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The origins of the Rus (or Rus' , Русь) are controversial. Whereas most Western historians tend to give credence to the Normanist theory, many Slavic scholars are strongly opposed and work to find other origins. Culture and heritage is what is ultimately at stake in this controversy. The question is whether East Slavic civilisation owes an element of its cultural origin to the Scandinavian rulers of the 9th to 11th centuries, as suggested by the Normanist theory, or whether that heritage can excusively attributed to the Slavs, as held by the Slavists. The question is emotionally charged. In the 1770s, one imperial Russian historian presenting the Normanist theory in St. Petersburg was forced to curtail his lecture by shouts from the audience and forced to cease his work on the issue. His work was destroyed (Source: Davies).
The Normanist theoryMissing image Viking_Age.png The Varangian world. This theory is called the Normanist theory, as it suggests that Kievan Rus' may have been named after its Scandinavian overlords just as Normandy. According to the Primary Chronicle, Rus was a group of Varangians who lived on the other side of the Baltic sea, in Scandinavia. The Varangians were first expelled, then invited to rule the warring Slavic and Finnic tribes of Novgorod:
Later, the Primary Chronicle tells us, they conquered Kiev and created Kievan Rus'. The territory they conquered was named after them (see Etymology of Rus and derivatives) as were, eventually, the local people (cf. Normans). The Normanist theory is also based on Ibn Fadlan who uses the name Rusiyyah for a group of people who are usually interpreted as Vikings near Astrakhan, and on the Persian traveler Ibn Rustah who allegedly visited Novgorod and described how the Rus' exploited the Slavs.
When the Varangians arrived in Constantinople, the Byzantines considered and described the Rhos (Greek Ρωσ) as a different people from the Slavs. In De Administrando Imperio[1] (http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/rus/texts/constp.html) is given the names of the Dniepr cataracts in both Rhos and in Slavic. The Rhos names:
It is also due to the annals of Saint Bertan which relate that Emperor Louis II' court in Ingelheim, 839 (the same year as the first appearance of Varangians in Constantinople), was visited by a delegation from the Byzantine emperor. In this delegation there were two men who called themselves Rhos (Rhos vocari dicebant). Louis enquired about their origins and learnt that they were Swedes. Fearing that they were spies for their brothers, the Danes, he incarcerated them. This theory claims that the name Rus, like the Finnish name for Sweden, is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the Russian rivers, and that it is linked to the Swedish province of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, from which most Varangians came. The name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi. In contemporary Scandinavian sources Eastern Europe was occasionally called Greater Sweden or Sweden the Cold beside a much popular name Gardarike (the land of cities). A similar way of naming an area of colonies has been used for southern Italy, Magna Graeca (Greater Greece). It has been suggested that the Vikings had some enduring influence in Rus, as testified by loan words, such as yabeda "complaining person" (from aembaetti "office"), skot "cattle" (from skattr "tax") and knout (from knutr, "a knotty wood"). Moreover three Nordic names of the first Varangian rulers also became popularized, i.e., Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga) and Igor (Ingvar). The proponents of the so-called "Normanist theory" of the Russian state - including Nikolai Karamzin and, later, Sergey Pogodin - wrote about the claims of the Primary Chronicle that the Varangians were invited by East Slavs to rule over them and bring order. The theory was not without political implications. In Karamzin's writing the normanist theory formed the basis and justification for Russian autocracy, and Pogodin used the theory to claim that the Russian state was immune to social upheavals and revolutions, because people's submission to their rulers was voluntary from the very beginning. The Antinormanist theoriesScholars from Eastern Europe have criticised the Normanist theory. Already in the 19th century the "Normanist theory" was disputed by the more liberal sectors of Russian society and by some Polish historians. Even earlier, Mikhail Lomonosov had written about how problematic he felt the Normanist theory to be. Some non-Normanist origins for the Rus have been expounded:
The fact that Vikings used a particular name for the area, Gardar ("Cities"), is presented as an argument against the Normanist theory. The Norse sagas demonstrate that the Vikings' knowledge of Eastern Slavic lands was slight. For instance, they usually considered not Kiev ("Kaenugardr") but Novgorod ("Holmgardr") as the capital of Rus. According to F. Donald Logan (The Vikings in History, cit. Montgomery, p. 24), "in 839, the Rus' were Swedes. In 1043, the Rus' were Slavs." The Scandinavians were completely absorbed and, unlike their brethren in England and in Normandy, they left little cultural heritage in Eastern Europe. This almost complete absence of cultural traces (besides several names, as discussed above, and arguably the veche-system of Novgorod, see ting) is remarkable, and the Slavicists therefore call the Vikings "cultural chameleons", who came, ruled and then disappeared, leaving little cultural trace in Eastern Europe. This seems to suggest that these Rus' were a small group, less than a people in the nation sense of the word; less than an ethnos. This conclusion leads Slavicists to deny or reinterpret the Primary Chronicle, which claims that the Danish (or Swedish) Rus' were "invited". They claim that Nestor, a putative author of the Chronicle, was biased against the pro-Greek party of Vladimir Monomakh and supported the pro-Scandinavian party of the ruling prince Svyatopolk. They cite Nestor's factual inaccuracies as pro-Scandinavian manipulations and compare his account of Rurik's invitation with numerous similar stories found in folklore around the world. Boris Rybakov, a prominent Soviet historian, felt that the cultural level of the Varangians could not have warranted an invitation from the equally culturally advanced Slavs. References
Related articles
External linkIbn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah, by James E. Montgomery, with full translation of Ibn Fadlan (http://www.uib.no/jais/v003/montgo1.pdf) An overview of the controversy (http://arc.cs.odu.edu:8080/dp9/getrecord/oai_dc/544641417/oai:digbib.uio.no/7245)
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