In the article dedicated to the Varangian Guard, we explained that, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, this unit came to be known as Englinbarrangoi (Anglo-Varangians) and English became their usual language because it began to be filled with Anglo-Saxons (English and Scots) who left the islands to settle in Constantinople. In 1098, thousands arrived, led by Prince Edgar Atheling, a claimant to the English throne, placing themselves in the service of Alexios I Komnenos. According to historical sources, the Byzantine emperor even granted them land in the northeast of the Black Sea to form a colony that was named New England (Nova Anglia in Latin).

This New England (or Nīwe Englalond, as it was said in Old English) would have been created between the years 1070 and 1090. This is evidenced by two later works. The first is the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis, of which two copies are preserved, both from the thirteenth century: one in Paris at the National Library of France, and the other in Germany at the Berlin State Library. This chronicle was written by an anonymous English monk from a monastery in Laon (Picardy) belonging to the Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré (whose members are known in English as Premonstratensians) and is a history of the world that extends until the year 1219.

The second work is the Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga (generally abbreviated as Saga Játvarðar). As the heading indicates, it is an Icelandic saga that tells the life of Edward the Confessor (hence it is also called Eduardiana), who was the king of England from 1045 to 1066, and the father of the aforementioned Edgar Atheling. The identity of its author is unknown, but we do know that he relied on the referenced Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis or at least used a common source. This does not prevent there from being some differences between the two, especially in the names of the characters and other details.

The Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos
The Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

As the stories go, the English who resisted William the Conqueror saw their cause lost when they learned that King Svend II of Denmark would stop helping them and then decided to leave the country for Miklagard, which is what Constantinople was called in Northern Europe, as they knew that soldiers were needed there. A great host, led by Sigurðr, jarl af Glocestr (Siward, Earl of Gloucester), embarked on three hundred and fifty ships, sailing along the coasts of France and the Iberian Peninsula to enter the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar, sacking Ceuta and the Balearic Islands, and reaching Sicily.

From there, they reached the Byzantine capital, breaking the siege it was under by pagans, and many were hired by Alexios I Komnenos for his Varangian Guard. However, Siward and others preferred to settle on their own, so the emperor granted them some lands located six days to the north and northeast of Constantinople, possibly in the Crimean peninsula, which they took from the infidels and named England, just as they named the various settlements after English cities. Religiously, instead of adopting the Eastern Orthodox rite, they brought Catholic clerics from the Kingdom of Hungary.

This is the version of the Saga Játvarðar. The Chronicon does not mention the Danish king and replaces the name of Siward with Stanardus. Likewise, it does not detail the exiles’ maritime itinerary, although it mentions the arrival in Sardinia instead of Sicily. It also does not cite the English names of the cities and provides the name Nova Anglia for the colony. It also adds a curious detail: it refers to the settlers as Eastern Angles and says they killed the Byzantine official sent by the emperor to collect tribute, which led those who had stayed in Constantinople to leave the city fearing reprisals and head to Nova Anglia, dedicating themselves to piracy.

The Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century
The Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century. Credit: AteshCommons / Spiridon MANOLIU / Rowanwindwhistler / Wikimedia Commons

There is a third source, which is also closer chronologically to the events, making historians consider it more accurate. This is the Historia Ecclesiastica, whose author is Orderic Vitalis, a Benedictine monk native of Atcham (England), which is why he received the nickname Angligena (English). He wrote the work between 1110 and 1115 by order of his superiors, which was initially supposed to be the chronicle of the Abbey of Saint-Evroul, only it was expanded to become a history of Anglo-Norman England.

To Vitalis belongs the fragment with which we began this article and which is part of a description and causes of the English journey to the Byzantine Empire:

Others [English] went into voluntary exile to be able to escape in exile from the power of the Normans or to obtain foreign aid and return to wage a war of revenge. Some of them who were still in the prime of their youth traveled to remote lands and valiantly offered their arms to Alexios, Emperor of Constantinople, a man of great wisdom and nobility.

