Olga’s revenge on the Drevlians

According to the Primary Chronicle, when the Drevlians sent twenty envoys to ask Olga to marry their prince Mal, she had them carried in their boat and thrown into a pit and buried alive; a second embassy was burned in a bathhouse, and at a funeral feast by Igor’s grave her men killed the drunken Drevlians. In 946 the young Sviatoslav opened the battle by throwing a spear, and the Kyivans besieged Iskorosten; Olga asked for a light tribute of three pigeons and three sparrows from every household and burned the town by releasing the birds with smouldering tinder tied to them.

The tale is shaped by folklore and pagan funeral ritual — similar stories of burning a town with birds appear in Scandinavian and other traditions — but it reflects the real subjugation of the Drevlian land. The chronicle then tells of Olga’s journeys through the Drevlian land and, in 947, to the Novgorod region, where she fixed dues and tribute and established pogosts.