Vikings, muslims & bicycles
It’s all started not so incidentally, from one documentary in which one scientist talked about the archaeological discoveries in Scandinavia. There were two major ports Uppsala and Oslo in the 10th century, in a time of great expeditions, an important starting point for the Viking exploration of the world. Starting from the northern sea, bravely paddling against the whims of sea and nature, the Vikings discovered the mouth of the great river, which they were attractive because the food and the settlements were located near them. Dnieper and Volga, to two large rivers, flow to the northern shores of the Black and the Caspian Sea. On the other hand, a great Islamic empire stretched to the area dividing with the Byzantine Empire.
The Vikings are looking for trade routes as well as Muslims. Silver Muslim money, which was found in the excavations of archaeological sites, is now in a museum in Oslo. It is a witness of a great cultural encounter between two great nations. Not just money, there are other artifacts as well, as rare written records of meeting these nations, in Islamic writings from the 11th century. They must have been surprised when they first saw each other.
I imagine this encounter between the Vikings with its famous helmets and blue braids stature, proud, with swords at the waist, and Arabs, dark-skinned brave warriors in their galaby and turbans with swords in their hands, how stare to each other in wonder.
The Vikings have arrived by boat to the Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. It is stated that, at the height of his research they even reached to Baghdad on camels. From this it follows that the characteristics of a great nation is: courage in exploring the world, bravery in encounter with the enemy, benevolence in trade, generosity toward fellow countrymen. What’s important to emphasize is that two, at that time great religious groups, Vikings as polytheists , who believed in Odin as the supreme God, and the Tor as the other gods, and Muslims as monotheists, (the silver coins that found in Sweden is embossed with prints with the name of the one God Allah ), did not enter into conflict. Respect, warrior code, commercial intentions, the long distance between the two nations, the extreme north of Europe, where the average temperature is very low and hot ends of the Arab desert or something else, it’s not familiar to me.
So much for that.
Bicycles, hm. Where here bike fits. If we look at the same map today, we will see that on this route are some of the most beautiful cities in the world. Taking the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, as the starting point of our tour. In Sweden there is a bicycle route, which is marked and leads straight, from Sweden via Finland to Russia. From Stockholm, route winds north sea all the way to Helsinki in Finland. From that point routes, marked with the European bicycle map number 10, leads all the way to St. Petersburg in Russia. St Petersburg, during the communist era known as Leningrad, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world with its numerous Orthodox churches with colorful roofs, grandiose in size. Bridges, who remind me personally on Paris, are bear witnesses of the great Russian culture and civilization that was imperial. The road leads all the way to Moscow.
Then 18-year-old, 28 May 1987, Rust landed wih Cessna 172 at the church Basil’s in Red Square, two steps away from Kremlj.
It’s the capital of the great Russia. The road leads to the port on the Black Sea coast through Georgia to Turkey, historically great civilization. The last point of this cycling route is Istanbul. If I try to explaine all this in one thought it would be tast like, amazing sauce of cultural, geographical, ideological diversity, which is worth to try. I decided to go around on the bicycle as touring biker on this trip that I named “The Viking Circle” . I’ll need three months for that.
The route is as follows:
