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Primary Chronicle

St Nestor the Chronicler, tr. Cross, 1930

d6

Almost at its beginning, the Povest introduces the problem of the original and prehistoric habitat of the Slavs, preserving the tradition (p. 137) that “for many years the Slavs had their abode by the Danube, where the Hunnish and the Bulgarian land now lies.” From this locality, the Povest represents them as expanding into the valley of the Bohemian Morava, and after attacks by the Vlakhs, it is likewise asserted that the Slavs moved north into the Vistula basin. Further movement is also reported toward the basin of the Dnieper and the area between the Pripet and the Dvina, while the founders of Novgorod settled upon the shores of Lake Ilmen.

This narrative supplied for centuries the accepted view of Slavic origins, until rivaled by the so-called Sarmatian theory, which linked the Slavs, not with the Danube, but with the Don, and therefore placed them in close kinship with the Iranian Scyths and Sarmatians, who inhabited South Russia in classic times, or even with the Vandals and the Germans. It was, in fact, not until the time of Karamzin and Dobrovsky, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that a more scientific conception arose, expressed fundamentally in the famous letter of Dobrovsky to Kopitar: “Mir beweisst alles dies, dass die Slaven keine Dacier, Geten, Thracier, Illyrier, Pannonier sind ... Slaven sind Slaven, und haben nächste Verwandtschaft mit den Litauern. Also muss man sie hinter diesen suchen, am oder hinter dem Dnieper.” (V. Jagić, Письма Добровского и Копитара [Leningrad, 1885], p. 119.) The evolution of a more accurate understanding of the early relations of the Slavs to other European peoples was subsequently furthered, during the early nineteenth century, by the progress of comparative philology from the publication of Bopp’s celebrated Vergleichende Grammatik (1833). One hundred years ago, however, the Slavs were generally looked upon, even by many scholars of repute, as an intellectually inferior race of obscure Asiatic origin. As Hegel wrote, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Jubiläumsausgabe [Stuttgart, 1928], XI, 447): “Sie [die Slaven] müssen aus unserer Betrachtung bleiben, weil sie ein Mittelwesen zwischen europäischem und asiatischem Geist bilden, und weil ihr Einfluss auf den Stufengang des Geistes nicht tätig und wichtig genug ist.” This characteristic disparagement of the Slavs by contemporary scholars ranked among the chief motives which inspired the first fundamental work on Slavic origins, the Starožitnosti Slovanské of Josef Šafařík (1837), the starting point for all further investigations in this field. The progress of anthropological research and, more recently, of archaeological study, has since that day made vast contributions to our knowledge of the prehistoric movement and differentiation of the Slavic peoples.¹

Though the tradition preserved in the Povest very likely represents what such Russians of the early twelfth century as gave any thought to the matter believed concerning their racial antecedents, it is not in accord with other sources antedating the Povest by two centuries or more, which indicate that, at the moment of the earliest recorded mediaeval contacts with peoples identifiable as Slavic, the habitat of the latter was considerably to the north of the Danube and even beyond the Carpathians. In fact, the prevailing modern view now places the original habitat of the Slavs at the beginning of the Christian era in the vicinity of the upper Vistula, extending eastward to the middle Dnieper basin, but bounded to the northeast by the Lithuanians along the Niemen and the Dvina, while the Mazurian Lakes and swamps at first shut them off from the Baltic. Thus Pliny (Hist. Nat., IV, 97), Tacitus (Germ., XLVI), and Ptolemy (Geog., III, 5, 7) all mention the Venedi (Οὐενέδαι), who are generally admitted to have been Slavs, as inhabiting the Vistula basin or the area to the east of the Germanic tribes and along the Baltic.

The Povest nowhere refers to the dispersion of the Slavs throughout the Balkan peninsula, but makes fairly detailed mention of the Slavic tribes in what is now Polish and Russian territory. By the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., in fact, it is fairly well established that the Eastern Slavs had spread northward as far as Lake Ilmen and southeastward to the Don and the Sea of Azov. They were thus exposed to the inroads of the Huns, beginning in 375, who were followed a century later by the Bulgarians, and about 550 by the Avars, regarding all of whom dim memories are scantily preserved in the Povest. It is, on the whole, curious that these reminiscences should have survived when, as far as the Povest is concerned, all trace of the vast domain of the Slavic Antes or Antae, which figure prominently in historical accounts from the fourth century forward, should have been wiped out. From their headquarters along the Dniester, their raids of the sixth century across the Danube and into the Balkans constituted a serious menace to the Byzantine Empire.² They disappear from Byzantine sources after the first decade of the seventh century. Their sudden disappearance is better explained by the fact that from this period the Danube ceased to be the Byzantine frontier than by the supposition that a race referred to by Procopius as literally measureless (Bell. Got., IV, 4) should have been totally exterminated by the Avars, with whom they were in bitter conflict. A remote connection between the Antes and the Povest narrative may be established through the mention in the latter of the Dulebians as oppressed by the Avars (p. 140). This Slavic tribe, as the Povest relates, had its seat upon the Bug, in Volhynia. Mas’ūdī, an Arabic writer of the tenth century, mentions the tradition that in ancient times the Volhynians dominated the rest of the Slavic tribes.³ These accounts thus point to the existence of a Slavic federation centering in Volhynia, which disintegrated before the violence of the Avars toward the beginning of the seventh century.

