Rus' people
The Rus, also known as Russes, were a people in early medieval Eastern Europe. The scholarly consensus holds that they were originally Norsemen, mainly originating from present-day Sweden, who settled and ruled along the river-routes between the Baltic and the Black Sea from around the 8th to 11th centuries AD.
The two original centres of the Rus' were Ladoga, founded in the mid-8th century, and Rurikovo Gorodische, founded in the mid-9th century. The two settlements were situated at opposite ends of the Volkhov River, between Lake Ilmen and Lake Ladoga, and the Norsemen likely called this territory Gardar. From there, the name of the Rus' was transferred to the Middle Dnieper, and the Rus' then moved eastward to where the Finnic tribes lived and southward to where the Slavs lived.
The name Garðaríki was applied to the newly formed state of Kievan Rus', and the ruling Norsemen along with local Finnic tribes gradually assimilated into the East Slavic population and came to speak a common language. Old Norse remained familiar to the elite until their complete assimilation by the second half of the 11th century, and in rural areas, vestiges of Norse culture persisted as late as the 14th and early 15th centuries, particularly in the north.
The history of the Rus is central to 9th through 10th-century state formation, and thus national origins, in Eastern Europe. They ultimately gave their name to Russia and Belarus, and they are relevant to the national histories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Due to this importance, there is a set of alternative so-called "anti-Normanist" views that are largely confined to a minor group of Eastern European scholars.
Etymology
File:Europe 814.svg|right|thumb|300px|Europe in the 9th century. Roslagen is located along the coast of the northern tip of the area marked "Swedes and Goths".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. There are two theories behind the origin of Rus/''Ruotsi, which are not mutually exclusive. It is either derived more directly from OEN rōþer, 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. Since Ruotsi and its cognates are found in all Finnic languages, the term is assumed to have entered the Finnic lexicon before the languages diverged, before or at the beginning of the Viking Age.
The Finnish and Russian forms of the name have a final -s revealing an original compound where the first element was -. 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. The name Roslagen itself is formed with this element and the plural definite form of the neuter noun lag, meaning "the teams", in reference to the teams of rowers in the Swedish kings' fleet levy.
There are at least two, probably three, instances of the root in Old Norse from two 11th century 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 on the lost Nibble stone, in the old Swedish heartland in the Mälaren Valley, and the possible third one was identified by Erik Brate in the most widely accepted reading as 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 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 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.
Other theories such as derivation from Rusa'', a name for the Volga, are rejected or ignored by mainstream scholarship.
History
Having settled Ladoga in the 750s, Scandinavian colonists played an important role in the early ethnogenesis of the Rus people, and in the formation of the Rus' Khaganate. Ladoga, then known as Aldeigja by the Norsemen, was the earliest and most significant settlement of the Rus', while Gorodische, likely known as Holmr, was founded over a century later. It was from the Ladoga area, which formed the centre of the Rus', that the envoys went to Constantinople in 838. The Varangians are first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle as having exacted tribute from the Slavic and Finnic tribes in 859. It was the time of rapid expansion of the Vikings' presence in Northern Europe; England began to pay Danegeld in 865, and the Curonians faced an invasion by the Swedes around the same time.The Varangians are mentioned in the Primary Chronicle, which suggests that the term Rus was used to denote Scandinavians until it became firmly associated with the now extensively Slavicised elite of Kievan Rus. At that point, the new term Varangian was increasingly preferred to name the Scandinavians, probably mostly from what is currently Sweden, plying the river routes between the Baltic and the Black and Caspian Seas. Relatively few of the rune stones Varangians left in their native Sweden tell of their journeys abroad, to such places as what is today Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Greece, and Italy. Most of these rune stones can be seen today, and are a significant piece of historical evidence. The Varangian runestones tell of many notable Varangian expeditions, and even recount the fates of individual warriors and travelers.
In Russian historiography, two cities are used to describe the beginnings of the country: Kiev and Novgorod. In the first part of the 11th century the former was already a Slav metropolis, rich and powerful, a fast growing centre of civilisation adopted from Byzantium. The latter town, Novgorod, was another centre of the same culture but founded in different surroundings, where some old local traditions moulded this commercial city into the capital of a powerful oligarchic trading republic of a kind otherwise unknown in this part of Europe. These towns have tended to overshadow the significance of other places that had existed long before Kiev and Novgorod were founded. The two original centres of Rus were Staraya Ladoga and Rurikovo Gorodische, two points on the Volkhov, a river running for 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, 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". The Primary Chronicle portrays the East Slavic tribe of Polans as the most civilised of the East Slavs, and that they were therefore predisposed to host the Rus', but not give their name to the land. From this area, the Rus' moved eastward to the lands inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes in the Volga-Oka region, as well as south along the Dnieper.
The prehistory of the first territory of Rus has been sought in the developments around the early-8th century, when Staraja Ladoga was founded as a manufacturing centre and to conduct trade, serving the operations of Scandinavian hunters and dealers in furs obtained in the north-eastern forest zone of Eastern Europe. In the early period, a Norse presence is only visible at Staraya Ladoga, and to a much lesser degree at a few other sites in the northern parts of Eastern Europe. The objects that represent Norse material culture of this period are rare outside Ladoga and mostly known as single finds. This rarity continues throughout the 9th century until the whole situation changes radically during the next century, when historians meet, at many places and in relatively large quantities, the material remains of a thriving Scandinavian culture. For a short period of time, some areas of Eastern Europe became as much part of the Norse world as were Danish and Norwegian territories in the West. The culture of the Rus contained Norse elements used as a manifestation of their Scandinavian background. These elements, which were current in 10th-century Scandinavia, appear at various places in the form of collections of many types of metal ornaments, mainly female but male also, such as weapons, decorated parts of horse bridles, and diverse objects embellished in contemporaneous Norse art styles.
The Swedish king Anund Jakob wanted to assist Yaroslav the Wise, Grand prince of Kiev, in his campaigns against the Pechenegs. The so-called Ingvar the Far-Travelled, a Swedish Viking who wanted to conquer Georgia, also assisted Yaroslav with 3000 men in the war against the Pechenegs; however, he later continued on to Georgia. Yaroslav the Wise married the Swedish king's daughter, Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden, who became the Russian saint, Anna, while Harald Hardrada, the Norwegian king who was a military commander of the Varangian guard, married Elisiv of Kiev. The two first uncontroversially historical Swedish kings Eric the Victorious and Olof Skötkonung both had Slavic wives. Danish kings and royals also frequently had Slavic wives. For example, Harald Bluetooth married Tove of the Obotrites. Vikings also made up the bulk of the bodyguards of early Kievan Rus rulers.
Evidence for strong bloodline connections between the Kievan Rus and Scandinavia existed and a strong alliance between Vikings and early Kievan rulers is indicated in early texts of Scandinavian and East Slavic history. Several thousand Swedish Vikings died for the defence of Kievan Rus against the Pechenegs.