West Baltic languages
94-701: Old Prussian is an extinct West Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages , which was once spoken by the Old Prussians , the Baltic peoples of the Prussian region . The language is called Old Prussian to avoid confusion with the German dialects of Low Prussian and High Prussian and with the adjective Prussian as it relates to the later German state. Old Prussian began to be written down in
188-403: A -stems, i -stems, u -stems), of which only the first agreed with the noun in gender. There was a comparative and a superlative form. When it comes to verbal morphology present, future and past tense are attested, as well as optative forms (used with imperative or permissive forms of verbs), infinitive, and four participles (active/passive present/past). The orthography varies depending on
282-461: A West Baltic language or dialect. Another possible classification is a transitional language between West and East Baltic. Sudovian is either classified as an Old Prussian dialect, a West Baltic language or a transitional language between West and East Baltic. The former two options would leave Sudovian in the West Baltic phylum. Old Curonian is the least securely classified language. It
376-571: A dual identifiable in the existent corpus. There is no consensus on the number of cases that Old Prussian had, and at least four can be determined with certainty: nominative, genitive, accusative and dative, with different suffixes . Most scholars agree, that there are traces of a vocative case , such as in the phrase O Deiwe Rikijs 'O God the Lord', reflecting the inherited PIE vocative ending * -e , differing from nominative forms in o-stem nouns only. Some scholars find instrumental forms, while
470-449: A few borrowings from Germanic , including from Gothic (e.g., Old Prussian ylo 'awl' as with Lithuanian ýla , Latvian īlens ) and from Scandinavian languages . The Low German language spoken in Prussia (or West Prussia and East Prussia ), called Low Prussian (cf. High Prussian , High German ), preserved a number of Baltic Prussian words, such as Kurp , from
564-792: A good little comrade if you want to drink (but) do not want to give a penny! This jocular inscription was most probably made by a Prussian student studying in Prague ( Charles University ); found by Stephen McCluskey (1974) in manuscript MS F.V.2 (book of physics Questiones super Meteororum by Nicholas Oresme ), fol. 63r, stored in the Basel University library. The longest texts preserved in Old Prussian are three Catechisms printed in Königsberg in 1545, 1545, and 1561 respectively. The first two consist of only six pages of text in Old Prussian –
658-578: A historian of the Teutonic Knights , encompasses 100 words (in strongly varying versions). He also recorded an expression: sta nossen rickie, nossen rickie ('This (is) our lord, our lord'). The vocabulary is part of the Preussische Chronik written c. 1517–1526 . The second one is the so-called Elbing Vocabulary, which consists of 802 thematically sorted words and their German equivalents. Peter Holcwesscher from Marienburg copied
752-528: A manuscript of the Logica Parva by Paul of Venice . West Baltic languages The West Baltic languages are a group of extinct Baltic languages that were spoken by West Baltic peoples. West Baltic is one of the two primary branches of Baltic languages, along with East Baltic . It includes Old Prussian , Sudovian , West Galindian , possibly Skalvian and Old Curonian . The only properly attested West Baltic language of which texts are known
846-550: 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 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
940-504: 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 the Slavs on the middle Dnieper , which eventually became the "land of Rus" ( Ruskaja zemlja ). The Primary Chronicle portrays
1034-534: 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 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
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#17328454038131128-737: A phonological merger of dentialveolar and postalveolar sibilants in many Polish dialects – states that it originated as a feature of Polonized Old Prussians in Masuria (see Masurian dialects ) and spread from there. In addition to Prussia proper, the original territory of the Old Prussians may have included eastern parts of Pomerelia (some parts of the region east of the Vistula River ). The language may also have been spoken much further east and south in what became Polesia and part of Podlasie , before conquests by Rus and Poles starting in
1222-570: A scientific project and a humanitarian gesture. Some enthusiasts thereafter began to revive the language based on their reconstruction. Most current speakers live in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Kaliningrad (Russia). Additionally, a few children are native in Revived Prussian. Today, there are websites, online dictionaries, learning apps and games for Revived Prussian, and one children's book – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 's The Little Prince –
