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102-453: The fact that a few sparse contemporaneous sources appear to refer to the leader or leaders of Rus' people at this time with the word chacanus , which might be derived from the title of khagan as used by groupings of Asiatic nomads, has led some scholars to suggest that his political organisation can be called a "k(h)aganate". Other scholars have disputed this, as it would have been unlikely for an organisation of Germanic immigrants from

204-541: A Khazar khagan named Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi, exiled after losing an internecine war , settled with his Kabar faction in the Norse-Slavic settlement of Rostov , married into the local Scandinavian nobility, and fathered the dynasty of the Rus' khagans. Zuckerman dismisses Pritsak's theory as untenable speculation, and no record of any Khazar khagan fleeing to find refuge among the Rus' exists in contemporaneous sources. Nevertheless,

306-621: A fortress on the Khazar border with Levedia and that only after the Magyars departed for the west in 889 did the middle Dnieper region start to progress economically. A number of historians, the first of whom was Vasily Bartold , have advocated a more northerly position for the khaganate. They have tended to emphasize ibn Rustah's report as the only historical clue to the location of the khagan's residence. Recent archaeological research, conducted by Anatoly Kirpichnikov and Dmitry Machinsky , has raised

408-488: A 15th-century manuscript, at the end of a set of works usually attributed to Hilarion, adds one more mention: Быша же си въ лѣто 6559 (1051), владычествующу благовѣрьному кагану Ярославу, сыну Владимирю. Аминь. ("These things came to pass in the year 6559 (1051), during the reign of the pious kagan Jaroslav , the son to Volodimer, Amen.") The absence of any khagan in the following sources has been taken by several scholars as evidence indicating either that there had never been

510-448: A Christian prelate like Hilarion would 'laud his ruler with a shamanist title', adding in 2022: "The Christian ethos of the sermon is marred by Ilarion's attribution to Vladimir of the Khazar title kagan , which was definitely not Christian." Hilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace mentions the word kagan ( Old East Slavic : каганъ , romanized:  kaganŭ ) throughout the text, a total of five times. A colophon preserved in

612-537: A Rus' chacanus is to "the ruler of Kiev ". Some archaeologists have countered that there is no material evidence of a Norse presence in Kiev prior to the 10th century. Troublesome is the absence of hoards of coins which would prove that the Dnieper trade route – the backbone of later Kievan Rus' – was operating in the 9th century. Based on his examination of the archaeological evidence, Zuckerman concludes that Kiev originated as

714-483: A Rus' khaganate (Tolochko 2015, Ostrowski 2018), or that it must have disappeared by 911 (Zuckerman 2000), probably already before 900 (Golden 1982). The dating of the Khaganate's existence has been the subject of debates among scholars and remains unclear. Paul Robert Magocsi and Omeljan Pritsak date the foundation of the Khaganate to be around the year 830. According to Magocsi, "A violent civil war took place during

816-484: A Rus' khagan are last recorded in the 880s, and do not return until the 11th century. Various possible reasons for its disappearance have been suggested. The Primary Chronicle describes the uprising of the pagan Slavs and Chudes (Baltic Finns) against the Varangians, who had to withdraw overseas in 862. The Novgorod First Chronicle , whose account of the events Shakhmatov considered more trustworthy, does not pinpoint

918-550: 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

1020-504: 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

1122-536: 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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1224-629: A relevant passage. In a legendary story about a siege of the Tsanars in the Caucasus in 854, mention is made of "the overlords ( sahib ) of the Byzantines ( al-Rum ), of the Khazars, and of the Slavs ( al- Saqaliba )", which Zuckerman connected with a supposed Rus' khagan . According to Zuckerman, Ibn Khordadbeh and other Arab authors often confused the terms Rus and Saqaliba when describing Caspian expeditions of

1326-713: 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

1428-572: 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

1530-453: Is considerable dispute over the circumstances of this borrowing. Peter Benjamin Golden (1982) rejected the idea that the Rus' could have appropriated the title of Qağan from the Khazars; the ruling Ashina clan would have had to voluntarily appoint a Rus' leader as a vassal Qağan for it to have any legitimacy. Golden concluded that the Rus' Khaganate was a puppet state set up by the Khazars in

