The origins of Rus' (c. 900-1015)
JONATHAN SHEPARD
The Rus' Primary Chronicle's quest for the origins of Rus'
The question of the origins of Rus', how a 'land' of that name came into being and from what, has been asked almost since record-keeping began in the middle Dnieper region. The problem is formulated in virtually these terms at the beginning of the Rus' Primary Chronicle. The chronicle supposes a political hierarchy to have formed at a stroke, through a covenant between locals and outsiders. The Slavs, Finns and other natives of a land mass criss-crossed by great rivers agreed jointly to call in a ruler from overseas. Turning to 'the Varangians, to the Rus'' they said 'our land is vast and abundant, but there is no order in it. Come and reign as princes and have authority over us!'[1] The response, in the form of the arrival of three princely brothers with 'their kin' and 'all the Rus", is dated to around 862. The younger brothers soon died and the survivor, Riurik, joined their possessions to his own and assigned his men to the various 'towns' (grady). There were already 'aboriginal inhabitants' in them, 'in Novgorod, the Slovenes; in Polotsk, the Krivichi; in Beloozero, the Ves . . . And Riurik ruled over them all.' Before long a move was made southwards to the middle Dnieper by non-princely 'Varangians', Askold and Dir. They are said to have come upon a small town called Kiev and took charge, having learnt that the inhabitants paid tribute to the Khazars. Later a certain Oleg arrived, not, apparently, a prince himself, but acting on behalf of Riurik's infant son, Igor'. Denouncing Askold and Dir as 'neither princes, nor of princely stock', Oleg brought forth the child with the words 'Behold the son of Riurik!' and the two unlicensed venturers were put to death. The installation of princely rule in Kiev is dated around 882, with Oleg acting as Igor''s military commander.2
This sequence of tableaux was still being incorporated in works such as the chronicle of Nikon in the sixteenth century. They form the framework to any 'political' survey of the areas that would come to form part of Muscovy and, eventually, Russia. The Primary Chronicle's focus on princes can readily be dismissed as an oversimplification, a variant of European foundation myths involving two or three brothers. And the chronology sets developments both too early and too late. In reality, some sort of hegemonial structure already existed in the second quarter of the ninth century, perhaps earlier still, whereas the middle Dnieper only became a significant princely centre a generation or more after 882. Other qualifications could be made to the chronicle's picture, which is very much a product of the time when it neared completion, the opening years of the twelfth century, and also of the place - the Kievan Caves monastery. By then, the routes leading southwards along such rivers as the Volkhov and the Western Dvina to converge at the Dnieper and run down to the sea - 'the way from the Varangians to the Greeks' - formed an axis of obvious (though not unassailable) primacy The chroniclers' wishful assumption that power was from the first vested at points such as Novgorod and Kiev is understandable. They had little time for alternatives, such as routes from northerly regions to the Khazars based on the lower Volga and to the Islamic world. They note that people's rituals and customs across this 'vast' land had been variegated,3 but there are only occasional hints that princely authority itself might have been strung across several political centres through the ninth and most of the tenth centuries.
The vicissitudes of one leading family are treated as virtually synonymous with the emergence and extent of the land of Rus'. And yet in addressing the questions posed at the beginning of the chronicle - 'Whence came the land of Rus', who first began to rule as prince in Kiev . . .?'4 - the chroniclers did not play fast and loose with facts. Some places mentioned as centres of the 'Varangian' newcomers have been shown by excavations to have had Scandinavian occupants and visitors from the outset, for example Staraia Ladoga, while archaeology is uncovering important settlements started by 'aboriginal inhabitants' before the arrival of Scandinavians, for example, at Murom, Sarskoe and Pskov and a fortified settlement on the site of Izborsk. Other aspects of the chronicle's tableaux likewise gain corroboration from independent
2 PVL, p. 14.
3 The whereabouts and languages of different tribal groupings are described: PVL, pp. 10-11.
4 PVL, p. 7.
evidence. The princely line traced back in the chronicle was the most resilient and effective of whichever other ruling kin groups may have existed among the early Rus' (for the known descendants of Riurik, see Table 3.1). The name of the leading brother points clearly to an Old Norse original, *Hr0rikR, a form philologically plausible for the ninth century, when Riurik is supposed to have lived.[2] His son Igor' - the Slavic form of whose name harks back to Old Norse *Inghari - is an unquestionably historical figure. And for the final decade or so of the ninth century there is archaeological evidence of the establishment at Kiev of persons from much further north. Thus the Primary Chronicle registers actual political change and population movement under way in the late ninth century. But its composers drew from an exiguous database, spreading it thinly across gaps in their knowledge. Riurik is depicted as a commanding figure in the mid-ninth century, yet his son was active in the mid-tenth.[3] To gain an inkling of antecedents, one has to glance back to sources written far away and without first-hand knowledge, and to the oft equivocal findings of archaeology.
The beginnings of political formations
First signs of an organised power in the forest zone and of long-distance trading between the Muslim and Baltic worlds There had been a political hierarchy somewhere north of the middle Dnieper long before the turn of the ninth century, but it is hard to reconstruct the barest outlines. One firm fact is that by 838 there existed the ruler of a 'people' known to the Byzantines as Rhos and answering to that, or a very similar, name. Some Rhos accompanied a Byzantine embassy to the court of Louis the Pious, who was requested to assist them back to their 'homeland'.[4] The contemporary Frankish court annal relating this is carefully worded. It shows that the Rhos were well enough organised under a 'king' to send a mission to the Byzantine emperor, with sufficient resources for long-range embassies. The annal provides further clues about the strangers, clues at once suggestive and confusing. They described their own ruler as a chaganus, and when Louis investigated 'more diligently' he discovered that they 'belonged to the people
Table 3.1. Prince Riurik's known descendants
of the Swedes'. Fearing they might be spies, he detained them for further questioning. Thus their ruler bore a title akin to that of the ruler of the Khazars, the khagan, while their characteristics suggested those of 'Swedes'.
Countless historical interpretations revolve around this annalistic entry. There is no matrix against which to judge the inherent plausibility of one reconstruction against another. Much depends on assumptions about overall conditions between the Gulf of Finland and the Khazar-dominated Don and Volga steppes. But coexistence of a Scandinavian-led polity to the north with a Khazar power collecting tribute as far west as the Dnieper is the scenario implied in the Primary Chronicle. Objections can, of course, be raised: for example, to the discrepancy between the annal's intimation of a polity in 838 and the Primary Chronicle's chronology, and the sheer unlikelihood of a supposedly Swedish potentate assuming a Khazar title. There is, however, suggestive evidence of other Khazar and Turkic nomad traits in some of the Rus' elite's status symbols - for example the sporting of belts studded with metal mounts and ofbridles with elaborate sets ofornaments (see also below). Moreover, ambitious Scandinavian warlords in the British Isles were apt to take on local customs and Christian kingly attributes to bolster their regimes.
1
2
G. Schramm,
4