According to the Povest (p. 141), the Slavic tribes on Russian soil were fairly well localized at an epoch which may be assumed to precede by a considerable interval the conventional opening date of Russian history. The Polyanians inhabited the open country on the west bank of the Dnieper between Teterev and Ros, with the Uluchians and the Tivercians as their southern neighbors toward Bug and Dniester. Across the Dnieper, on its eastern shore, between the Desna and the Sula, were settled the Severians, beyond whom, to the northwest, were found the Vyatichians on the southern course of the Oka. The Radimichians lay along the Sož, and the Krivichians on the upper Volga and the watershed between the latter and the Dvina. North of the Polyanians, the Dregovichians occupied the wooded country south of the Pripet, while beyond the Dregovichians to the northward, Lithuanian and Finnish tribes lay between Niemen and Dvina. The settlers about Lake Ilmen were the only ones to employ the characteristic name of Slavs (Slověne), which, though of uncertain derivation, was destined ultimately to extend to the whole race.⁴

The Povest represents these tribes as bound by language and sense of common origin, but differentiated in customs, usages, and degree of civilization. “They each preserved their own customs, the law of their fathers, and their traditions, each one observing his own usages.” (p. 141) The distinction is clearly drawn between the more advanced Polyanians, who lived in the area of the age-old civilization along the Dnieper trade-route, and the rough and brutal customs observed by the tribes of the periphery. No mention is made of their religious beliefs beyond the assertion that certain of the tribes (Radimichians, Vyatichians, and Severians) burned their dead, and preserved the ashes in urns set upon posts beside the highways. The first mention of the Slavic pantheon occurs, in fact, in connection with the treaty of 907 (p. 151), where we find that Oleg’s companions “swore by their weapons and their god Perun, as well as by Volos, god of cattle, and thus confirmed the treaty.” The absence in the Povest of any detailed information on the religious life of the early Slavs is readily explained by the supposition that only the pagan priests and initiates knew the details of such religious usages as prevailed, while the elimination of the pagan priesthood upon the introduction of Christianity prevented any diffusion of the beliefs and superstitions which these initiates possessed. There is also very little evidence that anything like a systematic Slavic pantheon ever existed.⁵

The Polyanians are described as a meek and unwarlike people, harassed by the Derevlians, and before the arrival of the Varangians, reduced to tribute by the Khazars, who likewise acquired the domination over the Severians, the Vyatichians, and the Radimichians.⁶ This peaceful temper of the Slavic tribes made them an easy prey for more energetic interlopers. The Povest preserves the tradition that the Slavic tribes of Northern Russia, in common with their Finnish neighbors, were for some time tributary to the “Varangians from beyond the sea” (p. 144). Stirred to revolt by the exactions of the latter, the Slavs eventually rebelled, but were unable, according to the Povest, to arrive at any satisfactory inter-tribal understanding. To escape from the resulting confusion, the Povest thus reports that they sent overseas “to the Varangian Russes,” saying, “Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it; come and rule and have dominion over us.” This invitation was accepted by Rurik and his brethren, each of whom assumed control over a North-Russian centre, with Rurik himself at Novgorod, Sineus at Byeloozero, and Truvor at Izborsk. Such, in its simplest terms, is the narrative of the “calling of the princes,” which has inspired a larger volume of controversial literature than any other disputed point in Russian history.