1316-713: 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 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
1410-456: Is Old Prussian , although there are a few short remnants of Old Curonian and Sudovian in the form of isolated words and short phrases. Many West Baltic languages went extinct in the 16th century while Old Prussian ceased to be spoken in the early 18th century . The only languages securely classified as West Baltic are Old Prussian and West Galindian , which could also be a dialect of Old Prussian. Most scholars consider Skalvian to be
1504-572: 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
1598-419: Is argued to be either West Baltic with significant East Baltic influence, or East Baltic. West Baltic was presumably native to the north of Central Europe , especially modern Poland , and the western Baltic region , which includes parts of modern Latvia and Lithuania . The West Baltic branch probably fully separated from East Baltic around the 4th–3rd century BCE, although their differences go as far as
1692-523: Is believed to have retained an archaic feature from the Sudovian language — the usage of compound consonants šč , št , žd and st without inserting consonants k , g (e.g. auštas ‘high, tall’, pauštė ‘bird’, spiūsna ‘feather’, žvirždo s ‘sand, pebble’) — which also corresponds to examples found in Old Prussian (e.g. aūss ‘gold’, rīsti ‘whip’). Personal pronoun forms have also been noted for possessing features found in West Baltic languages, such as
1786-473: 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 the Volga , are rejected or ignored by mainstream scholarship. Having settled Ladoga in the 750s, Scandinavian colonists played an important role in
1880-451: 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 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
1974-650: 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
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#17328454038132068-512: Is mainly a word-for-word translation, and Will phonetically recorded Megott's oral translation. Because of this, the Enchiridion exhibits many irregularities, such as the lack of case agreement in phrases involving an article and a noun , which followed word-for-word German originals as opposed to native Old Prussian syntax. The "Trace of Crete" is a short poem added by a Baltic writer in Chania to
2162-574: Is more often found in Pomesianan than in Sambian. Others argue that the Catechisms are written in a Yatvingized Prussian. The differences noted above could therefore be explained as being features of a different West Baltic language Yatvingian/Sudovian . The Prussian language is described to have the following consonants: There is said to have existed palatalization (i.e. [tʲ] , [dʲ] ) among nearly all of
2256-591: 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 ' 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
2350-549: 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 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
2444-567: 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 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
2538-561: 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
2632-506: Is the Primary Chronicle , compiled and adapted from a wide range of sources in Kiev at 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
2726-621: Is the Kälvesten runestone from the 9th century in Östergötland , but it does not specify where 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
2820-404: 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 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
2914-583: The Legendary sagas and there Garðaríki appears as a Norse kingdom where the rulers have Norse names, but where also dwelt 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
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3008-782: 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 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
3102-514: 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
3196-505: The Latin alphabet in about the 13th century, and a small amount of literature in the language survives. In modern times, there has been a revival movement of Old Prussian, and there are families which use Old Prussian as their first language. Old Prussian is an Indo-European language belonging to the Baltic branch. It is considered to be a Western Baltic language. Old Prussian was closely related to
3290-589: The Protestant Reformation and thereafter. Old Prussian ceased to be spoken probably around the beginning of the 18th century, because many of its remaining speakers died in the famines and the bubonic plague outbreak which harrowed the East Prussian countryside and towns from 1709 until 1711. In the 1980s, linguists Vladimir Toporov and Vytautas Mažiulis started reconstructing the Prussian language as
