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The Diffusion of the Stirrup into Europe

This brings us to the subject of the diffusion of the stirrup into Europe. Despite the claims in some older publications for the role of Goths (in the late 4th century) or Huns (in the mid 5th century), it is now fairly widely accepted that stirrups were brought to Europe by a Turkic-speaking steppe people called the Avars in the 6th century when they established their Central European khaganate (empire) on the Pannonian Plain, which lasted approximately 250 years. The evidence is considerable. Not only do we have the testimony of the Stratēgikon but archaeological excavations throughout the Avar settlement area in what is now mostly Hungary have uncovered numerous iron and steel stirrups.^[1] The discovery of early Avar-style stirrups (which have a distinctive “apple” shape found among a range of other Turkic groups) in two Merovingian Frankish graves of the period c.580-c.610 in Germany indicates that these new Central Asian imports were of interest to the adjacent populations, although perhaps only as war booty or elite gifts at first.^[2]

It is difficult to trace the spread of stirrups outward from Avar-occupied regions because of the lack of written references. Archaeology only helps up to a point. One problem—previously alluded to—is the fact that stirrups are often found in warrior burials that include grave-goods. Such “furnished” burials (as they are called) only occur among some cultural groups and even then may disappear under new conditions: for example, Scandinavians and Lombards practised this kind of ritual deposition of objects with the body, while a number of Slavic-speaking peoples mostly cremated their dead; the Merovingian Franks furnished their graves abundantly, but this dwindled away as the Carolingian period began. In many areas, the establishment of Christianity gradually led to a decrease in grave-goods such that overall there are few furnished graves in Christian Europe after the 8^th century.^[3] In other words, a range of variables can skew the record. To this we must add the accident of preservation: iron holds up well in certain conditions, but it also rusts. Where stirrups have been discovered outside of burials, it has tended to be in other situations where they are protected from oxygen, such as in the mud of riverbeds.^[4]

All we can say with confidence is that the stirrup was adopted slowly and patchily in Central and Western Europe. The eastern parts of Frankia—where the Franks were nearest the Avar khaganate—show quite limited stirrup-deposition in Merovingian graves dating from the end of the 7^th century. One figure will serve as an example: out of approximately 700 excavated graves apparently containing warriors, only 135 contain items indicating that they were specifically cavalrymen, and only 13 contain stirrups.^[5] Some other Germanic peoples in the same general region also seem to have adopted stirrups to some extent in the 7^th century, judging from grave finds in parts of southern Germany associated with the Alemanni^[6] In Scandinavia stirrups begin to appear in archaeological sites in the 8^th century and become common from the 9^th and 10^th centuries. In Britain it has often been thought that the technology came with the Vikings in the 9^th century, although this is debated.^[7]

Eastern, and especially South-Eastern, Europe is a different matter, for several reasons. As we know from the Stratēgikon, the Byzantine imperial army was using stirrups from c.600. As the 7th century wore on, a new Turkic-speaking Eurasian steppe people—also using stirrups—became a power-player in the region: the Bulgars, who established a state north of the Black Sea on the Pontic Steppe c.630 and then after its collapse a new khanate (kingdom) west of the Black Sea (in the 680s) that would eventually become modern Bulgaria. In other words, South-Eastern Europe had a new influx of stirrup-using equestrian people while the Avars’ European empire was still a going concern. After the Avar state finally collapsed, the Pannonian Plain of the Carpathian Basin was eventually occupied (c.900) by the Magyars, yet another group of horse-riding, stirrup-using steppe people and the last to create an enduring kingdom inside Europe: Hungary.