On the tenth day the young woman went to each of the tents of the Rus’ warrior, having sex with all the dead man’s companions, who would then cry out that they did right by their departed friend. The Arab traveller described how, before the funeral, the female slave had spent ten days as the dead man’s ‘bride’, attended to by servants, who were also the daughters of the woman overseeing the ceremony (whom he called the ‘Angel of Death’). He wrote extensively about a group he labelled ‘Allah’s filthiest creatures’, but the most memorable and disturbing part of his account recalls the funeral of a Rus’ chief. These were the eastern Vikings who settled along the rivers flowing into the Black Sea, drawn to the riches of Constantinople and the Islamic world. Sent by the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, ibn Fadlan was part of a delegation to deliver a message to the ruler of the Volga Bulghars, and along the way he had spent time with a people he called al-Rusiyyah, known to historians as the Rus’. This was the scene in perhaps the most famous accounts of life among the Vikings, written by a traveller and diplomat called Ahmad ibn Fadlan after his mission in 922. No older than her teens, she had been drugged and raped before being tied down and strangled by four men, while repeatedly stabbed by the older woman in charge. The young woman’s screams were drowned out by the sound of drums.
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