Vikings arrive on Turkish coast

A Viking longboat has moored in the Marmara coast as a group of Russian friends recreate the seafaring expeditions of their forefathers. The six friends arrived in Tekirdag, on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara, after a tour of ports around the Black Sea that began last month. Wearing traditional Viking dress, the sailors disembarked their 15-meter ship to put on a display of folk dancing and sword-fighting. Vikings from Sweden are thought to have settled in modern-day Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 9th centuries. Known as Rus, they traded along the rivers leading into the Black Sea and came well-established, even serving as bodyguards to Byzantine emperors, when one carved Nordic runes into a parapet in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia. One of the travellers, Father Feoktist, said the group is heading for the Adriatic port of Bar in Montenegro.