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The Silkroad to the North
Blue
shows the Don/Volga and
red shows the Dnepr route
The Danes, the western Slavs and the Kievans were kept off the Silkroad. Still they grew in power, mainly due to the local and internal
trade, an extensive piracy on the Baltic and a likewise extensive looting and extortion to the west. They went more and more aggressive
and desperate to capture the Silkroad. The Danes did, for some periods of time, dominate Hedeby and they made certain thrusts in the
directions of Birka and Staraja Ladoga.
The strategic significancy of Birka, as a secure and neutral meeting place for the entrepreneurs of the Silkroad, grew in pace with the
Danish threat. In the latter part of the 10th century, the Frankic empire had diffused, the German had emerged and Birka was properly
armed and fortified. The local "king" surely comprehended his co-interest with the management of Birka and probably contributed to the
defence with a permanent garrison of freed thralls and to appoint his sheriff and thrall master the "bryte" (Swe. "work and bread breaker")
as head of the garrison.
Suddenly, a khazaric featured Kievan mounted force, lead by a likewise khazaric looking "Khagan Rus" (Turk. "the Khagan of the
Reddish"), prince Svyatoslav (To the right! - The assumed Khazarian nobleborn and adoptive son of the aged royal couple, the Scandinavan Igor "The
Wise" and the Khazarian christian noble lady Olga "The Holy"), in a greedy but abortive attempt to
subdue the structures of the Silkroad and in a treacherous collaboration with a timorous Byzantium, succeded to penetrate the Khazarian
empire and to seize Sarkel in the year of 965 and destroy the capital Itil in 967. Some wild turkic peoples, that the Khazars till now had
managed to neutralize, now run amuck all over the Northern domain. The diminished Khazaria was cut off from the Don-Volga route and
was unable to maintain any effective and organized long-distance trade to the North and ceased to be an empire.
Birka, Hedeby and Staraja Ladoga were abandoned by the Khazars. The Varangians of Staraja Ladoga managed to conduct a small rill of
silktrade with the former Khazarian subjects, the Bulgars of Volga, and their city of trade Bulgar. At times small camel caravans from China
managed to get there. There was no one to maintain Birka and Hedeby. The recently flourishing Birka was soon to be totally deserted,
Hedeby some time later. They were never to be rebuilt!
The breaking down of the Khazarian dominance, their withdrawal and the following devastating consequences in economical loss and
organizational vacuum, meant a collapse to the Silkroad. This became a starting point for a desperate and revolving attempt to reorganize
trade. A troubled time of conflict and economo-political change emerged in the whole affected area from around 970.
New national states formed around the Baltic. The silk found in due time new ways to western and northern Europe through other routes
across the inner continent of Europe and Spain, not least by the grand provision of the Khazar-Jewish houses of trade. The absolute
coreland of Khazaria around the Crimea, the Sea of Asov and on the northern slopes of Caucasus survived, but was later incoperated with
the Golden Horde in the mid 13th century and for some time constituted a fairly autonomous khaganate there.
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