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123-637: The Berindeis were semi-nomadic and have been documented as holding various military positions, such as that of "frontier guards" on the payroll of Rus' lords. The Berindeis are mentioned in the chronicles of the Kievan Rus' in the 11th and 12th centuries as " Chornye Klobuki " and, together with the Pechenegs and Uzs , became settled along the borders of the Russian steppes. Some rebel Berindei tribes took refuge in territories which are part of today’s Romania . Most of

246-768: A "cuz" or nomadic people, are the Yörüks of Antalya, who are direct descendants of the Oghuz Turks. There are two villages called Berende in Bulgaria , which names, according to the linguist Anna Choleva–Dimitrova, stem from the Berendei tribe. In modern-day Romania, the Berindeis were documented to have lived in Teleorman County , around the town of Roșiorii de Vede together with the Pechenegs , Uzs, and Cumans . In Olt County , there

369-641: A name used for two of the Danish straits, the Belts , while others claim it to be directly derived from the source of the Germanic word, Latin balteus "belt". Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt ( Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam ). He might also have been influenced by

492-612: A normal winter, except sheltered bays and shallow lagoons such as the Curonian Lagoon . The ice reaches its maximum extent in February or March; typical ice thickness in the northernmost areas in the Bothnian Bay , the northern basin of the Gulf of Bothnia, is about 70 cm (28 in) for landfast sea ice. The thickness decreases farther south. Freezing begins in the northern extremities of

615-682: A rich biology. The remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen, and in species. Thus, statistically, the more of the entrance that is included in its definition, the healthier the Baltic appears; conversely, the more narrowly it is defined, the more endangered its biology appears. Tacitus called it the Suebic Sea, Latin: Mare Suebicum after the Germanic people of the Suebi , and Ptolemy Sarmatian Ocean after

738-510: A runic inscription was most likely carved by Swedish mercenaries serving in the Varangian Guard . Brate has reconstructed * Rōþsland , as an old name for Roslagen. Between the two compatible theories represented by róðr or Róðinn , modern scholarship leans towards the former because at the time, the region covered by the latter term, Roslagen, remained sparsely populated and lacked the demographic strength necessary to stand out compared to

861-529: A typical depth of 5–10 meters only) and notably deeper water. Drogden Sill (depth of 7 m (23 ft)) sets a limit to Øresund and Darss Sill (depth of 18 m (59 ft)), and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of heavy salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm and Gotland . The Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have

984-562: A valuable insight into the names of the Rus ' . Of the fourteen Rus ' signatories to the Rus ' –Byzantine Treaty in 907, all had Norse names. By the Rusʹ–Byzantine Treaty (945) in 945, some signatories of the Rus ' had Slavic names while the vast majority had Norse names. The Chronicle presents the following origin myth for the arrival of Rus ' in the region of Novgorod :

1107-572: Is Sveoni ). Fearing that they were spies, he detained them, before letting them proceed after receiving reassurances from Byzantium. Subsequently, in the 10th and 11th centuries, Latin sources routinely confused the Rus ' with the tribe of Rugians . Olga of Kiev , for instance, was designated as queen of the Rugians ( reginae Rugorum ) in the Lotharingian Chronicle compiled by the anonymous continuator of Regino of Prüm . At least after

1230-648: Is a reduction from the 25 incidents representing 1,110 kg (2,450 lb) of material in 2003. Until now, the U.S. Government refuses to disclose the exact coordinates of the wreck sites. Deteriorating bottles leak mustard gas and other substances, thus slowly poisoning a substantial part of the Baltic Sea. After 1945, the German population was expelled from all areas east of the Oder-Neisse line , making room for new Polish and Russian settlement. Poland gained most of

1353-522: Is a village called Berendi in the town of Serik, located in the Antalya province of Turkey. The people of this village are known as "coz", or settled people. Berendi is one of the oldest villages in the region, and since the word for non-settled people in Turkish is "cuz", the villagers of Berendi are conjectured to be the descendants of Muslim Pechenegs who were also designated as "coz" historically. An example of

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1476-417: Is about 20,000 km (4,800 cu mi). The periphery amounts to about 8,000 km (5,000 mi) of coastline. The Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish inland seas by area, and occupies a basin (a Zungenbecken ) formed by glacial erosion during the last few ice ages . The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Baltic Sea as follows: The northern part of

1599-413: Is adapted to reproducing also with no ice in the sea. The sea ice also harbors several species of algae that live in the bottom and inside unfrozen brine pockets in the ice. Due to the often fluctuating winter temperatures between above and below freezing, the saltwater ice of the Baltic Sea can be treacherous and hazardous to walk on, in particular in comparison to the more stable fresh water-ice sheets in

1722-470: Is also a Berindei village . Berindei (occasionally spelled Berindey) survives into modern times, designated as a family name. This is the surname of several noted Romanian personalities such as the architects Ion. D. Berindey, Dimitrie I. Berindey, and the general Anton Berindei born in Roșiorii de Vede; the architects Ion (Johny) Berindei and Ion Berindei, the historians Dan Berindei and Mihnea Berindei ;

1845-658: Is comparable in semantics to Old Norse gramr which meant both "wrath", "king" and "warrior". Other runestones explicitly mentioning warriors serving the ruler of Kievan Rus ' are one of the Skåäng runestones , the Smula runestone and most famously, the Turinge runestone which immortalises the dead commander with a poem: The Veda runestone is of note as it indicates that the riches that were acquired in Eastern Europe had led to

1968-909: Is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea–Baltic Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal . The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area includes the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat , without calling Kattegat a part of the Baltic Sea, "For the purposes of this Convention the 'Baltic Sea Area' shall be

