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- "The ship was covered in gold above the water, with marvelous dragon heads and a double-sided sail of the most precious cloth."
– Flateyjarbók
Væringjar is an Exploration Age 
Unique Civic of the Icelandic civilization in Civilization VII.
- Effects:
- +3
Combat Strength and +1 Movement for Naval and Embarked Units.
- +3
- Mastery:
Strategy[]
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Civilopedia entry[]
Norse warriors did not exclusively operate as Viking raiders – they were also highly valued as mercenaries across Europe and beyond. The most famous of these were the Væringjar, members of the Varangian Guard who served the Byzantine Emperors during the 10th and 11th centuries. The unit was founded in 988 CE by Emperor Basil II out of 2,000 Norse and Slavic warriors sent by Prince Vladimir I of Kiev. They were highly regarded as great warriors, often placed in the vanguard during major conflicts and entrusted as the emperor’s bodyguards. The most famous Varangian was Haraldr Sigurðarson, nicknamed harðráði, who later became king of Norway. The only Norseman named in Byzantine sources, he was deployed against the Bulgars in the Balkans and the Arabs in Sicily before returning north to claim his throne. By the mid-11th century, the Norse contingent of the Guard began to shrink, increasingly replaced by Frankish and English warriors until the unit dissolved during the fall of Constantinople in 1204.
Despite their immense fame, the history of the Varangians is challenging to unpack, as most of our sources for their activities come centuries later, well after their heyday, from writers who had never met a Varangian or been to Byzantium. Nevertheless, their lasting legacy fascinated both writers and audiences in Iceland during the later Middle Ages. The Mediterranean exploits of Haraldr and his two Icelandic companions, Halldórr Snorrason and Úlfr Óspaksson, proved immensely popular in the kings’ sagas composed in Iceland beginning in the 13th century. The future king’s outsized figure seems to have inspired other saga heroes elsewhere in the corpus, mostly Icelanders, who are often used by writers to explore the aftermath of service in Byzantium – what does it mean to return to rural Iceland after a glorious youth in one of the world’s greatest cities? Sometimes heroic, sometimes tragic, they offer a compelling glimpse into Norse perspectives on combat trauma and the challenges of coming home after military service abroad.
| Civilization VII Civics [edit] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | Standard | |
| Unique | ||
| Exploration | Standard | |
| Theology | ||
| Unique |
| |
| Modern | Standard | |
| Ideology | ||
| Unique | ||
| 1 Requires DLC | ||