1632-473: 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

1734-451: 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

1836-650: 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

1938-591: 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

2040-549: 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

2142-567: 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

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2244-459: 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

2346-459: 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

2448-621: 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

2550-504: Is today European Russia and Ukraine as a chronological predecessor to the Rurik dynasty and Kievan Rusʹ . The region's population at that time was composed of Slavs, Turkic , Baltic , Finnic , Hungarian and Norse peoples . The region was also a place of operations for Varangians , eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants, and pirates. Although since the 19th century various writers (some expressing anti-Normanist views) have asserted

2652-404: 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

2754-583: 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

2856-782: 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

2958-514: 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

3060-543: The terminus post quem for the hill-fort's establishment decades later: dendrochronological analysis showed that trees used in construction at the site were felled between the years 889 and 948, and radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples collected from a ditch at the site of "Holmgard" trace back to 880(±20). According to one fringe theory, the Rus' khagan resided somewhere in Scandinavia or even as far west as Walcheren . In stark contrast, George Vernadsky believed that

3162-665: The Byzantine Empire , around 839. Fearful of returning home via the steppes , which would leave them vulnerable to attacks by the Magyars , these Rhos travelled through the Frankish kingdom accompanied by Byzantine Greek ambassadors from the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus . When questioned by the Frankish king Louis the Pious at Ingelheim , they stated that their leader was known as chacanus (hypothesized to be either

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3264-515: The Latin word for "khagan" or a deformation of Scandinavian proper name Håkan ), that they lived far to the north, and that they were Swedes ( comperit eos gentis esse sueonum ). Thirty years later, in spring 871, the eastern and western Roman Emperors, Basil I and Louis II of Italy , quarrelled over control of Bari , which had been besieged by Arabs. The Byzantine Emperor sent an angry letter to his western counterpart, reprimanding him for usurping

3366-604: 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

3468-555: The Rhos envoys were "northern Germanic", but in the service of a "Rus' khagan", that was to be identified as the Slavic Rus' prince of Kiev . Vasil’evskii (1915) thought the Rhos were an indigenous people living near the mouth of the Dnieper into the Black Sea , and that the khagan was their Khazar master. Still others presume a Rus' khagan reigning over a state , or a cluster of city-states , set up by Rus' people somewhere in what

3570-471: 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

3672-553: The Turkic -speaking steppe peoples as "köl-beki" or "lake-princes", came to dominate some of the region's Finno-Ugric and Slavic peoples, particularly along the Volga trade route linking the Baltic Sea with the Caspian Sea and Serkland . According to Franklin & Shepard (1996, 2014), the account of the 860s Rus' expedition against Constantinople in the Primary Chronicle (which claims

3774-523: The khagan interpretation again, arguing that one cannot just turn the c in the middle of chacanus into a g , adding that 'many Germanic names starting with phonetic h- were transcribed in Frankish sources with ch- ' , and concluding that the word most likely was the Swedish name Håkan , an explanation accepted by Ostrowski (2018). Assuming it reflects the Khazar-derived title khagan , there

3876-552: 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

3978-606: The 11th and 12th centuries, and are "fundamentally different". The Perso-Arabic (Islamic) sources mentioning a khāqān rus or Khāqān-i Rus all appear to follow a single common chain of tradition tracing back to the "Anonymous Note". The earliest claimed reference related to Rus' people ruled by a "khagan" comes from the Frankish Latin Annales Bertiniani , which refer to a group of Norsemen who called themselves Rhos ( qui se, id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant ) and visited Constantinople , capital of

4080-553: 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

4182-571: 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, ... ). Chronicon Salernitanum The Chronicon Salernitanum , or " Salerno Chronicle ", is an anonymous 10th century chronicle of the history of the Principality of Salerno . It