2091-521: Is currently Sweden, plying the river routes between the Baltic and the Black and Caspian Seas. Relatively few of the rune stones Varangians left in their native Sweden tell of their journeys abroad, to such places as what is today Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Greece, and Italy. Most of these rune stones can be seen today, and are a significant piece of historical evidence. The Varangian runestones tell of many notable Varangian expeditions, and even recount

2214-650: Is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us". Thus they selected three brothers, with their kinsfolk, who took with them all the Russes and migrated. The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus , at Beloozero ; and the third, Truvor , in Izborsk . On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as the land of Rus ' . From among Rurik 's entourage it also introduces two Swedish merchants Askold and Dir (in

2337-561: Is that the name Aeifor in reference to the fourth cataract is also attested on the Pilgårds runestone from the 10th c. on Gotland . However, some researches indicate that at least several of the Rus ' names can be Slavic and, as for the Dnieper cataract Aeifar / Aeifor , its name doesn't have an acceptable and convincing Scandinavian etymology. At the time, the Byzantines also recorded

2460-523: Is that the name originally meant "enclosed sea, bay" as opposed to open sea. In the Middle Ages the sea was known by a variety of names. The name Baltic Sea became dominant after 1600. Usage of Baltic and similar terms to denote the region east of the sea started only in the 19th century. The Baltic Sea was known in ancient Latin language sources as Mare Suebicum or even Mare Germanicum . Older native names in languages that used to be spoken on

2583-558: Is used by the Øresund Bridge , including the Drogden Tunnel . By this definition, the Danish straits is part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg and the Bay of Kiel are parts of the Baltic Sea. Another usual border is the line between Falsterbo , Sweden, and Stevns Klint , Denmark, as this is the southern border of Øresund. It is also the border between the shallow southern Øresund (with

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2706-659: The Rhos ( Greek : Ῥώς ), as a different people from the Slavs. At least no source says they are part of the Slavic race. Characteristically, Pseudo-Simeon and Theophanes Continuatus refer to the Rhos as dromitai (Δρομῖται), a word related to the Greek word meaning a run , suggesting the mobility of their movement by waterways . In his treatise De Administrando Imperio , Constantine VII describes

2829-544: The All Saints' Flood of 1304 and other floods in the years 1320, 1449, 1625, 1694, 1784 and 1825. Little is known of their extent. From 1872, there exist regular and reliable records of water levels in the Baltic Sea. The highest was the flood of 1872 when the water was an average of 2.43 m (8 ft 0 in) above sea level at Warnemünde and a maximum of 2.83 m (9 ft 3 in) above sea level in Warnemünde. In

2952-745: The Black Sea and southern Russia. This Norse-dominated period is referred to as the Viking Age . Since the Viking Age , the Scandinavians have referred to the Baltic Sea as Austmarr ("Eastern Sea"). "Eastern Sea", appears in the Heimskringla and Eystra salt appears in Sörla þáttr . Saxo Grammaticus recorded in Gesta Danorum an older name, Gandvik , -vik being Old Norse for "bay", which implies that

3075-555: The Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea ), the Gulf of Finland , the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk . The " Baltic Proper " is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60°N, by Åland and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula. The Baltic Sea

3198-586: The Curonians faced an invasion by the Swedes around the same time. The Varangians are mentioned in the Primary Chronicle , which suggests that the term Rus ' was used to denote Scandinavians until it became firmly associated with the now extensively Slavicised elite of Kievan Rus ' . At that point, the new term Varangian was increasingly preferred to name the Scandinavians, probably mostly from what

3321-402: The Danish straits . According to the 18th-century natural historian William Derham , during the severe winters of 1703 and 1708, the ice cover reached as far as the Danish straits. Frequently, parts of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland are frozen, in addition to coastal fringes in more southerly locations such as the Gulf of Riga. This description meant that the whole of the Baltic Sea

3444-644: The Dwarves Dvalin and Durin . There is, however, more reliable information from the 11th and the 12th centuries, but at that time most of the Scandinavian population had already assimilated, and the term Rus ' referred to a largely Slavic-speaking population. Still, Eastern Europe is presented as the traditional Swedish sphere of interest. The sagas preserve Old Norse names of several important Rus ' settlements, including Hólmgarðr ( Novgorod ), and Kønugarðr ( Kiev ); Fjodor Uspenskij argues that

3567-639: The Netherlands , Denmark , and Scotland . The Polabian Slavs were gradually assimilated by the Germans. Denmark gradually gained control over most of the Baltic coast, until she lost much of her possessions after being defeated in the 1227 Battle of Bornhöved . In the 13th to 16th centuries, the strongest economic force in Northern Europe was the Hanseatic League , a federation of merchant cities around

3690-470: The Netherlands : their fleets needed the Baltic timber, tar, flax, and hemp. During the Crimean War , a joint British and French fleet attacked the Russian fortresses in the Baltic; the case is also known as the Åland War . They bombarded Sveaborg , which guards Helsinki ; and Kronstadt , which guards Saint Petersburg; and they destroyed Bomarsund in Åland . After the unification of Germany in 1871,

3813-523: The North and Central European Plain . The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. It is a shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea . The Baltic Sea drains through the Danish straits into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund , Great Belt and Little Belt . It includes the Gulf of Bothnia (divided into

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3936-503: The Pechenegs . In Scandinavian sources, the area is called Austr (the "East"), Garðaríki (the "realm of cities"), or simply Garðar (the "cities"), and Svíþjóð hin mikla ("Great Sweden"). The last name appears in the 12th century geographical work Leiðarvísir ok Borgaskipan by the Icelandic abbot Nicolaus (d. 1161) and in Ynglinga saga by Snorri Sturluson , which indicates that