Contentious literature on this problem begins with the early studies of Russian history by German scholars who joined the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences during the first half of the eighteenth century. The natural tendency of these historians, among whom the pioneers were Gottlieb Bayer and Gerhart Friedrich Müller, was to take the Povest narrative at its face value, and to identify the Varangians and the Russes as Scandinavians. This view was vehemently opposed, partly from patriotic bias and partly because of insufficient education, by the native historian Lomonosov, who in 1749 was thus instrumental in preventing the delivery before the Academy of Müller’s oration De Origine Gentis et Nominis Russorum. The Scandinavian origin of the Russes was, notwithstanding, accepted by a respectable list of older Slavic scholars of the first rank from Karamzin through Šafařík, and the scientific basis of this view, as held during the first half of the nineteenth century, is effectively summarized in the work of E. Kunik, Die Berufung der schwedischen Ruodsen durch die Finnen und Slaven (Leningrad, 1844). The balance of scholarship has thus generally favored the Scandinavian (or Norman) theory, and there was no really serious answer to the Norman school until the appearance, in 1871, of D. Ilovaiski’s work, О Мнимом Призвании Варягов, ably seconded, in 1876, by S. Gedeonov’s study, Варяги и Русь. From this revival, the adherents of the Slavic (anti-Norman) school increased in numbers and importance, including such names as Zabyelin, Pervolf, Filevich, Hrushevski, and Golubovski. A fresh aspect of the question was likewise opened up by new studies of Arabic sources, which indicated that the Russes were known on Russian soil prior to the traditional date set for the beginning of Russian history. The salutary contribution of the Slavic school has lain primarily in keeping the question open and in exposing weaknesses in the Normanist system, particularly in connection with the credibility of the Primary Chronicle. The best modern exposition of the Norman theory still remains W. Thomsen’s Origin of the Ancient Rus (London, 1877). With the exceptions just noted, moreover, the ablest representatives of Russian historiography (Pogodin, Solovyov, Klyuchevski, Milyukov, Pokrovski) and of Slavic philology (Miklosich, Sreznevski, Jagić, Shakhmatov, Brückner) have all been adherents of the Norman school. The present tendency in handling this question is to attach less weight to the traditional account in the Primary Chronicle and rather to follow the evidence as to early Scandinavian–Russian relations supplied by Greek and Oriental sources and by the results of sound archaeological research.

In a passage inserted in the context of the cosmography derived from Hamartolus, the Povest (p. 137) remarks that the Varangians live on the shores of the Varangian Sea, and that to the race of Japheth belong, among other nations, the Varangians, the Swedes, the Normans, the Russes, and the Angles. The Varangian Sea is identified as the Baltic in the subsequent passage which describes the trade-route connecting it with the Black Sea (p. 138) via the Neva River, Lake Ladoga, the Volkhov, Lake Ilmen, the Lovat, and the Dnieper, and likewise by the statement (ibid.) that the river Dvina flows into the Varangian Sea. The Varangians lived, according to the Primary Chronicle, not merely on the Baltic, but across it.⁷ Varangian is a generic term, of which Rus is a particular. As the Povest puts it (p. 145): “They went overseas to the Varangian Russes; for so they are called, and are Varangians, just as other [Varangians] are known as Swedes, Normans, Angles, and Goths.” The names of the three brothers who migrated to Russia are readily reduced to Scandinavian originals as Hrœrekr, Signiutr, and Þorvaðr (Thomsen, op. cit., p. 71). Further, in the armaments of Oleg, Varangians are distinguished from Finnish and Slavic elements (pp. 146 and 149). The name Oleg itself corresponds to the Norse Helgi, as Olga to Helga and Igor to Ingvarr. In the treaty of 912, the Povest preserves a list of Oleg’s retainers, much mutilated in transmission, but of which not one is Slavic, while all of them can be reduced to Scandinavian originals without violence to their present textual aspect. In the portion of the account of Oleg’s expedition which is of native Russian origin (p. 149), the Russes and the Slavs are clearly distinguished, but in the treaty text itself, the whole expedition is designated as Rus. In the reign of Igor, the Varangian Russes are again distinguished from Polyanians, Slověne, and Krivichians (p. 158, anno 944), and once more, in the treaty of 945, a list of names is supplied of which the majority are not Slavic, but Norse (Thomsen, loc. cit.).

Quite apart from any question of the credibility of the Povest narrative, it thus represents a clear-cut tradition that the leaders summoned to Novgorod came from the other side of the Baltic, and belonged to a subdivision, called Rus, of the national element known as Varangians, to which belonged various other German tribes. The names of the immediate descendants and of the followers of these princes are specifically Scandinavian. In the recorded raids upon Constantinople, the Rus element took the lead, with the result that the Greeks negotiating with Scandinavians only supposed the entire expedition to be Rus, regardless of other elements in it.