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4284-615: The 820s. ... The losers of the internal political struggle, known as Kabars , fled northward to the Varangian Rus' in the upper Volga region , near Rostov , and southward to the Magyars , who formerly had been loyal vassals of the Khazars . The presence of Kabar political refugees from Khazaria among the Varangian traders in Rostov helped to raise the latter's prestige, with the consequence that by

4386-424: The 830s a new power center known as the Rus' Kaganate had come into existence." Whatever the accuracy of such estimates may be, there are no primary sources mentioning the Rus' or its khagans prior to the 830s. Omeljan Pritsak noted that the leader of those Kabars was Khan-Tuvan . Golden (1982) and Zuckerman (2000) concluded that if a Rus' khaganate had existed, it must have disappeared before 900, as references to

4488-710: The 880s and 890s suggests that the Volga trade route ceased functioning, precipitating "the first silver crisis in Europe". After this economic depression and period of political upheaval, the region experienced a resurgence beginning in around 900. Zuckerman associates this recovery with the arrival of Rurik and his men, who turned their attention from the Volga to the Dnieper, for reasons as yet uncertain. The Scandinavian settlements in Ladoga and Novgorod revived and started to grow rapidly. During

4590-399: 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

4692-619: 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

4794-576: 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

4896-905: The Great , ( r.  980–1015 ) Yaroslav the Wise ( r.  1019–1054 ), and perhaps Sviatoslav II of Kiev ( r.  1073–1076 ) and Oleg I of Chernigov ( r.  1097–1115 ) were occasionally identified as kagans in Old East Slavic literature until the late 12th century. The word khagan for a leader of some groups of Rus' people is mentioned in several historical sources. According to Constantin Zuckerman (2000), these sources are divided into two chronological groups: three or four Latin and Arabic sources from c. 839 to c. 880 (which he labelled "1a, 1b, 1c"), while three Old East Slavic sources (labelled "2a, 2b, 2c") date from 200 years later in

4998-609: 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

5100-436: The Khazars. This theory is echoed by Thomas Noonan , who asserts that the Rus' leaders were loosely unified under the rule of one of the "sea-kings" in the early 9th century, and that this " High King " adopted the title "khagan" to give him legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects and neighboring states. According to this theory, the title was a sign that the bearers ruled under a divine mandate. Omeljan Pritsak speculated that

5202-589: 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

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5304-408: 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

5406-444: The Northmen do not have a khagan. From that, the non-extant letter of Basil I has been thought to have stated that the Northmen had a khagan, but we do not know that. (...) Besides, even if Basil's letter did assert that the ruler of the Northmen was called a khagan, that testimony is negated by the statement of Louis II that their ruler is not called a khagan.' Ahmad ibn Rustah , a 10th-century Persian Muslim geographer , wrote that

5508-482: 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

5610-431: 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 ,

5712-403: 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

5814-422: The Rus' ( Rhos ) mentioned in the Annales Bertiniani and the other sources possibly mentioning a Rus' khagan were Slavic , the modern scholarly consensus is that the Rus' people originated in Scandinavia , possibly Sweden . According to the prevalent theory, the name Rus ' , like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden ( *Ruotsi ), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" ( rods- ) as rowing

5916-452: The Rus' khagan ("khāqān rus") lived on an island in a lake. Constantin Zuckerman comments that Ibn Rustah, using the text of the Anonymous Note from the 870s, attempted to accurately convey the titles of all rulers described by its author, which makes his evidence all the more invaluable. Ibn Rustah mentions only two khagans in his treatise—those of Khazaria and Rus. Hudud al-'Alam , an anonymous geography text written in Persian during

6018-453: The Rusʹ in the 9th and 10th centuries. But Ibn Khordādbeh's Book of Roads and Kingdoms does not mention the title of "khagan" for the ruler of Rus'. The three later Old East Slavic sources mentioning a kagan ( Hilarion of Kiev 's 11th-century Sermon on Law and Grace , and the 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv inscription) or kogan (the 12th-century The Tale of Igor's Campaign ) have generally been understood to refer to