4059-604: The Rhos as the neighbours of Pechenegs who buy from the latter cows, horses, and sheep "because none of these animals may be found in Rhosia "; his description represents the Rus ' as a warlike northern tribe. Constantine also enumerates the names of the Dnieper cataracts in both rhosisti ('ῥωσιστί', the language of the Rus ' ) and sklavisti ('σκλαβιστί', the language of the Slavs). The Rus ' names are usually etymologised as Old Norse . An argument used to support this view

4182-471: The Rusʹ Khaganate ). Arabic-language sources for the Rus ' people are relatively numerous, with over 30 relevant passages in roughly contemporaneous sources. It can be difficult to be sure that when Arabic sources talk about Rus ' they mean the same thing as modern scholars. Sometimes it seems to be a general term for Scandinavians: when Al-Yaqūbi recorded Rūs attacking Seville in 844, he

4305-675: The Sambia Peninsula in Kaliningrad Oblast . The Bay of Pomerania lies north of the islands of Usedom/Uznam and Wolin , east of Rügen . Between Falster and the German coast lie the Bay of Mecklenburg and Bay of Lübeck . The westernmost part of the Baltic Sea is the Bay of Kiel . The three Danish straits , the Great Belt , the Little Belt and The Sound ( Öresund / Øresund ), connect

4428-506: The Sarmatians , but the first to name it the Baltic Sea ( Medieval Latin : Mare Balticum ) was the eleventh-century German chronicler Adam of Bremen . The origin of the latter name is speculative and it was adopted into Slavic and Finnic languages spoken around the sea, very likely due to the role of Medieval Latin in cartography . It might be connected to the Germanic word belt ,

4551-417: The Stockholm area, southwestern Finland, and Estonia. The Western and Eastern Gotland basins form the major parts of the Central Baltic Sea or Baltic proper. The Bornholm Basin is the area east of Bornholm, and the shallower Arkona Basin extends from Bornholm to the Danish isles of Falster and Zealand . In the south, the Bay of Gdańsk lies east of the Hel Peninsula on the Polish coast and west of

4674-412: The Volga , are rejected or ignored by mainstream scholarship. Having settled Ladoga in the 750s, Scandinavian colonists played an important role in the early ethnogenesis of the Rus ' people, and in the formation of the Rus' Khaganate . Ladoga, then known as Aldeigja by the Norsemen, was the earliest and most significant settlement of the Rus', while Gorodische , likely known as Holmr ,

4797-421: The retinue of Yaroslav I the Wise in Novgorod . The suffix - grimmr is a virtually unique word for "leader" which is otherwise only attested in the Swedish medieval poem Stolt Herr Alf , but in the later form grim . It is not attested as a noun in the sense "leader" in West Norse sources. In Old Norse , the basic meaning of the adjective grimmr is "heartless, strict and wicked", and so grimmr

4920-455: The river-routes between the Baltic and the Black Seas from around the 8th to 11th centuries AD. The two original centres of the Rus' were Ladoga ( Aldeigja ), founded in the mid-8th century, and Rurikovo Gorodische ( Holmr ), founded in the mid-9th century. The two settlements were situated at opposite ends of the Volkhov River , between Lake Ilmen and Lake Ladoga , and the Norsemen likely called this territory Gardar . From there,

5043-443: The trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks . Two of them are roþ for rōþer / róðr , meaning "fleet levy", on the Håkan stone , and as i ruþi (translated as "dominion") on the lost Nibble stone , in the old Swedish heartland in the Mälaren Valley , and the possible third one was identified by Erik Brate in the most widely accepted reading as roþ(r)slanti on the Piraeus Lion originally located in Athens , where

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5166-404: The 12th century. The bordering countries have also traditionally exported lumber, wood tar , flax , hemp and furs by ship across the Baltic. Sweden had from early medieval times exported iron and silver mined there, while Poland had and still has extensive salt mines. Thus, the Baltic Sea has long been crossed by much merchant shipping. The lands on the Baltic's eastern shore were among

5289-434: The 6th century, the name of the Rugii referred to Slavic speaking peoples including the Rus ' . According to the Annals of St. Bertin, the Rus ' leader had the title Khagan ( ... quod rex illorum, Chacanus vocabulo, ... ). Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark , Estonia , Finland , Germany , Latvia , Lithuania , Poland , Russia , Sweden , and

5412-473: The 9th century), a Norse presence is only visible at Staraya Ladoga, and to a much lesser degree at a few other sites in the northern parts of Eastern Europe. The objects that represent Norse material culture of this period are rare outside Ladoga and mostly known as single finds. This rarity continues throughout the 9th century until the whole situation changes radically during the next century, when historians meet, at many places and in relatively large quantities,

5535-406: The Baltic Sea and the North Sea . In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Poland , Denmark , and Sweden fought wars for Dominium maris baltici ("Lordship over the Baltic Sea"). Eventually, it was Sweden that virtually encompassed the Baltic Sea . In Sweden, the sea was then referred to as Mare Nostrum Balticum ("Our Baltic Sea"). The goal of Swedish warfare during the 17th century

5658-447: The Baltic Sea and the Entrance to the Baltic Sea, bounded by the parallel of the Skaw in the Skagerrak at 57°44.43'N." Historically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea, in tandem: in the Øresund at Kronborg castle near Helsingør ; in the Great Belt at Nyborg ; and in the Little Belt at its narrowest part then Fredericia , after that stronghold