Contemporary foreign sources testify abundantly that the Byzantine Greeks, even prior to 852, knew the Russes to be Scandinavians. In the Annales Bertiniani (ed. G. Waitz [Hannover, 1883], pp. 19, 20), it is reported that in 839 Theophilus sent an embassy to Louis the Pious, along with whom came certain individuals whom the Greeks called Rhōs. They were unable to return to their prince (chacanus) by their original route on account of the threatening barbarians, so that Theophilus requested the Emperor to speed them on their way. Louis investigated their nationality, and found them to be Swedes.⁸ Further, Luidprand of Cremona, who was in Constantinople in 949, writes of the Byzantine capital that it is situated among dangerous neighbors, for at its north it is menaced by Huns, Pechenegs, Khazars, and Rusii, “whom we call Nordmanni [Normans].” The identification of Rusii with Normans is repeated in his subsequent account of Igor’s foray of 942.⁹

Direct evidence that the language of the Russes was Scandinavian is provided by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (regn. 944–959) in his account of the Rus trading-expeditions down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and Constantinople.¹⁰ This treatise mentions Novgorod (Νεμογαρδάς), Svyatoslav son of Igor (Σφενδοσθλάβος ὁ υἱὸς Ἴγγωρ τοῦ ἄρχοντος Ῥωσίας), Smolensk (Μιλινίσκα), Chernigov (Τζερνιγώγα), Vyshegorod (Βουσιγραδέ) and the tribes of the Krivichians (Κριβιταιηνοί), and the Luchanians (Λενζανινοί).¹¹ It is, however, particularly valuable for its mention of the names of most of the cataracts of the Dnieper (a series of rapids south of its junction with the Samara, around which the Russes were obliged to portage their barks), both Ῥωσιστί and Σκλαβινιστί, i. e., in Rus and in Slavic.¹²

For the first fall, only one name is given, viz., Ἐσσουπῆ, which is translated both in Rus and in Slavic as “sleep not.” This form corresponds roughly to OSl. не съпи, having the same meaning. It has also been suggested (Pipping, op. cit., p. 21), that it would also correspond to an ON. né sofi. The second bears the Rus name Οὐλβορσί and the Slavic Ὀστροβουνὶ πράχ, translated into Greek as τὸ νησίον τοῦ φραγμοῦ. Thomsen (op. cit., p. 55) proposes for the ON. form Hólmfors (“island fall”). The Slavic name reproduces exactly островьный прагъ, with the same meaning. Constantine even correctly reproduces an audible medial ъ, together with the OSl. form prag instead of Rus. porog. The third is named only in Rus as Γελανδρί, with the remark that it is translated into Slavic as ἦχος φραγμοῦ, without specific mention of the Slavic form. The Rus name appears to represent the ON. part. pres. gjallandi, meaning “the roaring [fall],” which has its counterpart in the modern Russian name звонец (cf. Pipping, loc. cit., pp. 15, 16). The Rus name for the fourth is Ἀειφάρ or Ἀειφόρ· (Thomsen, op. cit., p. 143), corresponding to a Slavic Νεασήτ. This fall is actually mentioned on a Runic inscription from Gotland as Aifur (Arne, op. cit., p. 11). The name is variously interpreted as “ever-rushing” (ON. eiforr, Thomsen, loc. cit.), or as “impassible” (ON. ei-førr, Pipping, loc. cit., p. 12). Constantine remarks that it is so named “διότι φωλεύουσιν οἱ πελικάνοι εἰς τὰ λιθάρια τοῦ φραγμοῦ,” which corresponds well enough to the OSl. неясыть (“pelican”), though Thomsen (op. cit., pp. 61, 62) rejects any connection of Aifur with a cognate of Neth. ooievaar, and considers that the term signifies only “insatiable.” The fifth bears a Rus name which is transliterated into Greek as Βαρυφόρος, and is called in Slavic Βουλνηπράχ “because it makes great waves” (“διότι μεγάλην δίνην ἀποτελεῖ”; cf. Thomsen, op. cit., p. 64). The ON. form would thus be barufors (“wave-fall”) and the OSl. вльньный прагъ with the same meaning. The sixth is called in Rus Λεαντί and in Slavic Βερουτζή, translated by Constantine as βρᾶσμα νεροῦ (“boiling of water”). These names reproduce the ON. hlaejandi, “laughing,” and OSl. върѫштиврущій “twisting.” Finally, the seventh is named in Rus as Στρουβούν and in Slavic as Ναπρεζή, translated μικρὸς φραγμός. Neither name has been as yet satisfactorily restored. For a summary of conjectures, cf. Niederle, Slov. Star., I, iv, p. 110; Pipping, loc. cit., pp. 4–6. Apart from the difficulties presented by the names of the seventh cataract, it is thus clear that Ῥωσιστί does not signify Slavic, but Scandinavian, as far as language is concerned.