Portolan chart by the cartographer Battista Agnese made around 1544 marking <em>vagropoli</em> in the south of Crimea and a <em>flumẽlondia</em> and <em>p.d. susaco</em> east of the Kerch Strait
Portolan chart by the cartographer Battista Agnese made around 1544 marking vagropoli in the south of Crimea and a flumẽlondia and p.d. susaco east of the Kerch Strait. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

However, it does not explain the route or give names, except for the emperor and his rival Michael VII Doukas, who disputed the Byzantine throne in alliance with Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia. That is why the exiles are well-received and, in exchange for their help, they receive a reward that appears to be called in another way, Civitot.

Consequently, the English exiles were warmly received by the Greeks and were sent into battle against the Norman forces, which were too powerful for the Greeks alone. Emperor Alexios laid the foundations for a city called Civitot for the English, at some distance from Byzantium; but later, when the Norman threat became too great, he brought them back to the imperial city and put them to work protecting his main palace and royal treasures. This is the reason for the exodus of the English Saxons to Ionia; the emigrants and their heirs served the Holy Empire faithfully, and they are still honored among the Greeks by the Emperor, the nobility, and the people alike.

These discrepancies between accounts and the somewhat fantastic tone of some details cast doubt on its partial historicity. However, since there are also coincidences that are further corroborated by other evidence, it is considered that Nova Anglia really did exist. What evidence are we talking about? First, references from other sources which, because they are not specific, gain in credibility. This is the case of the Histoire de la conquête de Constantinople ou Chronique des empereurs Baudouin et Henri de Constantinople, a work written between 1205 and 1213 by the French chronicler Geoffroi de Villehardouin, who in the chapter dedicated to the Fourth Crusade states verbatim:

The French placed two ladders against a barbican near the sea. The wall here was heavily defended by English and Danes, and the ensuing battle was fierce, hard, and ferocious.

Another version of Battista Agnese's nautical chart dated 1553. It mentions a flumen Londia and a Porto di Susacho on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea
Another version of Battista Agnese’s nautical chart dated 1553. It mentions a flumen Londia and a Porto di Susacho on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea. Credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

Likewise, the accounts of the Franciscan missionaries sent by Pope Innocent IV to the Mongol Empire in 1246 make repeated references to the terra saxorum (land of the Saxons), describing those saxi living in the area of Crimea and the Sea of Azov as Christians. This is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that, in the 13th century, those settlers still constituted an identifiable community (the author of the Saga Játvarðar already reported that these people have lived there ever since).

On the other hand, letters from the Bulgarian archbishop Theophylact of Ohrid to the Armenian prince Gregory Taronites and a contemporary eulogy by the writer Manuel Straboromanus to Alexios I Komnenos demonstrate that the Byzantine Empire had restored its authority around the Black Sea. And the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, a work in ancient Greek from the 4th century AD, estimates that the sea voyage from Constantinople to the western end of the Crimean Peninsula would take six days and nights, which coincides with the distance to the land that Alexios I ceded to the English according to the Chronicon and the Saga Játvarðar.

Moreover, there are still certain toponyms in the nautical charts and portolans of the Black Sea coast used by Spanish, Italian, and Greek navigators that seem to refer to the English. There are five specifically. One of them, Porto di Susacho (“Susaco” could derive from the term Saxon or South Saxon, meaning “Saxon” or “South Saxons”, referring to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex), may have named what later became the Ottoman fortress of Sudschuk-ckala’h (or Sujuk-Qaleh), the seed of the Russian city of Novorossiysk, located on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea.

Another interesting toponym is Londina, the name of a river flowing through the northern part of the same Black Sea and which must have once been a city located northwest of Susaco, according to 15th and 16th-century maps, on which it is usually preceded by the word flume or flumen; it goes without saying the similarity to London. The other three are Varangolimen, Vagropoli, and Varangido agaria, the first two located in Crimea and the third at the mouth of the Don River into the Sea of Azov. Although they do not replicate sites in English, these are Greek names referring to the English Varangians.

