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"Viking" or Khazar?
The traditional cremations of the serving common people constitute most of the more than two thousand burials at Birka. However, a
couple of hundreds are exclusive chamberburials with a strong eastern turkic touch or very plain coffinburials in a continental
christian-jewish style, let be with a completely natural Scandinavian adaption. It seems impossible to regard these as representing
anything else, than the last resorts of some of the nobleborn imperial emissaries and esteemed merchants
from the Khazarian and Frankic empires.
A chronicler of the time, the arabic emissary Ibn Fadlan, tells us about a critical commentary given by a northman he meets at Volga about
turkic and arabic burial customs,: "You arabs are all stupid! You put the man you love and respect the most to the earth, where insects and
worms may eat him. We instantly burn him in fire and he travels immediately to paradise!". Ibn Fadlan also tells us about the turks and
their burial customs: "When a man has died, they dig him a large grave, big as a dwelling. They tend to him, dress him in a jacket, a belt, a
bow......then they bring his horses.....They all wear pointed hats....".
Roughly, a hundred very rich chambergraves, especially those around twenty featuring the ancient scythian-altaic custom of offering
horses, comprise an overwhelming amount of eastern and khazaric features. These are e.g. short hussar jackets, kaftans, furbrimmed and
pointed hats, balloon trousers, probably dubble bent altaic bows with quivers and arrows, buttons and other dress mountings, horse
garments and mountings such as stirrups and bridles, personal weapons such as spears, axes, daggers and frankic and other swords,
occasionally featuring Togrul, the eagle, at the sheath.
Eventually there are findings of equipments for balance of weight, maybe conforming to the birkivitch weight system. These would be the
very attributes of the foremost merchants and tallymasters, indicating their powers of trade, but also for quoting the balance of exchange in
silver. Silvercoins are occasionally present in the graves, as the so called Birka or Hedeby coinage (Scand. arch. Nordiska Mynt, Område
II, Engl. "Nordic Coinage, Area II"), of a so far unknown origin. However, they may very well be stamped on Khazarian demand by the often
jewish minters, somewhere along the Silkroad, from frankic and arabic models. Thus loads of faked arabic dirhems were produced within
the Khazarian empire.
The symbols on these "Nordic" coins may very well be interpreted as khazaric: sunsymbols, representing God, originally the traditional
sungod Tängri-Khan, yurts (traditional nomad tents), ships of trade, fine horses and the two confronting roosters, representing the two rival
Khagans of the Khazarian empire and the Kievan domain. Occasionally one is able to read hebrew characters, also very well understood
by the jewish merchants and nobles of the Khazarian empire. The most significant character is the shin (Hebr. Sh or S) for Sha (Pers.
"Emperor, Khagan") and shma [israel] (Hebr. "Hear[ O Israel]!").
The symbol shin, when interpreted as a stylized khazaric image, represents Togrul, the eagle, and thus the Khagan. It may stand for
gathering - calling together in a jewish context. In combination with the other interpretable characters, beth and cheth, we are able to read
this, as a typical jewish magical anagram and abbreviation, forming a call to mobilize against the Kievans and the Danes: "Sh[ma] - ChS -
ShChS - ChBhS" (Khaz. Hebr. "Attention Chas [that is Khazars]! Sha Chas [that is the Khagan] [wants you to] gird [yourselves]!").
Warrior burials in chambergraves, along with sacrified horses, point straightly to eastern Europe and all those kurgans and sopkis of the
eastern steppes, thus, already at that time, representing several thousands of years of tradition among the scythian, sarmatic, altaic and
turko-tartaric tribes. Examples of this, for Scandinavia and northern Europe scarce and alien form of burial, are also present, in the same
limited amount as in Birka, at other localities in the North, when comprising a prerequisite for organized trade.
This custom of burial is however much more represented along the russian river systems. These noble graves then represent an exclusive
momentum of the general culture of nobles among the ethnical Scandinavians, Slavs, Crimean Goths and Khazars, especially of the
Khazarian, but also Varangian, houses of trade and in the emerging Kievan domain.
Next page, The significance of the Khazarian empire!
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