Two Byzantine sources of the tenth century, one of which is probably dependent upon the other, also class the Russes as belonging to the same race as the Franks.¹³

Corroborative evidence of intimate Scandinavian relations with Russia at an early period is also supplied by archaeological research and, in a restricted degree, by Scandinavian literary monuments. The oldest Swedish objects discovered on Russian soil date from the eighth century, and were unearthed in Courland, over which the Vikings early established their domination. Evidence has also been found of early Swedish settlements on the southwestern shore of Lake Ladoga during the first half of the ninth century, and about 900, a Swedish colony appears at Gnezdovo (near Smolensk).¹⁴ Relics of the tenth century show the general prevalence of Swedish influence, which disappears again in the eleventh. The custom of erecting inscribed gravestones or cenotaphs became prevalent in Sweden only in the eleventh century, so that early survivals of Runic inscriptions mentioning Russia are comparatively rare.¹⁵ One of the five such survivals has been mentioned in the previous discussion of the Rus names of the Dnieper cataracts. Two others (one of the early and one of the late eleventh century) remark the activities of Swedish adventurers in Russia, which is referred to as Garðar, the country of fortified towns. Of the two remaining, one, dating from the late eleventh century, mentions the death in Novgorod of a certain Sigviðr, while the other, of about 1100, is a monument to one Spialboði, who met his death in St Olaf’s Church in Novgorod. In both instances, Novgorod bears the later familiar name of Hólmgarðr.

The literary survivals¹⁶ testifying to a traditional close relationship between Scandinavia and Russia are necessarily of much later date, and originate at a period when the memory of contact with Russia had been considerably obscured. The section of Scandinavia enjoying the closest relations with Russia was obviously Sweden, the culture of which evolved more slowly than was the case in either Norway or Denmark. The Swedes were, moreover, not exposed to the English and Irish influences which are of such moment for Icelandic and Norse intellectual development. The period to which archaeological evidence points for the southward expansion of Swedish communities along the Russian watercourses (ninth and tenth centuries) is precisely that in which, after Harald Harfagri’s victory at Hafrsfjord (872), the migration toward Iceland set in, to continue until 930. Since the historical saga reached its zenith only around 1230, during the lifetime of Snorri Sturluson, while the romantic sagas in general do not appear before the middle of the thirteenth century, and since, at the same time, the relations between Scandinavia and Russia lost their intimate character after the death of Yaroslav in 1054, a sufficient period thus elapsed before the rise of Icelandic prose literature for recollections of Russia, regarding which practically all Icelandic information was based on hearsay, to take on an indistinct and confused aspect. It is therefore not surprising that but a few of the oldest Russian cities are mentioned at all in the sagas. Hólmgarðr (Novgorod), Kœnugarðr (Kiev), Aldeigjuborg (Ladoga), Palteskja (Polotzk), Móramar (Murom), Sursdal or Surdalar (Suzdal), Raþstofa (Rostov), Smoleskja (Smolensk), and Syrnes (probably Chernigov) practically exhaust the list.¹⁷ Novgorod in the sagas also takes precedence over Kiev, though the latter had held the first rank since late in the ninth century. The principal literary evidences of direct Scandinavian contact with the Russian principate relate to the reigns of Vladimir I (972–1015) and of Yaroslav the Wise (1015–54). The traditions surrounding King Olaf Tryggvason describe the youthful prince as growing up at Vladimir’s court at Novgorod. The facts underlying this narrative were, however, so remote that Olga, Vladimir’s grandmother (she died, according to the Povest, in 969), is transformed into his consort with the name Allogia. The reign of Yaroslav is treated with interesting and more authentic detail in the Heimskringla, the Fagrskinna, the Morkinskinna, and the Eymundarþáttr Hringssonar. These accounts are of special moment for their preoccupation with Ingigerðr, Yaroslav’s Swedish wife, and with St Olaf, his son Magnus, and with Harald Harðraði, subsequently the consort of Yaroslav’s daughter Elisabeth.¹⁸

These reminiscences, however fragmentary, are sufficient to demonstrate that the contacts of even Norwegian princes with the Russian court of the tenth and the eleventh centuries were so intimate as not to allow the original Scandinavian affiliations of the Russian ruling house to lapse entirely into oblivion. Such accounts, however, while deserving further study, do not cast the same light on earlier Scandinavian contacts with Russia which is supplied by the results of archaeological research. The latter have established that an extensive commerce between Northern Russia and the districts south of the Caspian developed via the Volga River as early as the seventh century. Relics of Arabic commerce in Northern Russia are particularly common in the provinces at the headwaters of the Volga, and the most notable discoveries have been made in precisely those districts where the Scandinavian colonists were most active. The eastern limit of discovery for Scandinavian relics in Russia passes, in fact, southward through the provinces of Vyatka, Kazan, Saratov, and Voronezh. This early Arabic commerce with the North was unacquainted with the later route up the Dnieper from the Black Sea, which was not widely used until the decline of the Khazar power opened a direct road to Byzantium, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the earliest Byzantine coins found in Scandinavia (on the island of Björkö in Lake Maelar) date only from the ninth century. That Scandinavian commerce through Russia was at first primarily concerned with the trans-Caspian Orient is also indicated by the presence of Scandinavian objects in Northern Russia from the late eighth century forward, though specifically Russian objects do not appear in Scandinavia before the eleventh century, in spite of the fact that objects of oriental origin are found in Sweden by the end of the ninth.¹⁹

The archaeological evidence of Scandinavian contact with Arabic traders via the Russian watercourses is corroborated by the Arab geographers, who also refer to the presence of Scandinavian centres of colonization in Northern Russia.

