Question For Viking Experts

[Theuderic]

Although now I'm completely speculating about stuff I don't know. [/B]

Now we are getting somewhere.....

 

[tarchon]

tarchon says
The Rus and the Varingians are two separate groups. Although The Primary Chronicle claims that the Rus were a Scandinavian tribe, virtually all mainstream historical opinion is now that only the founding royal family were Scandinavian in origin. Apparently the Rus were not, contrary to their own founding myth, nordic at all. They were, in fact, a Slavic people all along.

Rather than write the widely known and available myself:

19th and early 20th century scholars disagreed over the ethnicity of the early Russian rulers. Current western opinion seems to be that Scandinavians moved into the area and formed states during the 9th century, but that by the 11th, the Slavic element had become predominant. This may be reflected in the terminology used by some of our primary reference sources. Rhos, Rus or Russi are the earliest words used by Byzantines for the people that came to them from the direction of Kiev, and Luitprand of Cremona, writing of a visit to the Emperor in 969, had no doubt that these Rhos were what western Europeans called Norsemen. The artificial term Tauro skythians was an alternative used by some writers. 1

During the early 11th century, the term, 'Varangian', began to be used. It is first mentioned in Byzantine sources in 1034 and came to mean the Norse warriors who arrived in Constantinople via Kiev, while Rhos became restricted to the inhabitants of the Russian states. Blondal, whose book "The Varangians of Byzantium" is still the most comprehensive work on the subject, discusses the possible origins of the term.

http://web.missouri.edu/~tm104/other/norse_mercs.htm

Thus I say Rus/Varangians.

 

[fusangite]

Sorry to take the thread off-track but...

In the current edition of his History of Russia, Riasanovsky cites several persuasive examples of the Rus appearing earlier in history. The Bertinian Annals note that in 862, Rus ambassadors from their Khanate east of Constantinople sent an embassy to Ingleheim. Photius writes of the Rus attacking Constantinople in 860. The Arabic writers of the ninth century referred to the Rus as a slavic people ruled by a khan.

Liudprand's alleged identification of the Rus as Western European Norsemen was, in fact, his statement that they were "from the north." The interpretation of Liudprand's statement as validation of the "Norman theory" has been discredited.