Mass Graves, Viking Legends and Muffin Therapy: Return to Izyum
At the checkpoint, a young Ukrainian policeman approaches the white van that just pulled up. The driver, Harald Omland, rolls down the window, flashes an affable smile and hands the policeman his passport.
“I was there,” the policeman says. “On a boat – from Denmark to Norway.”
He asks Omland to open the back of the van so he can check the contents. Inside, he finds wheelchairs, walkers and crutches, boxes of medicine and bags full of children’s stuffed animals.
Once the policeman is satisfied that the Norwegian is merely a humanitarian volunteer, he suggests Omland take some photos in front of the concrete “Izyum” sign at the entry to the city.
After the photos, Omland’s huge frame climbs nimbly into the van and pulls out a plastic-wrapped cardboard tray filled with a dozen chocolate-chip muffins, then offers it to the soldiers and policemen at the checkpoint. They’re surprised, almost suspicious, but their faces light up when they see the muffins.
Can’t see the forest for the graves
On Sept. 15, 2022, as Ukrainian forces pushed Russian occupiers out of the eastern Kharkiv region, they discovered a wooded area on the edge of Izyum, near the old cemetery, with hundreds of freshly dug graves.
According to Ukrainian investigators, 447 bodies were discovered, including 414 civilians – the majority of them women, as well as five children. Most of the buried showed signs of violent death, and 30 presented traces of torture and summary execution, including ropes around their necks, bound hands, broken limbs.
“Just the other day they found a buried couple with their rib cages open and shattered,” Ruslan, a Ukrainian soldier from Sambir guarding the site, told Kyiv Post in September 2022. “The man had his genitals cut off.”
Since then, the Izyum– like Bucha – has become synonymous with Russian war crimes. About half of the city’s pre-1922 population of 45,000 has left.
Omland is coming back to Izyum after two and a half years, again to bring much-needed humanitarian supplies. His BBrave organization may not be the biggest operation working in Ukraine, but he makes it a point to bring as many of the supplies directly to those who need them as he can – as opposed to dropping off his cargo at warehouses for later distribution.
The 64-year-old Norwegian volunteer first came to Ukraine during the Revolution of Dignity that started in 2013. Over time he developed an attachment to the country and its people. When the full-scale invasion broke out in 2022, he decided to go into action.
Earlier in his life, Omland had been an officer in the Norwegian Army, serving both in the Arctic and the Middle East at various times. After eight years in the army, he became a TV director and producer. His experience made him eminently suited to document the fighting. But ultimately, the humanitarian impulse took over, and he chose to transport whatever he could gather from generous Norwegians directly to those in need.
“Sometimes it’s enough to just put a smile on their faces,” he says.
A traumatized city
Izyum’s scars are still very visible. Most of the bombed-out buildings have not been repaired. Russians attacked about a week after the full-scale invasion began, with hard fighting in an attempt to control the strategic heights just outside the city.
Russians occupied the city for six months, until the Ukrainian counteroffensive of September 2022 pushed them out. Those who could, left. Olga German had to stay to take care of her aging parents. When the Ukrainian soldiers liberated the city, she could again freely speak the Ukrainian she had studied in Kharkiv and Kyiv.
As soon as Omland arrives in Izyum with his van full humanitarian aid, German connects him with the people in the town who need it.
The first stop is an apartment block in the center of the city to bring a tri-pod cane to 90-year-old Liudmyla Petrivna and a walker-seat to a 64-year-old schoolteacher who had recently suffered a stroke (she doesn’t want her name revealed so as not to worry any former students who might worry about her health).
Later Omland drives to a house on the outskirts, where he brings a walker to 88-year-old Ivan Vladimirovych. On the way to his house is a pile of rubble. Ivan says it was building struck by a HIMARS just as the Ukrainians were retaking the city. From the antenna rising up above the tower, one might assume it was some sort of communication center.
The following day Omland visits 76-year-old Valentin, who needs a wheelchair. In the first days of Russia’s attack, he and his family were forced to sleep in their basement. It was still cold, and his leg began to freeze and swell. By the time they were able to transport him to a hospital, it was too late. The leg needs to be amputated.
Several more stops bring wheelchairs, walkers and canes donated by Norwegian hospitals to other Izyum residents. Omland even stops at the local fire department where he had made friends on his last trip to the town.
Everywhere he goes, he drops off the individually wrapped Aunt Mabel’s muffins produced and donated by Milba, a Norwegian baked goods company located in Omland hometown of Skein.
“It’s good to give people what they need,” Omland says. “But you also want to give them something that will make them happy. Even just for a while.”
Invariably, when people taste the muffins, their happiness is hard to hide.
On previous trips to Ukraine, Omland would focus more on soldiers, going to the front lines in Bakhmut and Avdiivka during some of the harshest winter fighting.
“As a soldier who served in some of the coldest Arctic regions, I understand what’s important for these men’s morale,” Omland says. “So I would bring woolen socks and shirts. There’s nothing better to keep you warm and dry than wool.”
Omland doesn’t speak much Ukrainian, but soldiers immediately recognize him as someone who understands. And for him, so much of his efforts are an attempt to reestablish the ties binding Norwegians and Ukrainians, which go back as far as the 10th century.
The Viking routes through Kyivan Rus’
In tandem with his volunteer work, Omland is working on a documentary series about medieval Norsemen and their deep ties to Kyivan Rus.
“Very few people in the West, or even Norway, are aware of the deep historic connection between Scandinavians and Ukrainians,” Omland says.
He explains how the founder of the Rurik Dynasty that ruled Kyivan Rus’ was in all likelihood the 9th-century Varangian (Viking) Prince Rurik, and how the Grand Princess Olha (Helga) was also of Norse stock, although probably Slavicized, as many of the Rurikind were by the 10th century. Olha was the grandmother of Volodymyr the Great, the man who baptized Kyivan Rus’ in 988.
In the documentary, Viking Legends, Omland explores years that Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway from 995 to 1,000, spent in Kyiv. The future Norwegian king spent time in the Kyivan court with Volodymyr. Once Tryggvason became king, he set out to baptize the Norwegians and make Christianity the official religion of the land, much as Volodymyr was doing in Rus.
Another Scandinavian who spent time in Kyiv was Harald Harada, who would rule as King of Norway from 1044 to 1066, when he was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge while trying to invade England.
Omland recounts how Harald had arrived in Kyiv, met Elisaveta (Elisiv), the daughter of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise, and asked Yaroslav for her hand in marriage. Harald was denied, so he set off for Constantinople where he became commander of the Byzantine Varangian Guard and befriended the emperor. Through various military campaigns across the Mediterranean, Harald accumulated great wealth.
When he returned to Kyiv – a wealthy and famous warrior – Yaroslav allowed Harald to marry his daughter. They returned to Norway, where he ruled as king for two decades.
Omland tells the stories of these and other Scandinavians who plied the Dnipro’s waterways like the modern saga chronicler he is. Today he is a living embodiment of the deep historical bonds between Norwegians and Ukrainians.
These bonds are reflected in the extraordinary military and humanitarian support Norway has been giving Ukrainians since the full-scale invasion.
Soldiers and children
After Izyum, Omland drops off medicines and muffins to soldiers closer to the front lines. On his next stop, he’ll bring clothes, diapers, children’s crutches, and stuffed animals to the cancer ward of a pediatric hospital in western Ukraine.
This is Omland’s 14th voyage to distribute humanitarian goods with his BBrave foundation. What’s truly remarkable is the joy he manages to transmit – as if the people receiving Norway’s gifts, recognize the atavistic nature of his efforts. As if our ancestors could help us to heal.
Source: Stash Luczkiw