Arabic interest in geographical science developed rapidly from the ninth century forward, and by the eleventh, an extensive body of geographical literature had arisen which embodied considerable material concerning the northern area inhabited not only by the Slavs, but also by the Magyars, the Bulgars, the Khazars, and the various nomads of the steppes. One such account of the northern races with particular bearing on the identity of the Russes originated apparently in the work of Al Gaihānī, Book of the Routes and Realms, written shortly after 922, and derived jointly from an earlier lost work of Abū Muslim al Garmī (fl. 845) and from an extant book of the same name (Kitāb al Masālik wa’l Mamālik) by Ibn Khurdādhbih, dating from ca. 894.²⁰ This material appears with variations in the works of Ibn Rusta (tenth century), Al Bekrī (eleventh century), and Gurdēzī (eleventh century).²¹ Further information on the same subject is contained in Mas’ūdī’s Gold Fields and Jewel Mines, dating from 943. The testimony of the Arabic geographers is appreciably confused by the fact that very few of them possessed of first-hand information, and because they experienced some difficulty in distinguishing the Slavs from other light-complexioned peoples with whom they came in contact. To many of the Arabic geographers, the term Ṣaqlāb designated anyone of blond complexion, particularly of Northern European origin, and thus was applied at one time or another to the Volga Bulgarians, the Germans and the Saxons, the Hungarians, and the Varangians.²² If this fact be borne in mind, the identification of the Russes with the Slavs in so important an author as Ibn Khurdādhbih is not so surprising.²³

On the other hand, a respectable body of Arabic information distinguishes the Russes from the Slavs within the confines of Russian territory. Ibn Rusta (Khvolson, op. cit., pp. 34, 35) locates the Rus centre of population on a marshy island in a northern lake, whence they make forays upon the Slavs, and sell their captives as slaves to the Khazars and the Bulgars. To this account, Gurdēzī adds (Barthold, op. cit., p. 123) that the Russes constantly attack the country of the Slavs in companies of one or two hundred men, and seize by violence their useful property, remarking also that many Slavs have taken service with the Russes as a means of self-protection. The approximate location of the Russ settlements, viz., at the headwaters of the Volga, is indicated by the statement of Al Bekrī (Kunik–Rosen, op. cit., p. 60) that the river Itil (Volga) flows from among the Russes, and empties into the Khazar (Caspian) Sea. In the Arabic writers, there is no reference whatever to the Russes in any connection with the Slavs of the Dnieper valley. Their trading activities at Bolgar are, however, amply attested by Ibn Rusta, who reports (Khvolson, op. cit., p. 23): “The Khazars carry on trade with the Bulgars; likewise the Russes also bring to them their merchandise.” Apart from slaves, the principal articles of Rus trade at Bolgar were sable, ermine, squirrel, and other furs. As is indicated by the frequent discoveries of Arabic coins (dating 745–900) in Northern Russia, this commerce was largely on a money basis, and we learn from Gurdēzī²⁴ that the inhabitants of the upper reaches of the Volga accepted nothing but coined money in payment for their wares. That the Russes did not originally speak Slavic is attested by the Jew Ibrāhīm ben Ya’qūb (ca. 965), who remarks that, though not a Slavic people, they were masters of certain Slavic territory and learned Slavic by virtue of their intimate contacts with the Slavs.²⁵

The description of the principal seat of the Russes given by Ibn Rusta (Khvolson, op. cit., p. 34) is of special interest. “They are found,” he declares, “on an island surrounded by a lake. The circumference of this island on which they live equals three days’ journey. It is covered with woods and morasses. It is so unhealthy and damp that the ground, on account of the water absorbed in it, shakes whenever stamped upon.” Gurdēzī adds (op. cit., p. 123) that about 100,000 live upon this island. In the passage just cited, Ibn Rusta refers to the chief of the Russes as their Khakan, with which should be compared the reference of the Annales Bertiniani (839) to “rex illorum chacanus uocabulo” (supra, p. 123). This insular colony is readily identifiable with the Norse Hólmgarðr, the equivalent of Novgorod, so called, according to W. Thomsen, in consequence of its situation upon an island where the river Volkhov flows out of Lake Ilmen (op. cit., p. 101). The chieftain, according to Gurdēzī (op. cit., p. 123), collects a tithe from the merchants under his authority. The Russes practise no agriculture, but live from the products of the farm labor of the subjugated Slavs.

