International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
University of Oslo, Department of Philosophy, Oslo, Norway;
[e-mail]
The Unity of Divine Activity according to St Maximus the Confessor
Maximus largely uses the plural form of the Greek 
energeia
, but I shall argue that divine activity 
is basically unified. However, this unified activity is somehow pluralized in accordance with certain 
principles that play a role both in the procession of the world from God and in the conversion of 
beings to Him.

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BYZANTIUM AND 
ΟΙ ΡΩΣ
: HISTORICAL AND TEXTOLOGICAL 
QUESTIONS OF THE OLD TESTIMONIES’ INTERPRETATIONS
Conveners: 
Karsten Fledelius, Olena Syrtsova
Karsten Fledelius
, 
Royal Scandinavian Visitors to Rus’ and Byzantium Revisited 
Mari H. Isoaho
, 
A Byzantine Look at 
οἱ Ῥῶς
– The New People with an Apocalyptic Burden
Vladimir Petrukhin
, 
Sarkel and 
Annales Bertiniani
: Khazarian Beginning of Russian History?
Olena Syrtsova
, 
L`Apocryphe sur l`apôtre André et le Menologium de Basile II
Oleksandr Romensky
, 
Rus’ and the Civil War in Byzantium in 987–989: 
The Chronology of the Battle of Chrysopolis and the Rus-Byzantine Treaty
Pavel Kuzenkov,

«Russian Monastery» on Mount Athos: 
The Metamorphoses of the Name in Greek, Serbian and Russian Texts

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54
Karsten Fledelius
University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities,
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Copenhagen, Denmark;
[e-mail]
Royal Scandinavian Visitors to Rus’ and Byzantium Revisited 
Since the Congress in Copenhagen in 1996 the scholarly interest in the political aspects of 
the trade routes from Scandinavia through Russia to Byzantium has been intensified through 
archaeological research, in particular the Viking ships found at the excavations for the new metro 
of Istanbul. But also the written texts attract new interest to the vivid communications between the 
Baltic and the Black Sea regions from the 9
th
to the 11
th
centuries. The Byzantine evidence is scarce 
but both Russian and Scandinavian literary and poetic sources and new archaeological findings 
give hope of new insights in one of the main roads of commercial and cultural exchange through 
medieval Europe.