which they encounter Patzinaks and Polotjans. Two music albums coincidentally released in 2007 deal with fictional journeys down the trade route, heavy metal band Rebellion's Miklagard — The History of the Vikings Volume 2 and Finnish folk metal band Turisas' The Varangian Way . Turisas' songs feature Scandinavian names (Jarisleif in "In the Court of Jarisleif" for Grand Prince Yaroslav) and Old Norse exonyms for toponyms (such as Holmgard in "To Holmgard and Beyond" for Veliky Novgorod, and Miklagard in "Miklagard Overture" for Constantinople) connected to Kievan Rus'. According to Bosselmann (2018) and DiGioia (2020), Scandinavian names are used by Turisas 'as a way to convey the historical context of the songs' subject matter', namely 'the stories of the Scandinavian pre-Christian populations and their travels eastwards along the way known as the Way of the Varangians to the Greek to Constantinople'. Michael Crichton's fictional work Eaters of the Dead uses the framework of this trade route, in the book's first portion, to explicate a journey from the Middle East all the way to Scandinavia. This book was the basis for the film The 13th Warrior. See also Caspian expeditions of the Rus Rus' Khaganate Greece Runestones References Further reading Dixon, D.F., 1998. Varangian-Rus warrior-merchants and the origin of the Russian state. Journal of Macromarketing, 18(1), pp. 50–61. Adelson, H.L., 1960. Early medieval trade routes. The American Historical Review, 65(2), pp. 271–287. Sverdlov, M.B., 1970. Transit Routes in Eastern Europe in the 9th to 11th Centuries. Soviet Geography, 11(6), pp. 472–479. Petrukhin, V.J., 2006. The Dnieper rapids in" De administrando imperio": the trade route and its sacrificial rites. BAR INTERNATIONAL SERIES, 1499, p. 187. Jakobsson, Sverrir, The Varangians: In God’s Holy Fire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), . External links P.M.Zolin Economy of the Byzantine Empire Economic history of Ukraine Economic history of Russia Former trade routes Portages History of Kievan Rus' Varangians Medieval economics