5781-471: The Baltic Sea is known as the Gulf of Bothnia , of which the northernmost part is the Bay of Bothnia or Bothnian Bay . The more rounded southern basin of the gulf is called Bothnian Sea and immediately to the south of it lies the Sea of Åland . The Gulf of Finland connects the Baltic Sea with Saint Petersburg . The Gulf of Riga lies between the Latvian capital city of Riga and the Estonian island of Saaremaa . The Northern Baltic Sea lies between

5904-414: The Baltic Sea was known as the Mare Suebicum or Mare Sarmaticum . Tacitus in his AD 98 Agricola and Germania described the Mare Suebicum, named for the Suebi tribe, during the spring months, as a brackish sea where the ice broke apart and chunks floated about. The Suebi eventually migrated southwest to temporarily reside in the Rhineland area of modern Germany, where their name survives in

6027-424: The Baltic Sea with the Kattegat and Skagerrak strait in the North Sea . The water temperature of the Baltic Sea varies significantly depending on exact location, season and depth. At the Bornholm Basin, which is located directly east of the island of the same name, the surface temperature typically falls to 0–5 °C (32–41 °F) during the peak of the winter and rises to 15–20 °C (59–68 °F) during

6150-443: The Baltic states and Poland. The remaining non-NATO and non-EU shore areas are Russian: the Saint Petersburg area and the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave . Winter storms begin arriving in the region during October. These have caused numerous shipwrecks , and contributed to the extreme difficulties of rescuing passengers of the ferry M/S Estonia en route from Tallinn , Estonia, to Stockholm , Sweden, in September 1994, which claimed

6273-404: The Baltic states. In 1945, the Baltic Sea became a mass grave for retreating soldiers and refugees on torpedoed troop transports . The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the worst maritime disaster in history, killing (very roughly) 9,000 people. In 2005, a Russian group of scientists found over five thousand airplane wrecks, sunken warships, and other material, mainly from World War II, on

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6396-493: The Berindeis remained on the territories of the Kiev and Pereyaslavl principalities, where they functioned as cavalry troops in the region of the lower Dnieper river. During the 12th century, the Berindeis were already assimilated, but also maintained their own military aristocracy. After the Berindei nobility were accepted by the elite of the Kievan Rus' state, towns were created by the new nobility and started to flourish. The Berindei cavalry continued to remain active against

6519-401: The Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea were frozen with solid ice near the Baltic coast and dense floating ice far from it. In 2008, almost no ice formed except for a short period in March. During winter, fast ice , which is attached to the shoreline, develops first, rendering ports unusable without the services of icebreakers . Level ice , ice sludge , pancake ice , and rafter ice form in

6642-410: The Dnieper. The prehistory of the first territory of Rus ' has been sought in the developments around the early-8th century, when Staraja Ladoga was founded as a manufacturing centre and to conduct trade, serving the operations of Scandinavian hunters and dealers in furs obtained in the north-eastern forest zone of Eastern Europe. In the early period (the second part of the 8th and first part of

6765-407: The Don. This made them less relevant than the Primary Chronicle to understanding European state formation further west. Imperialist ideologies, in Russia and more widely, discouraged research emphasising an ancient or distinctive history for Inner Eurasian peoples. Arabic sources portray Rus ' people fairly clearly as a raiding and trading diaspora , or as mercenaries, under the Volga Bulghars or

6888-403: The Greek Rōs . Rus ' is generally considered to be a borrowing from Finnic Ruotsi ("Sweden"). There are two theories behind the origin of Rus ' / Ruotsi , which are not mutually exclusive. It is either derived more directly from OEN rōþer ( OWN róðr ), which referred to rowing, the fleet levy , etc., or it is derived from this term through Rōþin , an older name for

7011-546: The Gulf of Bothnia normally thaw in late April, with some ice ridges persisting until May in the eastern extremities of the Gulf of Finland. In the northernmost reaches of the Bothnian Bay, ice usually stays until late May; by early June it is practically always gone. However, in the famine year of 1867 remnants of ice were observed as late as 17 July near Uddskär . Even as far south as Øresund , remnants of ice have been observed in May on several occasions; near Taarbaek on 15 May 1942 and near Copenhagen on 11 May 1771. Drift ice

7134-494: The Gulf of Bothnia typically in the middle of November, reaching the open waters of the Bothnian Bay in early January. The Bothnian Sea , the basin south of Kvarken , freezes on average in late February. The Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga freeze typically in late January. In 2011, the Gulf of Finland was completely frozen on 15 February. The ice extent depends on whether the winter is mild, moderate, or severe. In severe winters ice can form around southern Sweden and even in

7257-398: The Icelanders considered Kievan Rus ' to have been founded by the Swedes. The name "Great Sweden" is introduced as a non-Icelandic name with the phrase "which we call Garðaríki" ( sú er vér köllum Garðaríki ), and it is possible that it is a folk etymological interpretation of Scythia magna . However, if this is the case, it can still be influenced by the tradition that Kievan Rus '

7380-514: The Khazars, rather than taking a role in state formation. The most extensive Arabic account of the Rus ' is by the Muslim diplomat and traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlan , who visited Volga Bulgaria in 922, and described people under the label Rūs / Rūsiyyah at length, beginning thus: I have seen the Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil . I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms , blond and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor caftans, but

7503-408: The Latin text, ... qui se, id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant, ... ; translated by Aleksandr Nazarenko as ... who stated that they, i.e. their nation, were called Rhos, ... ). Once Louis enquired the reason of their arrival (in the Latin text, ... Quorum adventus causam imperator diligentius investigans, ... ), he learnt that they were Swedes ( eos gentis esse Sueonum ; verbatim, their nation