3384-604: 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
3478-471: 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
3572-593: The Sudovian Book in the middle of the 16th century. Palmaitis regards them as Sudovian proper. In addition to the texts listed beneath, there are several colophons written by Prussian scriptors who worked in Prague and in the court of Lithuanian duke Butautas Kęstutaitis . The so-called Basel Epigram is the oldest written Prussian sentence (1369). It reads: Kayle rekyse thoneaw labonache thewelyse Eg koyte poyte nykoyte pênega doyte Cheers, Sir! You are no longer
3666-605: 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 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
3760-568: The 10th century and the German colonisation of the area starting in the 12th century. With the conquest of the Old Prussian territory by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and the subsequent influx of Polish, Lithuanian and especially German speakers, Old Prussian experienced a 400-year-long decline as an "oppressed language of an oppressed population". Groups of people from Germany, Poland , Lithuania , Scotland , England , and Austria (see Salzburg Protestants ) found refuge in Prussia during
3854-553: 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 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
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3948-453: The 8th, 9th and 10th centuries runic memorials had consisted of runes on wooden poles that were erected in 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
4042-482: The Catechisms display systematical differences in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Some scholars postulate that this is due to them being recordings of different dialects: Pomesanian and Sambian. Phonetical distinctions are: Pom. ē is Samb. ī ( sweta- : swīta- 'world'); Pom. ō , Samb. ū after a labial ( mōthe [mōte] : mūti 'mother') or Pom. ō , Samb. ā ( tōwis : tāws 'father'; brōte : brāti 'brother'), which influences
4136-619: 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
4230-626: 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 the Dnieper. The prehistory of the first territory of Rus ' has been sought in the developments around
4324-659: 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
4418-589: 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 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
4512-456: 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
4606-691: 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 the Obotrites . Vikings also made up the bulk of the bodyguards of early Kievan Rus ' rulers. Evidence for strong bloodline connections between
4700-431: The Old Norse spoken in Kievan Rus ' , as folksgrimʀ may have been the title that the commander had in 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 ,
4794-400: The Old Prussian kurpe , for shoe in contrast to common Low German : Schoh (Standard German Schuh ), as did the High Prussian Oberland subdialect . Until the 1938 changing of place names in East Prussia , Old Prussian river- and place-names, such as Tawe and Tawellningken , could still be found. One of the hypotheses regarding the origin of mazurzenie –
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#17328454038134888-403: 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
4982-445: 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
5076-482: 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
5170-427: 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 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 ,
5264-409: The adage, however, has been argued to be genuinely West Baltic, only an otherwise unattested dialect): Additionally, there is one manuscript fragment of the first words of the Pater Noster in Prussian, from the beginning of the 15th century: Towe Nüsze kås esse andangonsün swyntins Vytautas Mažiulis lists another few fragmentary texts recorded in several versions by Hieronymus Maletius in
5358-415: The author. As the authors of many sources were themselves not proficient in Old Prussian, they wrote the words as they heard them using the orthographical conventions of their mother tongue. For example, the use of ⟨s⟩ for both /s/ and /z/ is based on German orthography. Additionally, the writers misunderstood some phonemes and, when copying manuscripts, they added further mistakes. There
5452-409: The basic meaning of the adjective grimmr is "heartless, strict and wicked", and so grimmr 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
5546-421: 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
5640-488: 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 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
