Four sites on one relief, tested against the chronicle’s sentence and two independent checks.
Scrolling moves the relief. About 12 minutes.
The Lower Danube, from Hârșova to the mouths. The relief on which the Pereyaslavets identification plays out, simplified after OpenStreetMap.
In 969, Sviatoslav, prince of Kiev, tells his mother he does not want to stay in Kiev: he wants to live at Pereyaslavets, on the Danube — “the centre of my land”, where all good things gather. The sentence stands in the Rus Primary Chronicle, anno mundi 6477. It records what he wanted, not that he moved his residence there.
Where was that town? Under the Tulcea village of Nufăru — as the textbook hypothesis has it? Between Cernavodă and Hârșova — where the Bulgarian historian Vasil Zlatarski put it a century ago? Near Silistra, under a village name given after 1940? Or not on the Danube at all, but inland at Preslav? Four answers, each with its historian and its ground: a dug fortress, a riverbank description, a village name, seals with their own geography.
The chronicler gives three claims about the place in 969, and the account of the 971 war offers one more test. Each fits the four sites, or does not, on the relief. Two independent witnesses follow — the seals found and the age of the names — and the arithmetic of the “centre”, printed with its error. Sviatoslav’s campaigns are on the neighbouring page, Vikings in Europe.
No site wins. Each placement stays with the historian who argues it, grounds included; the reader fits the claims to the sites on the map. Where the evidence is missing, the question stays open.
In 6477, before leaving for Bulgaria, Sviatoslav addresses his mother and his boyars. Here is the sentence in three wordings: the Laurentian text, the Cross English translation, and this page’s reading.
„Не любо ми есть в Киевѣ быти, хочю жити в Переяславци на Дунаи, яко то есть середа земли моеи, яко ту вся благая сходятся: отъ Грекъ злато, поволоки, вина и овощеве разноличныя, изъ Чехъ же, из Угоръ сребро и комони, из Руси же скора и воскъ, медъ и челядь.”“I do not care to remain in Kiev, but should prefer to live in Pereyaslavetz on the Danube, since that is the centre of my realm, where all riches are concentrated: gold, silks, wine, and various fruits from Greece, silver and horses from Hungary and Bohemia, and from Rus furs, wax, honey, and slaves.”„Nu-mi place să stau la Kiev, vreau să trăiesc la Pereiaslaveț, pe Dunăre — căci acela e mijlocul pământului meu: acolo se adună toate bunătățile: de la greci aur, mătăsuri, vinuri și felurite poame, de la cehi și de la unguri argint și cai, iar din Rus blănuri și ceară, miere și robi.”The chronicle frame: in 6475 (967), Sviatoslav takes eighty towns “along the Danube” and rules from Pereyaslavets; in 6476 (968), while he is there, the Pechenegs besiege Kiev; in 6477 (969), after his mother begs him first to bury her, Olga dies three days later; in 6479 (971), he storms the town towards evening.
Two warnings. The dating: the chronicle puts the first campaign in 6475 (967), Zlatarski moves it to the summer of 968 — the page shows both datings. The town of 971: Zlatarski argues it is Great Preslav, not Little Preslav, since the “on the Danube” qualifier is missing. The ambiguity is in the chronicle, not in the page.
Four sites, four historians. Each step lights one pin on the relief; each pin carries its proponent, its ground, and its source status. The steps follow the letters on the relief, from the mouths of the Danube inland, without the order meaning a ranking.
Candidate A
The Byzantine fortress inside the village, dug since 1978: stone walls with a mortar core, over 2.5 metres thick, a harbour, coins, and, from the digs of 2002–2003, timber buildings cautiously attributed by the excavators to Varangians. Oikonomides and Nesbitt place Little Preslav here — with a question mark; the excavators state the tenth-century evidence cannot support the identification. Its main opponent is Petre Diaconu himself.
Candidate B
Zlatarski (1927): Preslavets, that is Little Preslav, “opposite the marshy island of Balta”, a trading town at the narrowest place between the sea and the Danube. The pin is constructed by the page at the reach’s midpoint, with a halo of 15 kilometres; no tenth-century fortress has been demonstrated here.
Candidate C
The “near Silistra” placement is reported after the Encyclopedia of Bulgaria (vol. V, 1986) — a volume not opened by this page. The village name dates from 1942 (today’s form, from 1956): Kadaköy under Ottoman rule, Nescesănța under Romanian administration. One seal is reported from there (Feldman 2013); a modern name cannot carry a medieval identification.