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7626-411: The Obotrites . Vikings also made up the bulk of the bodyguards of early Kievan Rus ' rulers. Evidence for strong bloodline connections between the Kievan Rus ' and Scandinavia existed and a strong alliance between Vikings and early Kievan rulers is indicated in early texts of Scandinavian and East Slavic history. Several thousand Swedish Vikings died for the defence of Kievan Rus ' against

7749-403: The Rus ' . Arabic sources for the Rus ' had been collected, edited and translated for Western scholars by the mid-20th century. However, relatively little use was made of the Arabic sources in studies of the Rus ' before the 21st century. This is partly because they mostly concern the region between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and from there north along the lower Volga and

7872-429: The Rus ' / Varangians 'imposed tribute upon the Chuds , the Slavs , the Merians , the Ves' , and the Krivichians ' (a variety of Slavic and Finnic peoples). The tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves. There was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against

7995-445: The Slav's lands. ... When a son is born, the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says, "I shall not leave you with any property: You have only what you can provide with this weapon." When the Varangians first appeared in Constantinople (the Paphlagonian expedition of the Rusʹ in the 820s and the Siege of Constantinople in 860), the Byzantines seem to have perceived these people, whom they called

8118-435: The Slavs on the middle Dnieper , which eventually became the "land of Rus" ( Ruskaja zemlja ). The Primary Chronicle portrays the East Slavic tribe of Polans as the most civilised of the East Slavs, and that they were therefore predisposed to host the Rus', but not give their name to the land. From this area, the Rus' moved eastward to the lands inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes in the Volga-Oka region, as well as south along

8241-413: The Swedish coastal region Roslagen . The Finnish and Russian forms of the name have a final -s revealing an original compound where the first element was rōþ(r)s - (preceding a voiceless consonant, þ is pronounced like th in English thing ). The prefix form rōþs- is found not only in Ruotsi and Rusʹ , but also in Old Norse róþsmenn and róþskarlar , both meaning "rowers", and in

8364-482: The Ukrainian лляти /ˈlʲːɑtɪ/ "to pour" and the Polish lać /lat͡ɕ/ "to pour") strukum , "rapid current" from the Ukrainian стрибати /strɪˈbatɪ/ "to jump" The first Western European source to mention the Rus ' are the Annals of St. Bertin (Annales Bertiniani). These relate that Emperor Louis the Pious ' court at Ingelheim , in 839, was visited by a delegation from the Byzantine emperor . In this delegation there were men who called themselves Rhos (in

8487-426: The Vikings correctly regarded it as an inlet of the sea. Another form of the name, "Grandvik", attested in at least one English translation of Gesta Danorum , is likely to be a misspelling. In addition to fish the sea also provides amber , especially from its southern shores within today's borders of Poland , Russia and Lithuania . First mentions of amber deposits on the South Coast of the Baltic Sea date back to

8610-401: The adjacent Swedish heartland of the Mälaren Valley. Consequently, an origin in word compounds such as róþs-menn and róþs-karlar is considered the most likely one. Moreover, the form róþs- , from which Ruotsi and Rusʹ originate, is not derived directly from ON róðr , but from its earlier Proto-Norse form roðz ( rothz ). Other theories such as derivation from Rusa , a name for

8733-423: The bottom of the Gotland Basin, at depths greater than 225 m (738 ft), the temperature typically is 4–7 °C (39–45 °F). Generally, offshore locations, lower latitudes and islands maintain maritime climates , but adjacent to the water continental climates are common, especially on the Gulf of Finland . In the northern tributaries the climates transition from moderate continental to subarctic on

8856-753: The bottom of the sea. Since the end of World War II , various nations, including the Soviet Union , the United Kingdom and the United States have disposed of chemical weapons in the Baltic Sea, raising concerns of environmental contamination. Today, fishermen occasionally find some of these materials: the most recent available report from the Helsinki Commission notes that four small scale catches of chemical munitions representing approximately 105 kg (231 lb) of material were reported in 2005. This

8979-473: The capital of a powerful oligarchic trading republic of a kind otherwise unknown in this part of Europe. These towns have tended to overshadow the significance of other places that had existed long before Kiev and Novgorod were founded. The two original centres of Rus ' were Staraya Ladoga and Rurikovo Gorodische, two points on the Volkhov, a river running for 200 kilometres (120 mi) between Lake Ilmen in

9102-421: The chronicle they are called " boyars ", probably because of their noble class). The names Askold ( Old Norse : Haskuldr ) and Dir ( Old Norse : Dyri ) are Swedish; the chronicle says that these two merchants were not from the family of Rurik, but simply belonged to his retinue. Later, the Primary Chronicle claims, they conquered Kiev and created the state of Kievan Rusʹ (which may have been preceded by

9225-558: The collapse of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. Finland and Sweden joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively, making the Baltic Sea almost entirely surrounded by the alliance's members, leading some commentators to label the sea a ″NATO lake″. Such an arrangement has also existed for the European Union (EU) since May 2004 following the accession of

9348-554: The eastern coast. Russia became and remained a dominating power in the Baltic. Russia's Peter the Great saw the strategic importance of the Baltic and decided to found his new capital, Saint Petersburg , at the mouth of the Neva river at the east end of the Gulf of Finland . There was much trading not just within the Baltic region but also with the North Sea region, especially eastern England and

9471-432: The elite until their complete assimilation by the second half of the 11th century, and in rural areas, vestiges of Norse culture persisted as late as the 14th and early 15th centuries, particularly in the north. The history of the Rus ' is central to 9th through 10th-century state formation, and thus national origins, in Eastern Europe. They ultimately gave their name to Russia and Belarus , and they are relevant to

