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polotaswarf

polotaswarf noun: the right of the Viking Varangian guard, upon the death of the Byzantine emperor, to remove from the royal palace as much treasure as they could carry in their hands.

Noun

polotaswarf (uncountable)

  1. The right of the Viking Varangian guard, upon the death of the Byzantine emperor, to remove from the royal palace as much treasure as they could carry in their hands.
    • Harald [Hardraade] had been three times in the poluta-svarf while he was in Constantinople. It is the custom, namely, there, that every time one of the Greek emperors dies, the Varings are allowed poluta-svarf; that is, they may go through all the emperor's palaces where his treasures are and each...1230, Snorri Sturlason, chapter 16, in Heimskringla: The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway
    • I shall go down to Constantinople to the Varangers, get my Polotaswarf out of the Kaiser’s treasure, and pay thee back five to one.1866, Charles Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 42

Forms of polotaswarf

alternative formpolutasvarf

Origin of polotaswarf

From Old Norse, palace-looting.

Questions about polotaswarf

What does polotaswarf mean?
Polotaswarf means the right of the Viking Varangian guard, upon the death of the Byzantine emperor, to remove from the royal palace as much treasure as they could carry in their hands.
What part of speech is polotaswarf?
Polotaswarf is a noun.

Words near polotaswarf in the dictionary

  1. polonynas
  2. Polorós
  3. polos
  4. polostick
  5. polosticks
  6. polotaswarf
  7. Polotsk
  8. Polovtsian
  9. Polovtsians
  10. poloxalene
  11. poloxamer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: polotaswarf (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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