This chapter is something of a ragbag, in that it attempts to gather up such evidences from non-Byzantine sources as can be found about Varangians and which are not of a clearly fictitious nature. The bulk of these come, not surprisingly, from Norse sources, and the reliability of these has, naturally enough, been severely impugned in recent years, most notably by Professor P. H. Sawyer. Whatever is found in them, therefore, must always be treated with considerable caution, since they suffer from the double defect of not being certified copies of Public Record Office documents and also, at least in their oldest surviving manuscript versions, many years, indeed some centuries in several cases, later than the events they treat of and their own, often shaky, sources. Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that a considerable amount of material in them is based on fact and, as Professor J. H. Delargy has shown, it is unwise to distrust an oral tradition wholesale, since where it has been possible to check its descent in recent years, it has very often been found to carry an anecdote, a piece of verse or a longer narrative over remarkably long periods with considerable accuracy.