Candidate D
The seal-town equation: Diaconu and Jordanov read Presthlavitza as the Grecised name of the Bulgarian capital, and eight seals of the strategos Aetios were found at Preslav. Diaconu goes further: Sviatoslav himself sat at Preslav, and the chronicler confused the name with the Rus Pereyaslavl.
Four pins on the Lower Danube: Nufăru (A), the Cernavodă–Hârșova reach (B), Malak Preslavets (C), Preslav (D). The reader’s choice lights the dots on each pin.
Four claims, four sites. For each claim the page lays out every site’s ground; the reader decides where it fits — or leaves it undecided. Each choice lights the dot of the chosen pin on the relief and writes the verdict under the group, while the stage panel keeps the four choices.
The page tots up no scores and declares no winner: each claim keeps the reader’s chosen site.
A chosen town or a point dropped on the relief: the page measures the straight line to each candidate and names the nearest. The answer names the nearest and the farthest site, with each distance; the marker stays on the relief until cleared.
Starting towns
or a point dropped on the relief
Straight-line distances (haversine, R = 6,371 kilometres), error ±2 kilometres. The chosen point never leaves the device. Towns off the relief park their marker at its edge.
Nothing chosen or pressed here ever leaves the page.
Two checks that do not use the chronicler’s sentence — plus the arithmetic of the “centre”, printed with its error. Their order is no ranking: each test stands alone, with its own reserves.
The eleventh-century strategoi of Presthlavitza sealed in lead. The open list (Madgearu 2013, p. 90, snippets): eight Aetios seals at Preslav, one each at Silistra, Topolovgrad and Sliven, one at Dumbarton Oaks; the DO catalogue adds three kommerkiarioi and Leo Pegonites.
At Nufăru, on the open list: none. Absence from a list is no proof of absence — but the only counted geography of the seals pulls towards Preslav, not towards the mouths of the Danube, if the Pereyaslavets of 969 is the eleventh-century Presthlavitza. It is the first test that disagrees with the chronicle fitting.
Candidate C stands on a name: Malak Preslavets — “Little Preslav”. Except the village has been called that only since after 1940 — since 1942, in today’s form since 1956 (the Silistra library); Kadaköy under Ottoman rule, Nescesănța under Romanian administration. A kommerkiarios seal is reported from there (Feldman 2013, after Jordanov–Žekova 2007). It does not attest the town’s identity in 969, and if the name is modern, the toponym cannot carry the medieval identification.
Nufăru does not get off cheaply either: Nicolae (2007) gives Prislav, Principesa Elena, Ada Marinescu (1948–1964), and the GAL Delta Dunării page gives Prislava, Domnița Maria (1908–1948), Ada Marinescu (1948–1964). The two opened sources agree on Ada Marinescu (1948–1964) but not on the royal name; the wikis put Prislav’s end in 1968 and Ada Marinescu’s end in 1965 respectively. The acts are not opened. The Prislav = Nufăru equation stands on literature, not on acts shown here.
“The centre of my land” can be measured as the node of the hauls of the good things: Kiev, Constantinople, Buda — Bohemia with Hungary give one western haul, as in the sentence (modern points for old directions). The rule: for each site, the longest of the three hauls; the site with the shortest “longest haul” wins. All distances are straight lines.
The three hauls, as straight lines:
The shortest “longest haul” belongs to Malak Preslavets (762 kilometres), followed by the Balta reach (766 kilometres). The gap is 4 kilometres — inside the error margin.
Three reserves. First, the error: ±2 kilometres a measurement, plus pin B’s halo. Second, the true hauls were not straight lines but waters and passes. Third, the “centre” was political praise as well as measure. The arithmetic only says how the four sites stand between Kiev, Constantinople and Buda — nothing more.
K1 favours the waterside sites; the counted seals pull towards Preslav; candidate C’s modern name alone cannot carry the medieval identification. No site takes all four claims, and the strictest reading — everything undecided — stays on the table. What would close the case: the dig on the Balta reach, the Encyclopedia of Bulgaria V at page 450, the renaming acts. Until then, the 969 sentence waits on the bank. Nufăru and the Balta reach’s midpoint lie 102 kilometres apart as the crow flies.
See also: Vikings in Europe — Sviatoslav’s campaigns and the Varangian road; Cernavodă 1895 — the town at the seaward end of Zlatarski’s reach.