Prev | Page:
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Russian legend says that the "Russ" were first asked to come to Novgorod by the local popu lation which wanted them to put an end to their internal feuds. Rurik (Hrorekr) was the first (semi-legendary) "kniaz" (koning, prince) of Novgorod, but his companions wished to descend the Austrvegr, nearer to Byzantium, and Oleg (Helgi) settled in Kiev. The Russian Annals date the arrival of Rurik in Novgorod A.D. 862. But the first reliable datum is that of Oleg's commercial treaty with the Byzantines (9i I). A subsequent treaty was con cluded in A.D. 945 by Oleg's successor Igor (Ingvar) together with his companions, whose signatures contain only three Slav names among 5o Norse. Constantine Porphyrogenetus gives a very picturesque description of this trade which still remained the chief business of the "Russ" dynasty. During winter the princes and their gesiths who distributed among themselves the towns in the basin of the Dnieper were busy making circuits among neighbour ing tribes in order to force them to pay annual tribute. Their booty consisted of furs, money and slaves. As spring came they loaded their small boats "made of one single tree" (uovRvXos) and con voyed their caravans down the Dnieper ready to ward off attacks of nomad steppe tribes. In the treaties mentioned their rights of
trading in the capital were strictly defined. The "konings" ex tended their power over local tribes and to defend the land from nomad incursions, they constructed earthen walls on the fron tiers of the steppe. The local aristocracy joined the ranks of their "drushina" (gesith, comitatus) and the process of assimila tion began. The term "Russ" was now used to designate the southern outpost of the whole system of defence, i.e., Kiev with the surrounding country. The son of Igor and his wife Olga (Helga) had already a Slav name, Sviatoslay. However, he still remained a northern Viking combined with a southern nomad.
Sviatoslav did not yet feel at home in Kiev. He wanted to come still nearer to Byzantium and chose Pereyaslavets on the Danube in the Bulgarian land, because, he said "there was the centre where all goods gather from all parts : gold, clothes, wine, fruits from the Greeks, silver and horses from the Czechs and Hungarians, furs, wax, honey and slaves from the Russ." Sviatoslav also de feated the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars, but he was defeated by the emperor Zimisces and slain on his way back home by the Petchenegs (972). With him died the Scandinavian tradition of the Kiev dynasty.