The Dates of Vladimir Yaroslavich’s Expedition Against Byzantium in Rus Chronicles and the Regnal Years of Yaroslav the Wise

The Rus Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let, PVL) reports s. a. 6551 (1043) an unsuccessful military expedition of the Rus against Byzantium. This event is reported by Byzantine sources as well, and they confirm the date: 1043. As Alexander Nazarenko rightly points out, the date in PVL belongs to a series of year-dates which can be confirmed by foreign sources and which must go back to contemporary annalistic records of the first half of the 11th century. However, two of the Rus chronicles (the Novgorodian Karamzin and the Fourth Novgorodian) have another date of the expedition: 6549 (1041). At the same time they contain a version of the narration of this event which appears to be earlier in comparison with that of PVL and probably goes back to one of the late 11th-century texts-predecessors of PVL. A hypothesis is put forth that the original annalistic record of the expedition was dated not to a year from the Creation of the World, but to the 26th year of Yaroslav the Wise’s reign. When later chroniclers converted this regnal date into annus Mundi, they regarded different years as the first year of Yaroslav’s reign: 6524 (1016) or 6526 (1018). This hypothesis can look too speculative, but one can provide confirmation to both: to the usage of regnal dates in the first half of the 11th century, and to the treatment of different years as the first year of Yaroslav

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