Wikipedia: Rus' Khaganate

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"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.

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.

Viking Ethnicities: A Historiographic Overview

Courtesy of Medievalists.net:
"The ‘Viking Age’ is well established in popular perception as a period of dramatic change in European history. The range of viking activities from North America to the Middle East has excited the interest of many commentators. Vikings are variously regarded as blood thirsty barbarians or civilised entrepreneurs; founders of nations or anarchic enemies. But how cohesive was the identity of the ‘Vikings’ and how did they see themselves? In recent years the answer to this question has been evaluated from a range of perspectives. Established paradigms (often situated within a nationalist framework of thought) have come under greater scrutiny and new ideas have entered the debate. This paper will review some trends in the historiography of viking ethnicities and cultural identities in the period 800–1000 AD. This overview also highlights the value of comparative analysis of human migrations to the field of Viking Studies." The full article by Clare Downham of the University of Liverpool, originally published in History Compass, Volume 10, Issue 1, may be read in PDF format at the Wiley Online Library.