5734-410: The consonant sounds except for /j/ , and possibly for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ . Whether or not the palatalization was phonemic remains unclear. Apart from the palatalizations Proto-Baltic consonants were almost completely preserved. The only changes postulated are turning Proto-Baltic /ʃ, ʒ/ into Prussian /s, z/ and subsequently changing Proto-Baltic /sj/ into /ʃ/ . The following description is based on
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#17328454038135828-468: 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 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
5922-444: 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 , 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
6016-419: 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 the 9th century), a Norse presence is only visible at Staraya Ladoga, and to a much lesser degree at a few other sites in
6110-508: 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
6204-538: 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
6298-474: 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 the capital of a powerful oligarchic trading republic of a kind otherwise unknown in this part of Europe. These towns have tended to overshadow
6392-516: The following origin myth for the arrival of Rus ' in the region of Novgorod : 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
6486-450: The following six key linguistic features: 1 – primordial diphthong *ei , 2 – equivalents to IE velars *k and *g , 3 – *AN type compounds, 4 – equivalents to palatals *k‘ and *g‘ , 5 – equivalents to Baltic consonant compounds *tj and *td , 6 – equivalents to Baltic vowels *ā and *ō . Based on the degree of consensus existing in the academic community, the first two points are sometimes regarded as strong features whereas
6580-588: The incomplete transition of diphthong ei to ie (e.g. sv ie kas ‘hello’, sv ie kata ‘health’, pasv ie k ‘get well’), turn of vowel u into i before consonant v (e.g. br i vai ‘eyebrows’, liž i vis ‘tongue’, ž i vis , ž i vė ‘fish’), use of diphthong ai instead of a (e.g. d ai lyti ‘distribute’), shortening of nominal singular endings (e.g. arkluks ‘little horse’, dieus , dies ‘god’, niks ‘nothing’, vaiks ‘child’), use of consonant z instead of ž (e.g. ząsis , ząsė ‘goose’, zvėris , zvėrys ‘beast’, zvaiždė ‘star’). The said subdialect
6674-435: 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 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
6768-571: The manuscript around 1400; the original dates from the beginning of the 14th or the end of the 13th century. It was found in 1825 by Fr Neumann among other manuscripts acquired by him from the heritage of the Elbing merchant A. Grübnau; it was thus dubbed the Codex Neumannianus . There are separate words found in various historical documents. The following fragments are commonly thought of as Prussian, but are probably actually Lithuanian (at least
6862-597: 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
6956-658: 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, 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
7050-575: The middle of the last millennium BC. Unlike the East Baltic languages , West Baltic languages generally conserved the following features: the diphthong *ei (e.g. deiws 'god', ( ACC ) deinan 'day'), palatalized consonants /kʲ/ , /gʲ/ (they are preserved also in the Lithuanian language), and the consonant clusters /tl/ and /dl/ . They also preserved three genders: masculine , feminine and neuter . Sudovian and Old Curonian shared
7144-528: The nominative suffixes of feminine ā-stems ( crauyō [kraujō] : krawia 'blood'). The nominative suffixes of the masculine o-stems are weakened to -is in Pomesanian; in Sambian they are syncopated ( deywis : deiws 'god'). Vocabulary differences encompass Pom. smoy [zmoy] (cf. Lith. žmuo) , Samb. wijrs 'man'; Pom. wayklis , Samb. soūns 'son' and Pom. samien , Samb. laucks [lauks] 'field'. The neuter gender
7238-465: 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 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
7332-413: 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, the material remains of a thriving Scandinavian culture. For
7426-518: 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 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
7520-771: The other extinct West Baltic languages , namely Sudovian , West Galindian and possibly Skalvian and Old Curonian . Other linguists consider Western Galindian and Skalvian to be Prussian dialects. It is related to the East Baltic languages such as Lithuanian and Latvian , and more distantly related to Slavic . Compare the words for 'land': Old Prussian semmē [zemē], Latvian : zeme , Lithuanian : žemė , Russian: земля́ , ( zemljá ) and Polish : ziemia . Old Prussian had loanwords from Slavic languages (e.g., Old Prussian curtis [kurtis] 'hound', like Lithuanian kùrtas and Latvian kur̃ts , cognate with Slavic (compare Ukrainian : хорт , khort ; Polish : chart ; Czech : chrt )), as well as
