The Origins and History Of
The Rus


Origins

By the time the Vikings burst onto Western Europe in 793, they had been a presence on the Southern coasts of the Baltic for almost 150 years. Scandanavian graves have been found in Grobin in Courland possibly from as early as 650 and from Elbing on the Gulf of Gdansk from C.700. Using the large rivers which flow into the Baltic they created trade routes down the Russian rivers, particularly the Don and the Dnieper, which led south to the markets of Bulgar, Khazaria and Byzantium. Some reached as far East as the Caspian Sea and as far south as Baghdad. This trade is reflected in the Arab silver Dirhams which start appearing in Scandanavian hordes from about 785 and continue for over 200 years. The Vikings who explored, traded and raided this route were apparently first called Rus by the Arabs and although nowadays the majority view seems to be that it is a Finnish name for the Vikings of Sweden, the origin of the name is now lost to history. In the course of trade in amber, furs, honey, slaves, wax and weapons they founded the great cities of Starja Ladoga, Kiev and Novgorod.

In Byzantium the Rus were also known as Varangians - a term which is thought to come from a Norse word meaning those who join in an oath, probably to share the profit of their trading or raiding. It was from these men that the Emperor fashioned his bodyguard and the name continued in use even when the Varangian Guard came to include Slavs, Anglo-Saxons and others.


History

According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kiev in the early 12th century, the Slavs invited the Swedish chieftain Rurik and his two brothers to rule them in 862 AD. In fact, the Rus seem to have kept mainly to the regions along the rivers - their relations with the Slavs being mostly confined to exacting tribute and raiding for slaves. Among their neighbours was the empire of the Khazars, (a Turkic race which had been converted to Judaism in the 8th century AD,) stretching around the Black Sea from the Danube to the Caspian.

Much of our knowledge of the early Rus comes from a description of them by the Arab diplomat/trader Ibn Fadlan. Writing in about 922 he describes them : "Never before have I seen people of more perfect physique. They are tall as date-palms, blonde and ruddy." (Roesdahl, 1991)

He also described them as follows : "They are the filthiest of Allah's creatures; they do not wash after shitting and peeing, nor after sexual intercourse, and do not wash after eating. They are like wayward donkeys" (Ibid.) According to Ibn Fadlan, the Rus he encountered did wash once a day, but all used the same water, and their ablutions included spitting and blowing their noses into the communal washbowl and handing it to the next person. The Rus in Ibn Fadlan's time were followers of the pagan Scandinavian gods. He describes their burial practices, involving animal and human sacrifice, and the funeral pyre of a chieftain in his longship. One Rus explained to him that cremation was much better than the Muslim custom of burial, saying "We burn him in fire in a moment, and he goes at once to paradise." (Ibid.) he also describes their habit of imbibing great quantities of alcoholic drink, and said that they are often found dead still grasping a beaker of it. He may have been exaggerating, and there have even been suggestions that he did not travel to places he described, and may have made up some of the more lurid details just to shock his fastidious (and tee-total) Arab audience.

Expansion

External Affairs

In typical Viking fashion the 10th and 11th centuries saw the Rus alternating between trading with Byzantium and attacking it. In both 907 and 1043 fleets were completely destroyed before the walls of Constantinople by the Byzantine secret weapon, Greek fire, while another attack in 960 was also turned back. Around 965 Tsar Svyatoslav of Kiev attacked the empire of the Khazars, capturing the capital, Atil. The Khazars withdrew from the Caspian region to the Bosphorus coast of what is now north-western Turkey. There they survived there in a much diminished form until the Rus combined with Byzantium to destroy their remnants in 1016.

In 988 Kievan Tsar Vladimir (from Swedish Valdemar) agreed to convert to Christianity as part of a treaty which also involved marriage to a Byzantine princess, and the ceding of some Byzantine territory. (It is said that he had compared the various religious choices available, apparently dismissing Islam because of its prohibition on alcohol, and finally deciding on Orthodox Christianity because of the splendor of its churches and ceremonial). Vladimir had also recently imported 6000 warriors from Sweden to put down an insurrection, and he now had an army on his hands with nothing to do, so, as part of the treaty, he sent them to Byzantium, where they became the first Varangian Guards. His actions founded a dynasty which went on to influence most of Eastern and Northern Europe. His son Jaroslav the Wise married the Swedish princess Ingegerd, one daughter became the Queen of Hungary, another Queen of France and his eldest married the Norwegian King, Harald Hardrada.

All of this contributed to the continual movement of Scandinavians through Russia from the 9th to the 12th centuries, and generated considerable cultural interchange between the two regions. However, the decline of the trade routes through Byzantium, and an apparent exhaustion of the Arab silver mines caused the importance of the cities of Kiev and Novgorod to lessen. Dynastic wars between the under-princes subject to Kievan rule , and when Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky captured Kiev in 1169 he moved the capital to his new city of Vladimir. The Rus intermarried with the subject Slavs and took on their customs to such an extent that though they were still ruled by the descendants of Rurik, they had ceased to exist as a separate race by the beginning of the 13th century.