New England

When the English exiles arrived in Constantinople, they were offered places in the Varangian Guard by the Emperor. This was Alexios I, called ‘King Kirjalax’ in the Edwardsaga, one of the sources for the English migration.

Alexios I Komnenos

Siward Barn and the other English chiefs wanted a realm of their own, and begged Alexios to grant them land in exchange for service. Alexios was unwilling to strip other men of their estates, and told them of a land lying north in the sea, which once belonged to the Empire, but was now occupied by the ‘heathen’. If the English could go there, and conquer it, they were welcome to hold the land as imperial subjects. The saga records:

“Earl Sigurd [Siward] and his men came to this land and had many battles there, and got the land won, but drove away all the folk that abode there before. After that they took the land into possession, and gave it a name, and called it England [Novo Anglia/New England].”

The exiles built new towns and called them London and York, and by the names of other towns in England. They refused to have ‘St Paul’s Law’, used in Constantinople, but sent for bishops and clergymen from Hungary. This land, said the chronicler, lay six days’ and six nights’ sail across the sea to the east and north-east of Constantinople.

The tale of the migration appears in a wide variety of chronicles and sagas - English, Norman and Icelandic - and is credited by scholars. Dr Caitlin Green and Jonathan Shepherd, among others, have identified the Crimea peninsula as the location of ‘Novo Anglia’.

There is strong evidence that Alexios I was able to restore Roman authority in the Crimea, at the turn of the eleventh century. Second, there is place-name evidence from a series of charts made by Italian, Catalan and Greek navigators from the fourteenth century onwards. The charts show five such places in the north and north-east portions of the Black Sea.

These are Londina (London), Susaco/Porta di Susacho (Sussex/port of Sussex) and three names that have Varang- as their first element: Varangolimen, Vagropoli and Varangido agaria. Varangolimen contains the Greek word for harbour and seems to refer to a port held by Varangians. To quote Dr Green:

“The implication of all this would thus seem to be that the Nova Anglia, ‘New England’, of the Edwardsaga/Chronicon Laudunensis did indeed exist and that it encompassed at least a number of cities stretching from the Crimean peninsula through to the southern shore of the Sea of Azov (described as ‘the Warang Sea’ in a Syrian map of c. 1150) and down the Black Sea coast east of the modern Kerch Strait.”