A Viking ´descendants´ moored on the Marmara coast as they tour of the Black Sea and Mediterranean regions.

A Viking longboat has moored in the Marmara coast as a group of Russian friends recreate the seafaring expeditions of their forefathers.

The six friends arrived in Tekirdag, on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara, after a tour of ports around the Black Sea that began last month.

Wearing traditional Viking dress, the sailors disembarked their 15-meter ship to put on a display of folk dancing and sword-fighting.

Vikings from Sweden are thought to have settled in modern-day Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 9th centuries.

Known as Rus, they traded along the rivers leading into the Black Sea and came well-established, even serving as bodyguards to Byzantine emperors, when one carved Nordic runes into a parapet in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia.

One of the travellers, Father Feoktist, said the group is heading for the Adriatic port of Bar in Montenegro.

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