7614-637: 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
7708-514: The phonological analysis by Schmalstieg: Schmalstieg proposes three native diphthongs: With other remains being merely word lists, the grammar of Old Prussian is reconstructed chiefly on the basis of the three Catechisms. Old Prussian preserved the Proto-Baltic neuter. Therefore, it had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). Most scholars agree that there are two numbers, singular and plural, in Old Prussian, while some consider remnants of
7802-589: The remaining four are identified as weak features . There are differences in vocalic variations in the root ( aR / eR and a / e ) between East and West Baltic languages that possibly emerged due to development of Baltic phonology, categories of word-formation, categorical semantics of the verb or traces of IE perfect. Findings on the Lithuanian Zatiela subdialect in present-day Dyatlovo suggest that it had preserved certain linguistic traits associated with West Baltic languages, primarily Sudovian, such as
7896-414: The second one being a correction of the first. The third catechism, or Enchiridion , consists of 132 pages of text, and is a translation of Luther's Small Catechism by a German cleric called Abel Will, with his Prussian assistant Paul Megott. Will himself knew little or no Old Prussian, and his Prussian interpreter was probably illiterate, but according to Will spoke Old Prussian quite well. The text itself
7990-518: 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 the south to Lake Ladoga in the north. This was the territory that most probably was originally called by the Norsemen Gardar ,
8084-517: The suffix -ng- , which can be observed in various hydronyms and oeconyms (e.g. Apsingė , Nedzingė , Pilvingis , Suvingis , Palanga , Alsunga ) found in southern Lithuania, western Lithuania and Latvia. West Balts possessed double-stemmed personal names with distinct compounds (e.g. Net(i)- , Sebei- ), which are unusual to the anthroponymy of the East Balts. West Baltic languages are traditionally characterised by having at least few of
8178-554: The texts of a series of Rus ' –Byzantine Treaties from 911 , 945 , and 971 . The Rus ' –Byzantine Treaties give 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
8272-510: The traditional view is that no instrumental case existed in Old Prussian. There could be some locative forms, e.g. bītai ('in the evening'). Declensional classes were a -stems (also called o -stems), (i)ja -stems (also called (i)jo -stems), ā -stems (feminine), ē -stems (feminine), i -stems, u -stems, and consonant-stems. Some also list ī / jā -stems as a separate stem, while others include jā -stems into ā -stems and do not mention ī -stems at all. There were three adjective stems (
8366-550: The turn of consonant v into j when applying instrumental or adessive singular cases (e.g. sajim ( INS ), sajip , savip ( ADE ) ‘with oneself’, tajim ( INS ), tajip ( ADE ) ‘with you’). Old literary Lithuanian texts from Lithuania Minor attest the use of the third person singular past tense form bit(i) ‘was’ as well as prefix–preposition sa(-) , which are most likely linguistic features inherited from West Baltic languages. Rus (people) The Rus ' , also known as Russes , were
8460-465: 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 the adjacent Swedish heartland of the Mälaren Valley. Consequently, an origin in word compounds such as róþs-menn and róþs-karlar
8554-715: Was Prussian toponomy and hydronomy within the territory of (Baltic) Prussia. Georg Gerullis undertook the first basic study of these names in Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen ('The Old Prussian Place-names'), written and published with the help of Walter de Gruyter, in 1922. Another source are personal names. Further sources for Prussian words are Vernacularisms in the German dialects of East and West Prussia, as well as words of Old Curonian origin in Latvian and West-Baltic vernacularisms in Lithuanian and Belarusian. Two Prussian vocabularies are known. The older one by Simon Grunau (Simon Grunovius),
8648-546: 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
8742-495: 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 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
8836-711: Was translated into Revived Prussian by Piotr Szatkowski (Pīteris Šātkis) and published by the Prusaspirā Society in 2015. Moreover, some bands use Revived Prussian, most notably in the Kaliningrad Oblast by the bands Romowe Rikoito , Kellan and Āustras Laīwan, as well as in Lithuania by Kūlgrinda on their 2005 album Prūsų Giesmės ('Prussian Hymns'), and Latvia by Rasa Ensemble in 1988 and Valdis Muktupāvels in his 2005 oratorio "Pārcēlātājs Pontifex" featuring several parts sung in Prussian. The Elbing Vocabulary and
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