About Saint Olga of Kiev

Olga was born in what is now Pskov, a city in the northwest of Russia. As a young girl, around the age of fifteen, Olga was married to Igor, the Prince of Kiev. Soon she gave birth to their son, Sviatoslav.

In 945, Igor was killed by the Drevlian people while attempting to extort burdensome tribute. Because Igor’s son Svyatoslav was still a minor, Olga became regent of the grand principality of Kyiv from 945 to 964.

We read in the 11th-century Primary Chronicle that after killing King Igor, Drevlian ambassadors came to Kiev and proposed that Olga marry their leader, Prince Mal. According to the Primary Chronicle, an essential source of information on the queen, Olga responded to their offer by saying “Your proposal is pleasing to me; indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead”. She then asked the Drevlian ambassadors to return to her the next day and demand that the Kievan Rus carry the Drevlians into the city in their boat. That same day, Olga ordered her people to dig a large ditch outside of the city. When Olga’s representatives came to collect the Drevlians the next day, they did as the queen instructed and demanded that the Rus carry them to the city in their boats. When the Rus delivered the Drevlians to Olga, she ordered her people to drop them in the ditch. Olga then had the Drevlian ambassadors buried alive in their boat.

Before the Drevlians could learn of their ambassadors’ fates, Olga sent another message to the tribe. In this message, Olga stated that she would meet their prince if the Drevlians sent their most distinguished men to accompany her. The Drevlians responded by sending their governors to bring the queen back. When the group arrived, Olga invited them to bathe in her bathhouse. After the Drevlian governors went inside, Olga set the bathhouse on fire and burned them to death.

Following this, Olga sent another message to the Drevlians informing them that she wanted to come to Iskorosten, the city where the Drevlians had killed her husband, so that she could visit Igor’s tomb and hold a funeral feast for him. The Drevlians, still unaware that Olga had killed their ambassadors and governors, welcomed Olga into their city and helped her prepare a funeral feast. Once the feast was ready, Olga invited the Drevlians to eat and drink with her. After the Drevlians were thoroughly intoxicated, Olga ordered her people to massacre them and they killed roughly 5,000 people before returning to Kiev.

The Kievan Rus then raised an army and marched on the surviving Drevlians. Unable to defeat the Rus in open combat, the Drevlians fled to their cities and barricaded themselves inside. Olga and her army then laid siege to the Drevlian city of Iskorosten for an entire year. When the Drevlians did not relent, Olga sent a message to them stating that she no longer wanted revenge. She asked them to pay tribute instead, specifically asking for three pigeons and three sparrows from every house in the city.

The Rus then raised an army and marched on the surviving Drevlians. Unable to defeat the Rus in open combat, the Drevlians fled to their cities and barricaded themselves inside. Olga and her army then laid siege to the Drevlian city of Iskorosten for an entire year. When the Drevlians did not relent, Olga sent a message to them stating that she no longer wanted revenge. She asked them to pay tribute instead, specifically asking for three pigeons and three sparrows from every house in the city.

Olga promised to lift her siege of the city if they paid her the tribute, so the Drevlians happily complied. That night, however, Olga ordered her men to tie a piece of sulfur and cloth to each bird, set the cloth on fire, and then released the birds. The birds immediately flew back to their coops in the city, which were built in the roofs and eaves of wooden buildings. Almost every building in the city was set on fire, and Olga was able to conquer the city with ease. The majority of the city’s populace was then killed or enslaved, while the rest were left to pay the heavy tribute that Olga imposed following the Drevlians’ defeat.

Following Olga’s subjugation of the Drevlians, records say that she returned to Kiev and ruled peacefully for a number of years. Using her authority as regent, the queen established trading posts all over the region and set up a system of centralized administration. Olga also made changes to the tribute system of the Kievan Rus that constituted some of the first legal reforms in eastern Europe. In 948 CE, the queen visited Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire, where Constantine VII ruled as emperor.

According to the Primary Chronicle, Emperor Constantine asked Olga to marry him and rule beside him. However, Olga replied that she could not marry him because she was a pagan; so Constantine sponsored her in baptism and gave her the name Helena. After baptism, the emperor again proposed to the queen of the Kievan Rus. This time, however, Olga replied that she was now Constantine’s daughter by faith because he was her godfather, and an incestuous marriage was considered a sin for Christians, so she could not marry him. The Chronicle recounts that Emperor Constantine then admitted that Olga had bested him, and he sent her home with presents of gold, silver, silks, and other valuable gifts.

After returning home, Olga labored to convert her son. Sviatoslav remained pagan, but Olga managed to persuade him not persecute the Christians of the Kievan Rus – and in fact it was her grandson Vladimir who brought his people into the Faith.

One hundred and forty years after Princess Olga’s death, an ancient Russian chronicler wrote of the first Russian saint:

“She was a harbinger of the Christian land, like the morning star before the sun, like the dawn before sunrise. She shone like the moon at night, so brightly did she shine among the pagans, like a pearl in the mud.”

In her youth, Olga was known as “marvelous among maidens.” She came to faith in Christ around 957—the first among Russian rulers to do so — three decades before the Baptism of Rus by her grandson Prince Vladimir, upon whom Olga had a profound spiritual influence.

Grand Princess Olga and Grand Prince Vladimir the Baptizer stand together in the history of Rus not only as relatives, but also as two saints, honored by the Church as Equals-to-the-Apostles for their labors in Christianizing the Russian lands.

On July 11/24, 969, Saint Olga reposed in the Lord, and on this day she is commemorated as Equal to the Apostles, and the root of Russian Orthodox Christianity.