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 Slavicists.

The question is emotionally charged. In the 1700s, 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).

Table of contents

1 The Normanist theory 2 The Slavicist theory 3 Another theory 4 References 5 Related articles 6 External link

The Normanist theory

This theory is called the Normanist theory, as it suggests that Kievan Rus' may have been named after its Scandinavian overlords just as Normandy.

Rus was according to the Russian Primary Chronicle a group of Varangians living on the other side of the Baltic sea, in Scandinavia. The Varangians were first expelled, then invited to rule the warring Slavic and Fennic tribes of Novgorod:

The four tribes who had been forced to pay tribute to the Varangians - Chuds, Slavs, Merians, and Krivichians drove the Varangians back beyond the sea, refused to pay them further tribute, and set out to govern themselves. But there was no law among them, and tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against the other. They said to themselves, "Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to custom. Thus they went overseas to the Varangians, to the Rus. These particular Varangians were known as Rus, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans and Angles, and still others Gotlanders, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichians and the Ves then said to the Rus, "Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come reign as princes, rule over us". Three brothers, with their kinfolk, were selected. They brought with them all the Rus and migrated (The Primary Chronicle).

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 Ibn Rustah who visited Novgorod and described how the Rus' exploited the Slavs.

As for the Rus, they live on an island ...that takes three days to walk round

and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy....They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and...sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from the Slav's lands....When a son is born, the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says, "I shall not leave you with any property: You have only what you can provide with this weapon." (Ibn Rustah, according to the National Geographic, March 1985)

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 Scandinavian sources, however called Eastern Europe Greater Sweden, Sweden the Cold or Gardarike (the land of cities), which does not support the Normanist origin of Rus, as the Vikings apparently used a different name for the area.

It has been suggested that the Vikings had some enduring influence in Russia, as testified by loan words, such as jabetnik "complaining person" (from aembetsman "official"), gospodin "lord" (from husbondi "master") and knut (from knutpiska a kind of whip with knots). Moreover certain Nordic names also became popularized, such as Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga) and Igor (Ingvar).

The Slavicist theory

Scholarship from Eastern Europe has criticised this theory. For example Dolukhanov has written about how problematic he feels the Normanist theory to be.

Some non-Normanist origins for the origins of Rus have been postulated:

• From one of two rivers in the Ukraine (near Kiev and Pereyaslav), Ros and Rusna.
• An old word for bear, cognate with arctos and ursus.
• A term for water as in Rusalka.
• The Iranian tribe of the Roxolani (from Iranian rokhs ‘light’).

This almost complete absence of cultural traces (besides the name Rus, place names, loan words, some personal names, and probably the veche-system of Novgorod, see thing) is highly 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 group of people, less than a people in the nation sense of the word; less thatn an ethnos.

This conclusion leads Slavicists to refute the Primary Chronicle, which claims that the Swedish Rus' were "invited". They claim the the cultural level of the Varangians could not have warranted an invitation from the culturally superior Slavs.

Another theory

Other scholars note the presence of a West European trading company (Scandinavian?, French?) near the mouth of the Don River of a name very similar to the words Rus' and Ruthenia. This trading outpost seems to have been present in the 800s and perhaps earlier (see the Normanist theory).

References

• Pavel M. Dolukhanov. The Early Slavs: Eastern Europe from the Initial Settlement to the Kievan Rus. New York: Longman, 1996.
• Omeljan Pritsak. The Origin of Rus'. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
• Norman Davies. Europe: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Related articles

• Ruthenia
• Kievan Rus
• Varangian
• Ibn Rustah
• Ibn Fadlan
• Roslagen
• Normans
• Vikings

Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah, by James E. Montgomery, with full translation of Ibn Fadlan

An overview of the controversy