Tourney of Ymir 52

East meets west along the caravan way

February 19 – 21, 2027

Millstone 4-H Camp, Ellerbe, NC

Long before modern maps were made, Norse traders and adventurers pushed east and south out of Scandinavia down the Volga and Dnieper rivers, dragging boats between river systems and then riding the waters down towards the markets of Miklagard (Constantinople) and, by way of the Volga and the Caspian, to Baghdad. They carried trade goods like furs, amber, walrus ivory, and steel, in search of silver, silk, spices and other treasures. 

Chroniclers of the time such as Ibn Fadlan met these Nordic merchants on the Volga, while Byzantine emperors hired them as the elite Varangian Guard. Hoards buried in Scandinavian soil — tens of thousands of Islamic silver coins, are the hard archaeological proof of just how far the road ran.

The trade routes did not end at Miklagard or Baghdad, but connected with the beginnings of the Silk Road, which ran east from Persia to the far reaches of Tang and Song China. While there is no evidence of Vikings traveling to all the way East Asia, silk found in the Oseberg ship burial and Birka graves, as well as Samanid silver discovered in Scandinavian hoards, prove that by 950 CE, walrus tusk from Iceland and a swatch of Chinese silk could meet in the same marketplace.

Ymir 52 follows that road to the places where West met East, from the Norse longhouse to the brick homes and markets of Miklagard, across the Caspian and over the caravan roads toward the exotic courtyard homes at the Far Eastern edge of the world.