ABSTRACT
When the compilers of the Primary Chronicle tried to explain where in the world their land lay, they conceived of it largely in terms of rivers and riverways. Tribes and peoples are named in connection with them, and great thoroughfares are described, together with journeys of famous men. Surprisingly, perhaps, for a work which sets out to record the deeds of a series of princes and of their subjects, the chronicle’s opening pages treat the land as essentially one of transit, somewhere between other, more famous, places. There is a clear bias in the direction of the river Dnieper, and in favour of those living around one section of it. We are told that St Andrew, wanting to travel from a town on the Crimea to Rome, travelled up the Dnieper until he halted one night on the bank below some hills. Getting up next morning, he exclaimed to his disciples, ‘Do you see those hills, how God’s Grace shines forth upon them? God will cause a great town to stand there, and many churches to be built’. 1 Andrew blessed the hills and planted a cross on what was to become the site of the town of Kiev. He made his way further up the Dnieper and came eventually to the land of the Slovenes and the site of the future town of Novgorod. He observed their daily practice of beating themselves with young branches within an inch of their lives after baths of scalding hot water; having finished their self-flagellation, they plunged into cold water. Andrew continued on his journey and arrived in Rome. He recounted all that he had learnt and seen, and that the Slovenes ‘do this as their way of bathing, not battering’. Andrew’s listeners are said to have ‘marvelled’.