9594-557: The evidence of the Persian traveler Ibn Rustah who, it is postulated, visited Novgorod (or Tmutarakan , according to George Vernadsky ) and described how the Rus ' exploited the Slavs. As for the Rus, they live on an island ... that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy. ... They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and…sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from

9717-744: The existence of the some of the lesser important Slavic tribes in the region, and the emperor only knew of Rhosia , which referred to the Rus' who lived in Kiev, closer to Byzantium, and the Rus' who lived in the north, along the Volkhov River. the non-Slavonic names of the Slavonic or both for the non-Slavonic names for the non-Slavonic names súpandi "slurping" (compare the Ukrainian не спи /ne spɪ/ "do not sleep!") hólm-foss "island rapid" æ-for/ey-forr "ever fierce" báru-foss "wave rapid" (compare

9840-579: The expedition had gone. It was Harald Bluetooth 's construction of the Jelling stones in the late 10th century that started the runestone fashion that resulted in the raising of thousands of runestones in Sweden during the 11th century; at that time the Swedes arrived as mercenaries and traders rather than settlers. In the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries runic memorials had consisted of runes on wooden poles that were erected in

9963-493: The fates of individual warriors and travelers. In Russian historiography, two cities are used to describe the beginnings of the country: Kiev and Novgorod. In the first part of the 11th century the former was already a Slav metropolis, rich and powerful, a fast growing centre of civilisation adopted from Byzantium. The latter town, Novgorod, was another centre of the same culture but founded in different surroundings, where some old local traditions moulded this commercial city into

10086-625: The form of collections of many types of metal ornaments, mainly female but male also, such as weapons, decorated parts of horse bridles, and diverse objects embellished in contemporaneous Norse art styles. The Swedish king Anund Jakob wanted to assist Yaroslav the Wise , Grand prince of Kiev, in his campaigns against the Pechenegs. The so-called Ingvar the Far-Travelled , a Swedish Viking who wanted to conquer Georgia, also assisted Yaroslav with 3000 men in

10209-606: The ground, something which explains the lack of runic inscriptions from this period both in Scandinavia and in eastern Europe as wood is perishable. This tradition was described by Ibn Fadlan who met Scandinavians on the shores of the Volga . The Fagerlöt runestone gives a hint of the Old Norse spoken in Kievan Rus ' , as folksgrimʀ may have been the title that the commander had in

10332-508: The historians at this time ceased with the usage of the Berindei tribal name. Some of Turkic placenames in south of Kyiv Oblast and in Cherkasy Oblast , namely Kaharlyk , Karapyshi, Tahancha, Koshmak, are believed to be connected to the Berendei. Additionally, so is the name of the city of Berdychiv in southern part of Zhytomyr Oblast , which is founded by the "Berendychi". Also, there

10455-562: The historic region known as Swabia . Jordanes called it the Germanic Sea in his work, the Getica . In the early Middle Ages , Norse (Scandinavian) merchants built a trade empire all around the Baltic. Later, the Norse fought for control of the Baltic against Wendish tribes dwelling on the southern shore. The Norse also used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually to

10578-481: The ice further into the north, and much of the waters north of Gotland were again free of ice, which had then packed against the shores of southern Finland. The effects of the afore-mentioned high-pressure area did not reach the southern parts of the Baltic Sea, and thus the entire sea did not freeze over. However, floating ice was additionally observed near Świnoujście harbor in January 2010. In recent years before 2011,

10701-443: The interior lakes. The Baltic Sea flows out through the Danish straits ; however, the flow is complex. A surface layer of brackish water discharges 940 km (230 cu mi) per year into the North Sea . Due to the difference in salinity , by salinity permeation principle, a sub-surface layer of more saline water moving in the opposite direction brings in 475 km (114 cu mi) per year. It mixes very slowly with

10824-506: The jazz musicians Emil Berindey, Mihai Berindei, and Ștefan Berindei. During the communist regime in Romania (1945–1989), many Berindeis have emigrated to Europe and the United States. Rus%27 people The Rus ' , also known as Russes , were a people in early medieval Eastern Europe. The scholarly consensus holds that they were originally Norsemen , mainly originating from present-day Sweden , who settled and ruled along

10947-589: The last in Europe to be converted to Christianity . This finally happened during the Northern Crusades : Finland in the twelfth century by Swedes, and what are now Estonia and Latvia in the early thirteenth century by Danes and Germans ( Livonian Brothers of the Sword ). The Teutonic Order gained control over parts of the southern and eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they set up their monastic state . Lithuania

11070-485: The last very heavy floods the average water levels reached 1.88 m (6 ft 2 in) above sea level in 1904, 1.89 m (6 ft 2 in) in 1913, 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in) in January 1954, 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) on 2–4 November 1995 and 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in) on 21 February 2002. An arm of the North Atlantic Ocean , the Baltic Sea is enclosed by Sweden and Denmark to

11193-457: The lives of 852 people. Older, wood-based shipwrecks such as the Vasa tend to remain well-preserved, as the Baltic's cold and brackish water does not suit the shipworm . Storm surge floods are generally taken to occur when the water level is more than one metre above normal. In Warnemünde about 110 floods occurred from 1950 to 2000, an average of just over two per year. Historic flood events were

11316-459: The material remains of a thriving Scandinavian culture. For a short period of time, some areas of Eastern Europe became as much part of the Norse world as were Danish and Norwegian territories in the West. The culture of the Rus ' contained Norse elements used as a manifestation of their Scandinavian background. These elements, which were current in 10th-century Scandinavia, appear at various places in