This illustration from the chronicle of John Skylitzes is the only contemporary depiction of the Varangian Guard, shown with Byzantine-style armor
This illustration from the chronicle of John Skylitzes is the only contemporary depiction of the Varangian Guard, shown with Byzantine-style armor. Credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

Some philologists see certain forms of West Germanic languages in the preserved -scarce- lexicon of Crimean Gothic, a dialect of the Crimean Goths that endured until the late 18th century. Therefore, all this toponymic panorama would confirm what could already be read in the Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis:

To the peoples who were in the land and to those who built, they gave the names of the peoples of England. They called both of them London and York, as well as the names of other major cities in England.

With all this, why is there no full and secure certainty of the existence of New England? Actually, in view of the data, it can be said that there is, only it is necessary to qualify the details. As always, the chroniclers took the facts and adapted them to their narrative needs. Thus, the only English nobleman of those times who had lands in Gloucestershire was named Siward Barn, so he could be identified with the one the Saga Játvarðar calls Siward and the Chronicon Stanardus. However, Barn was imprisoned by William the Conqueror between 1071 and 1087, so he could not have led the fleet’s journey, which the Chronicon places in 1075.

Surely the authors of these works adapted the character to the maritime exile journey and syncretized it with that of Edgar Atheling in 1091. In any case, it is clear that the American New England was neither the only nor the first.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on August 8, 2024: Nova Anglia, la colonia medieval fundada en Crimea por anglosajones que huían de la conquista normanda

SOURCES

Jonathan Sephard, Another New England? — Anglo-Saxon Settlement on the Black Sea

Caitlin R. Green, The medieval ‘New England’: a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast

Frank Jacobs, Another New England — in Crimea. Fleeing the Norman Conquest, English émigrés established a now-forgotten New England on the northern shore of the Black Sea

Nicholas C.J. Pappas, English Refugees in the Byzantine Armed Forces:  The Varangian Guard and Anglo-Saxon Ethnic Consciousness

Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis

George Webbe Dasent (trad.), Icelandic Sagas and Other Historical Documents Relating to the Settlements and Descents of the Northmen on the British Isles

Wikipedia, Nova Anglia

  • Share this article:

Discover more from LBV Magazine English Edition

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Edgar Atheling, the lost king of England and his eventful life
Edgar Atheling, the Lost King of England Who Was Born in Hungary and Joined the First Crusade In his work Gesta Regum Anglorum ("Deeds of the Kings of the English"), the medieval historian William of Malmesbury gives the last and endearing known detail of one of the…
Varangians in a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov (1910)
Varangian Guard, the Viking Escort of Byzantine Emperors Among the Scandinavian archaeological heritage are the so-called runestones, stelae whose epigraphic content is written -obviously- in runes, with a quite broad chronology, from the 4th century to the 12th.…
The Conquest of Trebizond, mural attributed to Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso (1416-1465)
Empire of Trebizond, the Greek State that Survived the Fall of Constantinople When the Ottomans, led by Sultan Mehmed II, captured Constantinople on May 29, 1453, bringing an end to the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire, they virtually controlled all the…
Nineteenth-century illustration by Morris Meredith Williams
Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd, the Medieval Welsh Princess who Led an Army against Norman Invaders While there is no shortage of examples - some very famous - generally, women have not been prominent in military history because, traditionally, the profession of arms has been exercised…
Emperor Dušan's visit to Ragusa, the work of Marko Murat.
The Problem of the Two Emperors: The Historical Dispute over Embodying the Legacy of Rome It wasn't called the "beacon of civilization" for nothing. The legacy of Rome was so immense—in every realm—that centuries after its fall, there were still struggles to claim legitimacy as…
The humiliation of Andronicus Comnenus, miniature from the 15th century
The Turbulent Life of Andronicus I Comnenus, who Managed to Become Emperor by Escaping after 12 Years in Captivity It's tough to imagine a life more turbulent and extravagant than that of Andronicus Comnenus, Byzantine emperor and the last of his dynasty. Charismatic, contradictory, lover of worldly pleasures, expert…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.