Octavia Randolph · 2024 · sea

Sidroc, on Gotland, risks most of his fortune on a daring venture: south along the Austrvegr, the east way, over the Baltic and into the rivers of the Rus, bound for Miklagardr - Constantinople - and the sun. Away in Angle-land his son Hrald, Jarl of Four Stones, is propelled into a crisis of his own making. Randolph drew a dedicated expedition sheet for this book; its latitudes are accurate to a fifth of a degree but its longitudes are schematic, so this route follows her named places at their true positions and takes the rivers the Rus actually took: the Gulf of the Finns, the Neva into Lake Ladoga, the Volkhov to Novgorod, the Lovat and the portage over the watershed, and then the whole length of the Dnieper to the sea.

1. 1
   Tyrsborg, Gotland

   Sidroc stakes most of what he has on the venture. Gotland sits in the middle of the Baltic for a reason: from here the east way runs to the Gulf of the Finns and the rivers beyond, and the men who take it come home rich or not at all.

2. 2
   Staraya Ladoga

   East along the Gulf of the Finns and in by the Neva to Lake Ladoga, then up the Volkhov a little way to the oldest Norse town in the land of the Rus - the gateway where Baltic ships are traded for river craft.

3. 3
   Novgorod

   South up the Volkhov to the new fort on the way to the Greeks. Beyond it lies Lake Ilmen and the long haul upriver.

4. 4
   Gnezdovo

   Up the Lovat and over the watershed - the portage where boats are dragged overland between river systems - and down onto the upper Dnieper, to the great barrow-field and trading settlement by Smolensk. Randolph draws this stretch as a dotted line; it is the one part of the route that is not water at all.

5. 5
   Lyubech

   One of two minor markers Randolph sets on the Dnieper without naming them. Her sheet's longitudes are schematic, but her latitudes are not - and since the Dnieper's longitude is fixed by its latitude, the dot resolves to within about thirteen kilometres of Lyubech, the Rus stronghold on the river.

6. 6
   Vyshhorod

   Her second unnamed marker, recovered the same way to within about ten kilometres: the princes' fortress on the heights just above Kyiv, guarding the last approach.

7. 7
   Kyiv

   The great city of the Rus on the Dnieper, where the flotillas gathered each spring before running the cataracts south.

8. 8
   Miklagardr / Constantinople

   Down the Dnieper to the sea and across the Black Sea to the Great City. Randolph draws this final crossing as a dotted line, the only leg of her expedition sheet she leaves uncertain.