It has generally been conceded that the original source from which was derived the information relayed by Ibn Rusta, Al Bekrī, and Gurdēzī, was composed during the second quarter of the ninth century. It thus represents the situation at the headwaters of the Volga just before the Russes began their thrust southward along the Dnieper. The Russes are described as warriors and pirates of Viking character. Mas’ūdī, in fact, though confusing the Slavs and the Russes, remarks²⁶ that the latter are divided into many tribes, but that among them is one race known as Norwegians who are the most numerous, and who voyage with their merchandise to Spain, Italy, Constantinople, and Khazaria. Their Norman kinship is thus clearly recognized.

Combined literary and archaeological evidence not only produces a presumption in favor of the Scandinavian origin of the Russes, but also demonstrates that these Russes were established at the headwaters of the Volga considerably before 859, the date under which the Povest (p. 144) first mentions the Finnish and Slavic tribes of the north as tributaries of the Varangians. At the same time, the Arabic references to the systematic forays executed upon the unresisting Slavs suggest the nature of the process by which Varangian domination extended southward along the Dnieper toward the middle of the ninth century. The raids of the Russes around 850 were, in fact, not confined to the plains of the Dnieper basin, but actually extended across the Pontus into Paphlagonia. A report of such a raid carried out in the second quarter of the ninth century is preserved in the Greek Life of St George of Amastris, written prior to 842 and thus providing the earliest Byzantine record of the Russes.²⁷ Their southward movement toward the Crimea is apparently reflected in the Slavic Life of St Stephen of Surož (Sugdaea) by the account of a Russian raid from Novgorod which traversed the countryside from Kherson to Kerch, and captured Surož after a ten days’ siege. The event took place shortly after St Stephen’s death, therefore early in the ninth century.²⁸

We are therefore fully justified in rejecting the Povest tradition of the “calling of the princes” in favor of the conviction that the Russes, a Scandinavian clan of traders and fighters, had established themselves in Northern Russia before the beginning of the ninth century, and before 850 were already in contact with the Byzantine Empire. At the same time, however, the relations between the terms Varangian and Rus require some elucidation.

The origin of the name Rus (Русь, Greek Ῥῶς, Arabic ar Rūs) is a matter of considerable dispute.²⁹ In general, the hypothesis of E. Kunik and W. Thomsen, which derives this appellation from the Finnish name for Sweden and the Swedes, has met with the widest acceptance. The Finnish appellation for Sweden is thus Ruotsi, and for Swedes Ruotsalaiset. This terminology is common to all Finnish dialects along the Gulf of Finland, and is commonly held to be derived from Ro(d)slagen (Kunik, op. cit., p. 163), the name of the coast of the Swedish province of Upland, just opposite the Gulf of Finland. On the principle that “an intellectually or politically inferior people as a rule names a more powerful and more respected neighboring people after the nearest frontier tribe of the latter,” T. E. Karsten still accepts this view,³⁰ though Thomsen (op. cit., p. 95) has objected to it on the ground that Roslagen is of too recent origin. The Danish scholar points out (ibid.) that the territory now occupied by the modern Swedish provinces of Upland, Södermanland, and East Gotland was known in ancient times as Roðer or Roðin. It is precisely in this district that the Scandinavian proper names occurring in the Russo–Greek treaties of 912 and 945 are most prevalent (Thomsen, op. cit., p. 72). Thomsen accordingly suggests that Roðer is probably derived from an original roðsmenn or roðskarlar, meaning “seafarers,” “rowers,” so that the Finns took this latter term to indicate nationality, and preserved only the first syllable of it in the forms Ruotsi and Ruotsalaiset. Thomsen remarks in this connection that when a compound word is adopted into Finnish from another language, it is not unusual to take only the first part of it.

In view of the fact that such Scandinavian raiders as first penetrated the territory occupied by Slavic tribes between Lake Ilmen and the headwaters of the Volga must on their way have traversed an area settled by Finns, it is highly probable that the Slavs borrowed their own name for these interlopers from their Finnish neighbors, exactly as the Romans adopted the name Germani for the Teutonic tribes from the Celts with whom they came in contact. The vowel-change from uo to u occurs similarly in the Russian Сумъ, derived from Finnish Suomi,³¹ and Русъ itself, as a feminine collective with i-stem, corresponds with the formation of several other similar Finnish tribal names appearing in Old Russian as Ямъ, Весь, Чудъ, Ливъ, and Пермь. In the last analysis, the etymology of the word Ruotsi-Rus is of comparatively slight importance. As Shakhmatov observes (Изв., IX, 340), there is no doubt of the identity of the name Rus given the Scandinavians by the Slavs with the name Ruotsi which the Finns used to designate these same Scandinavians. A certain amount of difficulty is unfortunately introduced by the Greek form Ῥῶς, which is used as an indeclinable masculine plural (οἱ Ῥῶς, τῶν Ῥῶς) and which contains an ω where ου would reasonably be expected. This word is not yet satisfactorily explained. Thomsen (op. cit., p. 99) inclined to the belief that it reached the Greeks through the medium of some Turco–Tatar tribe, and thus probably through the Khazars, in view of the fact that in Byzantine Greek many Turco–Tatar words appear as indeclinables. Some considerable variation among ο, ω, and ου in such names is also apparent (Marquart, Streifzüge, p. 354). On the other hand, as Marquart remarks (ibid.), no Turkish word can begin with r or l (cf. Hungarian Orosz, “Russian”), so that the mediation of any Turco–Tatar language seems improbable.³²

