609]@PlanoSteve[/USER]&#039;s historical and genealogical context, in Kievan Rus&#039; and the broader area of Scandinavian settlement in this part of the world (including parts of Poland and Ukraine, along with a sustained mercantile and ethnic presence in the eastern Baltic), Mstislav was a younger brother of Jaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev (1019-1054) and occasional Prince of Novgorod, that much further north and nearer to the Baltic.</p><p>(Here&#039;s the best map I could find --in this medium-- on short notice.)</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1371563[/ATTACH]</p><p>They were both sons of Vladimir the Saint.&nbsp; As a younger son, Mstislav ruled parts of Crimea and the Caucasus, at the bottom part of the map.&nbsp; He&#039;s best known for his war with Jaroslav (1024), which led to a the division of Kievan Rus&#039; between them, until Mstislav&#039;s death in 1036.</p><p>...Meanwhile, Jaroslav&#039;s own, continuing ties to Scandinavia, especially from Novgorod, were as conspicuous as they were multifaceted.&nbsp; He gets extensive reference in Snorri Sturlusson&#039;s <u>Heimskringla</u>,* particularly for having sheltered two exiled Norwegian princes, the eventual kings Magnus den Gode (1035-1047) and Harald Hardrade (1047- ...wait for it... 1066).&nbsp; One gestalt you can get from this, even in these late, post-Pagan phases of the Viking Age, is that &#039;Nordic&#039; culture, unlike so many comparable constructs, is <i>not</i> reducible to historical revisionism.&nbsp; ...Even the <u>Heimskringla</u> has excerpts from an Iceland skald (court poet), celebrating the half-Danish earl Waltheof, who was executed by William I in 1076, after taking part in one too many rebellions (including collusion with the last major post-Conquest invasion --by the Danes, this time-- in 1069).</p><p>For me, this level of cultural continuity, over any given, discrete chronological interval --replete with ongoing adaptation-- is likely to be inherently edifying.&nbsp; Thank you, independently of the particular culture involved (...or its prevailing color).&nbsp; Especially where cultural history is concerned, this is the sort of dynamic that I need, first of all, in the abstract.</p><p>*Best complete English translation I know of is still Lee M. Hollander, UT /Austin, 1964.&nbsp; My copy is from the first paperback printing, 1991.&nbsp; ...If you&#039;re into this stuff, and don&#039;t have this, it&#039;s worth looking for.&nbsp; In reference to the original Old Norse (vernacular prose, an easy generation before Dante), it&#039;s as irreplacable on a literary level as it is as (frequently dodgier) primary source history (especially at a couple century or more&#039;s remove from the events, as most of it is).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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