What this song renders
The Pecheneg siege is documented in the Primary Chronicle with one of the more striking pieces of pre-modern siegecraft: a Rus’ boy slipped through the besiegers’ lines disguised as a Pecheneg, swam the Dnieper, and reached the relief force on the far side. The Chronicle reads as eyewitness or near-eyewitness.
Sviatoslav’s absence is the political fact the song’s grief sits on. He had spent most of his reign in foreign campaigns; the city he was supposed to defend was now defended by his mother and her grandchildren. The Primary Chronicle records the message Olga sent him: ‘You search for the lands of others, while you have abandoned your own.’
Pretsich’s relief and Sviatoslav’s late return ended the siege. Olga survived — just — and died the following year, in 969. The album places the siege as her last campaign and Christian death the following year as the resolution.
The siege, the relief by Pretsich, the message to Sviatoslav, and Olga’s presence in the city are all documented in the Primary Chronicle. The Chronicle is the Rus’ perspective and is closer to events than later accounts.