The name Rus, derived apparently from the Finnish appellation of raiders and colonists from eastern Sweden, thus applies in the Povest to the Scandinavian element which, after establishing itself at a strong point near Lake Ilmen, gradually imposed its authority over the scattered Slavic tribes of the whole Dnieper basin. This appellation, particularly after the arrival of Kiev at a position of dominance under Rus sovereignty, not only designated the ruling class, at first exclusively Scandinavian, but gradually came to include as well the subject Slavs, and thus superseded the old tribal nomenclature.

The interpretation of the original significance of the term Rus is to some extent complicated by its association with the name Varangian (Варяги, Варязи, Βάραγγοι, Væringjar). As already intimated (p. 137), Varangian is used in the earlier sections of the Povest as a generic term for the Germanic nations on the coasts of the Baltic, including Swedes, Goths, and Angles, as well as the Russes. On the other hand, since the Povest in four passages specifically refers to the Varangians “from beyond the sea” (“за море, за моря”), it may be concluded that those Varangians who migrated to Russia were regarded as exclusively Scandinavian. The Arabic geographer Al Bīrūnī (973–1038) also mentions the Baltic as the Varangian Sea, and specifies the Varangians as a people dwelling on its coasts.³³ The Arabs subsequently identified these Varangians with the Swedes.³⁴ There is reason to believe that the term Varangian was not known in Russia before the last half of the tenth century, when it came into use there as applied to the Scandinavian warriors who took service either with the Russian princes or with the Byzantine emperors, and distinguished the latter from the old line of Scandinavian colonists who, by 1000, must have been well russified. The time limits within which the term Varangian was in common use in Russia may be determined with relative accuracy. In the first place, it does not occur in any of the treaties with Byzantium, showing that as a terminus technicus it was certainly unknown as late as 945. Furthermore, its last appearance in the Povest occurs in 1037, and it is therefore clear that the word was not in common use at Kiev after the reign of Yaroslav. The Norse equivalent Væringjar is by no means a word of such common occurrence as to indicate that it was in everyday use even in the heyday of Scandinavian relations with the Near East. The earliest Scandinavian to take service in Byzantium was apparently Þorkell Þjóstarsson, who spent some seven years about 950 in travel and adventure and, as he expressed it, was a vassal of the king of Miklagarðr (“em handgenginn Garðskonunginum”).³⁵ The first datable use of the word in Norse literature appears to occur in the Geisli of the skald Einarr Skularson, delivered in 1153. The institution of the Varangian guard was apparently well established by 1000, since we find an Icelander, Kolskeggr Hámundarson, commanding it about that date.³⁶ In the Byzantine sources, while mention is made of Russes in the imperial service as early as 1016 (Cedrenus, II, 465), it is not until 1034 that the Βάραγγοι are specifically mentioned, and in that instance only as in garrison in the Thracesian theme (ibid., pp. 508, 509). In the main, however, the term Varangian seems very clearly to have made its first appearance, not in Scandinavia or in Russia, but in Byzantium itself, where the name was introduced to designate a function. It was therefore not brought to Russia from Scandinavia, but, from the fact that it was applied in Byzantium to Norse adventurers who took service there, was extended in Russia to apply to Scandinavian warriors journeying to and from Constantinople or even in the Russian service. Since the term Rus, by the beginning of the twelfth century, had long since lost all Scandinavian connotation, the designation of these adventurers was very naturally extended to their country of origin, so that Varangian, to a Russian of the last half of the eleventh century, meant simply Scandinavian, and the Russes, whose Scandinavian extraction was only a matter of legend, were classed as a subdivision of the Varangians.³⁷ While the available evidence thus leads to a rejection of the naïve Povest tradition of the “calling of the princes,” it indicates with equal emphasis that the dominant class in the formative period of the early Russian state was composed of the Scandinavian warrior-merchants who, early in the ninth century, made their way to the south and east along the Russian watercourses in search of commercial contacts with the Orient and with Byzantium.

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