11439-597: The men wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hand free. Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife, and keeps each by him at all times. The swords are broad and grooved, of Frankish sort. Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper, or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband. Each box has a ring from which depends a knife. The women wear neck-rings of gold and silver. Their most prized ornaments are green glass beads. They string them as necklaces for their women. Apart from Ibn Fadlan's account, scholars draw heavily on

11562-491: The modern Swedish name for the people of Roslagen – rospiggar which derives from ON * rōþsbyggiar ("inhabitants of Rōþin"). The name Roslagen itself is formed with this element and the plural definite form of the neuter noun lag , meaning "the teams", in reference to the teams of rowers in the Swedish kings' fleet levy. There are at least two, probably three, instances of the root in Old Norse from two 11th c. runic inscriptions, fittingly located at two extremes of

11685-459: The more open regions. The gleaming expanse of ice is similar to the Arctic , with wind-driven pack ice and ridges up to 15 m (49 ft). Offshore of the landfast ice, the ice remains very dynamic all year, and it is relatively easily moved around by winds and therefore forms pack ice , made up of large piles and ridges pushed against the landfast ice and shores. In spring, the Gulf of Finland and

11808-620: The name of a legendary island mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder . Pliny mentions an island named Baltia (or Balcia ) with reference to accounts of Pytheas and Xenophon . It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia ("the royal") in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from "belt", and therein mean "near belt of sea, strait". Others have suggested that

11931-641: The name of the Rus' was transferred to the Middle Dnieper , and the Rus' then moved eastward to where the Finnic tribes lived and southward to where the Slavs lived. The name Garðaríki was applied to the newly formed state of Kievan Rus' , and the ruling Norsemen along with local Finnic tribes gradually assimilated into the East Slavic population and came to speak a common language . Old Norse remained familiar to

12054-517: The name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰel meaning "white, fair", which may echo the naming of seas after colours relating to the cardinal points (as per Black Sea and Red Sea ). This '*bʰel' root and basic meaning were retained in Lithuanian (as baltas ), Latvian (as balts ) and Slavic (as bely ). On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that

12177-425: The name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian. Another explanation is that, while derived from the aforementioned root, the name of the sea is related to names for various forms of water and related substances in several European languages, that might have been originally associated with colors found in swamps (compare Proto-Slavic *bolto "swamp"). Yet another explanation

12300-460: The national histories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Because of this importance, there is a set of alternative so-called " Anti-Normanist " views that are largely confined to a minor group of Eastern European scholars. The name Rusʹ remains not only in names such as Russia and Belarus , but it is also preserved in many place names in the Novgorod and Pskov districts , and it is the origin of

12423-522: The new procedure of legally buying clan land , and the Swedish chieftain Jarlabanke used his clan's acquired wealth to erect the monument Jarlabanke Runestones after himself while alive and where he bragged that he owned the whole hundred . The earliest Slavonic-language narrative account of Rus ' history is the Primary Chronicle , compiled and adapted from a wide range of sources in Kiev at

12546-537: The northernmost coastlines. On the long-term average, the Baltic Sea is ice-covered at the annual maximum for about 45% of its surface area. The ice-covered area during such a typical winter includes the Gulf of Bothnia , the Gulf of Finland , the Gulf of Riga , the archipelago west of Estonia, the Stockholm archipelago , and the Archipelago Sea southwest of Finland. The remainder of the Baltic does not freeze during

12669-637: The other. They said to themselves, "Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to the Law". They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Russes: these particular Varangians were known as Russes, just as some are called Swedes , and others Normans , English , and Gotlanders , for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichians and the Ves' then said to the people of Rus ' , "Our land

12792-520: The peak of the summer, with an annual average of around 9–10 °C (48–50 °F). A similar pattern can be seen in the Gotland Basin , which is located between the island of Gotland and Latvia. In the deep of these basins the temperature variations are smaller. At the bottom of the Bornholm Basin, deeper than 80 m (260 ft), the temperature typically is 1–10 °C (34–50 °F), and at

12915-559: The raids undertaken by the Cumans . In 1177, a Cuman -Kipchak army, allied with Ryazan , sacked six cities belonging to the Berendei and Torkil . After the great Mongol invasion of 1241, some Berindeis and other Turkic peoples moved to Bulgaria to join with those who had already taken refuge in Hungary. The rest of these tribes mixed with the nomad population of the Golden Horde , where after,

13038-632: The shores of the sea or near it usually indicate the geographical location of the sea (in Germanic languages), or its size in relation to smaller gulfs (in Old Latvian), or tribes associated with it (in Old Russian the sea was known as the Varanghian Sea). In modern languages, it is known by the equivalents of "East Sea", "West Sea", or "Baltic Sea" in different languages: At the time of the Roman Empire ,

13161-515: The south to Lake Ladoga in the north. This was the territory that most probably was originally called by the Norsemen Gardar , a name that long after the Viking Age acquired a much broader meaning and became Garðaríki , a denomination for the entire state. The area between the lakes was the original Rus ' , and it was from here that its name was transferred to the territories inhabited by

13284-657: The southern shore . The Soviet Union gained another access to the Baltic with the Kaliningrad Oblast , that had been part of German-settled East Prussia . The Baltic states on the eastern shore were annexed by the Soviet Union. The Baltic then separated opposing military blocs: NATO and the Warsaw Pact . Neutral Sweden developed incident weapons to defend its territorial waters after the Swedish submarine incidents . This border status restricted trade and travel. It ended only after