6120-445: 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

6222-482: 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

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6324-427: 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 ,

6426-483: The anonymous traveller quoted by ibn Rustah is to be believed, the Rus of the Khaganate period made extensive use of the Volga route to trade with the Near East , possibly through Bulgar and Khazar intermediaries. His description of the Rus' island suggests that their center was at Holmgard, an early medieval precursor of Novgorod whose name translates from Old Norse as "the river-island castle". The First Novgorod Chronicle describes unrest in Novgorod before Rurik

6528-409: 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

6630-428: The basin of the Oka River to fend off recurring attacks of the Magyars . However, no source records that the Rus' of the 9th century were subjects of the Khazars. For foreign observers (such as Ibn Rustah), there was no material difference between the titles of the Khazar and Rus' rulers. Anatoly Novoseltsev hypothesizes that the adoption of the title "khagan" was designed to advertise the Rus' claims to equality with

6732-421: 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

6834-488: 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

6936-468: 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

7038-444: 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

7140-419: 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

7242-508: 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

7344-697: 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

7446-477: The first decade of the 10th century, a large trade outpost was formed on the Dnieper in Gnezdovo , near modern Smolensk . Another Dnieper settlement, Kiev, developed into an important urban centre roughly in the same period. The location of the purported khaganate, more specifically the residence of the supposed khagan , has been actively disputed since the late 19th century. Sites proposed by scholars have included

7548-474: 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

7650-757: 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

7752-433: The following: Soviet historiography , as represented by Boris Rybakov and Lev Gumilev , advanced Kiev as the residence of the khagan, assuming that Askold and Dir were the only khagans recorded by name. Mikhail Artamonov became an adherent of the theory that Kiev was the seat of the Rus' Khaganate, and continued to hold this view into the 1990s. Halperin (1987) also stated that the 839 Annales Bertiniani reference to

7854-697: The khagan had his headquarters in the eastern part of the Crimea or in the Taman Peninsula and that the island described by Ibn Rustah was most likely situated in the estuary of the Kuban River . Neither of these theories has won many adherents, as archaeologists have uncovered no traces of a Slavic-Norse settlement in the Crimea region in the 9th century and there are no Norse sources documenting "khagans" in Scandinavia. The Russian anti-Normanist Stepan Gedeonov (1876)

7956-569: The late 10th century ( c. 982–983), refers to the Rus' king as "Khāqān-i Rus". The unknown author of Hudud al-Alam relied on several 9th-century and 10th-century sources. Abu Said Gardizi , an 11th-century Persian Muslim geographer, mentioned "khāqān-i rus" in his work Zayn al-Akhbār . Ibn Rustah, the Hudud al-Alam and Gardizi all copied their information from the same late 9th-century source. Zuckerman (2000) argued that Ya'qubi , Kitab al-Buldan ("The Book of Countries", c. 889–890), also has

8058-650: 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

8160-597: 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

8262-611: 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

8364-479: The north to adopt such a foreign title. Some historians have criticised the concept of a Rus' Khaganate, calling it a "historiographical phantom", and said that the society of 9th-century Rusʹ cannot be characterised as a state. Still other scholars identify these early mentions of a Rus' political entity headed by a chacanus with the Kievan Rus' state commonly attested in later sources, whose princes such as Vladimir

8466-465: 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

8568-413: 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

8670-567: 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

8772-637: 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

8874-419: The possibility that this polity was based on a group of settlements along the Volkhov River , including Ladoga, Lyubsha , Duboviki , Alaborg , and Holmgard (modern Rurikovo Gorodische ). "Most of these were initially small sites, probably not much more than stations for re-fitting and resupply, providing an opportunity for exchange and the redistribution of items passing along the river and caravan routes". If

8976-458: The possible Khazar connection to early Rus' monarchs is supported by the use of a stylized trident tamga , or seal, by later Rus' rulers such as Sviatoslav I of Kiev ; similar tamgas are found in ruins that are definitively Khazar in origin. The genealogical connection between the 9th-century Khagans of Rus' and the later Rurikid rulers, if any, is unknown at this time. Rus%27 people The Rus ' , also known as Russes , were

