exociti: contribution / karri kuoppala II

The First graffiti in Istanbul

Hagia Sofia, Holy Church of Wisdom, The Eight Wonder of the World, now Known as Ayasofya Museum, originally dedicated in 537, used to be a mosque before it got converted into a museum in 1935. Before Hagia Sofia was a mosque, it was a Christian church until the year 1453, when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and also changed the name of the city into Istanbul.

The Vikings, who are also known as Varangians, who called the city of Constantinoble Miklagård, first attacked Constantinople in 858. On one of the Hagia Sofia’s marble walls there is a Viking graffiti, written in the rune alphabets the Vikings used, dated in th 9th century. The graffiti reads Halvdan. Vikings were Swedish, Norwegian or Danish. Halvdan is a Viking name and it means Half Danish.

Halvdan was here.

Karri Kuoppala
(Visual Artist)

Photo: Hermanni Backer, 2005

The pictures of the Viking graffiti in Hagia Sofia taken by my friend Hermanni Backer, who is half Finnish, half Norwegian.

The picture of Hagia Sofia in the book “A World History of Art” by Hugh Honout and John Fleming. The minarets of Hagia Sofia are removed from the photograph.

[the poster]

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