13407-435: The start of the 13th century. It has therefore been influential in modern history-writing, but it was also compiled much later than the time it describes, and historians agree it primarily reflects the political and religious politics of the time of Mstislav I of Kiev . However, the chronicle does include the texts of a series of Rus ' –Byzantine Treaties from 911 , 945 , and 971 . The Rus ' –Byzantine Treaties give

13530-490: The use of the element garðr in these names, as well as in the names Garðar and Miklagarðr (Constantinople), shows the influence of Old East Slavic gorodǔ (city), as garðr usually means farmstead in Old Norse. He further argues that the city names can be used to show that the Rus ' were also competent in Old East Slavic. At this time the Rus ' borrowed some 15 Old East Slavic words, such as

13653-712: The war against the Pechenegs; however, he later continued on to Georgia. Yaroslav the Wise married the Swedish king's daughter, Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden , who became the Russian saint, Anna, while Harald Hardrada , the Norwegian king who was a military commander of the Varangian guard, married Elisiv of Kiev . The two first uncontroversially historical Swedish kings Eric the Victorious and Olof Skötkonung both had Slavic wives. Danish kings and royals also frequently had Slavic wives. For example, Harald Bluetooth married Tove of

13776-450: The west, Finland to the northeast, and the Baltic countries to the southeast. It is about 1,600 km (990 mi) long, an average of 193 km (120 mi) wide, and an average of 55 metres (180 ft) deep. The maximum depth is 459 m (1,506 ft) which is on the Swedish side of the center. The surface area is about 349,644 km (134,998 sq mi) and the volume

13899-688: The whole southern coast became German. World War I was partly fought in the Baltic Sea. After 1920 Poland was granted access to the Baltic Sea at the expense of Germany by the Polish Corridor and enlarged the port of Gdynia in rivalry with the port of the Free City of Danzig . After the Nazis' rise to power, Germany reclaimed the Memelland and after the outbreak of the Eastern Front (World War II) occupied

14022-516: The word for marketplace, tǔrgǔ , as torg , many of which spread to the other Old Norse-speaking regions as well. The most contemporary sources are the Varangian runestones , but just like the sagas, the vast majority of them arrive relatively late. The earliest runestone that tells of eastwards voyages is the Kälvesten runestone from the 9th century in Östergötland , but it does not specify where

14145-554: Was the last European state to convert to Christianity . In the period between the 8th and 14th centuries, there was much piracy in the Baltic from the coasts of Pomerania and Prussia , and the Victual Brothers held Gotland . Starting in the 11th century, the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic were settled by migrants mainly from Germany , a movement called the Ostsiedlung ("east settling"). Other settlers were from

14268-596: Was almost certainly talking about Vikings based in Frankia. At other times, it might denote people other than or alongside Scandinavians: thus the Mujmal al-Tawarikh calls the Khazars and Rus ' 'brothers'; later, Muhammad al-Idrisi , Al-Qazwini , and Ibn Khaldun all identified the Rus ' as a sub-group of the Turks. These uncertainties have fed into debates about the origins of

14391-414: Was also observed on 11 May 1799. The ice cover is the main habitat for two large mammals, the grey seal ( Halichoerus grypus ) and the Baltic ringed seal ( Pusa hispida botnica ), both of which feed underneath the ice and breed on its surface. Of these two seals, only the Baltic ringed seal suffers when there is not adequate ice in the Baltic Sea, as it feeds its young only while on ice. The grey seal

14514-525: Was built. The narrowest part of Little Belt is the "Middelfart Sund" near Middelfart . Geographers widely agree that the preferred physical border between the Baltic and North Seas is the Langelandsbælt (the southern part of the Great Belt strait near Langeland ) and the Drogden -Sill strait. The Drogden Sill is situated north of Køge Bugt and connects Dragør in the south of Copenhagen to Malmö ; it

14637-407: Was covered with ice. Since 1720, the Baltic Sea has frozen over entirely 20 times, most recently in early 1987, which was the most severe winter in Scandinavia since 1720. The ice then covered 400,000 km (150,000 sq mi). During the winter of 2010–11, which was quite severe compared to those of the last decades, the maximum ice cover was 315,000 km (122,000 sq mi), which

14760-510: Was founded over a century later. It was from the Ladoga area, which formed the centre of the Rus', that the envoys went to Constantinople in 838. The Varangians are first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle as having exacted tribute from the Slavic and Finnic tribes in 859. It was the time of rapid expansion of the Vikings' presence in Northern Europe; England began to pay Danegeld in 865, and

14883-543: Was of Swedish origin, which recalls Magna Graecia as a name for the Greek colonies in Italy. When the Norse sagas were put to text in the 13th century, the Norse colonisation of Eastern Europe, however, was a distant past, and little of historical value can be extracted. The oldest traditions were recorded in the Legendary sagas and there Garðaríki appears as a Norse kingdom where the rulers have Norse names, but where also dwelt

15006-470: Was reached on 25 February 2011. The ice then extended from the north down to the northern tip of Gotland , with small ice-free areas on either side, and the east coast of the Baltic Sea was covered by an ice sheet about 25 to 100 km (16 to 62 mi) wide all the way to Gdańsk . This was brought about by a stagnant high-pressure area that lingered over central and northern Scandinavia from around 10 to 24 February. After this, strong southern winds pushed

15129-609: Was to make the Baltic Sea an all-Swedish sea ( Ett Svenskt innanhav ), something that was accomplished except the part between Riga in Latvia and Stettin in Pomerania. However, the Dutch dominated the Baltic trade in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, Russia and Prussia became the leading powers over the sea. Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War brought Russia to

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