9078-516: The pre-Rurikid uprising to any specific date. The 16th-century Nikon Chronicle attributes the banishment of the Varangians from the country to Vadim the Bold . The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Braychevskiy labelled Vadim's rebellion "a pagan reaction" against the Christianization of the Rus'. A period of unrest and anarchy followed, dated by Zuckerman to c. 875–900. The absence of coin hoards from

9180-713: The raid originated in Kiev) was largely borrowed by the authors from a 10th-century Greek source, the Continuation of the Chronicle of George the Monk , which does not identify a point of departure. Since the 18th century, the debate on the word chacanus / Chacanus in the Annales Bertiniani has had two sides: it must either be understood as the title of the rex , namely khagan (first proposed by Siegfried Bayer in 1736), or that it

9282-516: The ruler of Kievan Rus'. According to Halperin (1987), the title kagan in the Annales Bertiniani sub anno 839, Hilarion's Sermon , and in The Tale of Igor's Campaign all apply to "the ruler of Kiev ". He agreed with Peter B. Golden (1982) that this reflected Khazar influence on Kievan Rus', and argued that the use of a "steppe title" in Kiev 'may be the only case of the title's use by a non-nomadic people'. Halperin also found it "highly anomalous" that

9384-518: 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 ,

9486-554: 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

9588-531: The title of emperor. He argued that the Frankish rulers are simple reges , while the imperial title properly applied only to the overlord of the Romans, that is, to Basil himself. He also pointed out that each nation has its own title for the supreme ruler: for instance, the title of chaganus is used by the overlords of the Avars ( Avari ), Khazars ( Gazari ), and " Northmen " ( Nortmanni ). To that, Louis replied that he

9690-465: 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

9792-623: Was a Scandinavian proper name, namely Håkon (first suggested by Stroube de Piermont in 1785). In 2004, Duczko stated: 'At present there is almost total unity of opinion that the title of the ruler of Rus is of Khazarian origin and that the word chacanus is a Latin form of the Turk word khagan , a title of a prime ruler in the nomadic societies in Eurasia.' He claimed that the Old Norse personal name interpretation 'was abandoned (though its supporters still appear from time to time).' Garipzanov (2006) challenged

9894-546: 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

9996-495: 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

10098-567: Was aware only of the Avar khagans, and had never heard of the khagans of the Khazars and Normans. The content of Basil's letter, now lost, is reconstructed from Louis's reply, quoted in full in the Chronicon Salernitanum ("Salerno Chronicle]"). According to Dolger, it indicates that at least one group of Scandinavians had a ruler who called himself "khagan", but Ostrowski (2018) countered: 'The letter of Louis II to Basil I states specifically that

10200-577: Was invited to come to rule the region in the 860s. This account prompted Johannes Brøndsted to assert that Holmgard-Novgorod was the khaganate's capital for several decades prior to the appearance of Rurik, including the time of the Byzantine embassy in 839. Machinsky accepts this theory but notes that, before the rise of Holmgard-Novgorod, the chief political and economic centre of the area was located at Aldeigja-Ladoga. However, Nosov (1990) stated that archaeological evidence recovered at Rurikovo Gorodische puts

10302-571: Was the first historian to suggest that the Rhos ambassadors mentioned in the Annales Bertiniani sub anno 839 were Swedes in the diplomatic service of a Rusʹ ( Rhos ) khagan ( chacanus ), and thus that there was Rus' khaganate, and that these Rus' people were Slavic . Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen (1877) instead concluded "that Rhos was the Greek designation for the Scandinavians or Northmen, who in this case happened to be Swedes." According to Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1904),

10404-501: Was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe , and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen ( Rus-law ) or Roden , as it was known in earlier times. The name Rus ' would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi . Around 860, a group of Rus' Vikings began to rule the area under their leader Rurik . Gradually, Norse warlords, known to

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