Showing posts with label Slavs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slavs. Show all posts

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Wikipedia: Rus' Khaganate

Kälvesten Runestone 


"The Rus' Khaganate was a polity that flourished during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe, roughly the late 8th and early-to-mid-9th centuries AD. A predecessor to the Rurik Dynasty and the Kievan Rus', the Rus' Khaganate was a state, or a cluster of city-states, set up by a people called Rus', who might have been Norsemen in what is today northern Russia. The region's population at that time was composed of Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Turkic and Norse peoples. The region was also a place of operations for Varangians, eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants and pirates."
Read the full Wikipedia article.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Vikings – the Rus – Varangians

Courtesy Medievalists.net:
"The Viking age in Scandinavia is usually dated from the end of the eighth century to the mid-11th century. Those who came from Scandinavia were called Rus and Varangians by peoples in Eastern Europe. French and Anglo-Saxon chroniclers sometimes divide the Vikings into ‘Danes’, ‘Swedes’ (Svear) and ‘Norsemen’ (Norwegians). In their turn, Arab scribes distinguished between Scandinavians, inhabiting Western Eurorpe, calling them ‘magus’ or al-urmania, and peoples in the east, which they called al-rus." A PDF of the full article, originally published in Historiska nyheter (2004), may be accessed at Academia.edu.