appeared
in their lands,
Rus was applied both non-Scandinavians all
and the East Slavs transformed
to the
into Rus. Later,
it
Kievan state and to those Scandinavians and
who became rulers of it, and
ultimately came to include
Orthodoxy
the peoples of that state. After Vladimir's conversion to
989,
in
Rus also began to mean someone who was an Orthodox Christian. The
evolution of the
consistency in
word did not
its
meaning
at
take place uniformly, so there
later
is
no necessary
any one time. The word Variagi/Varangians
was also used for the Scandinavians in the appeared
east,
but
many
argue that
it
than the term Rus, and was used primarily to designate those
Scandinavians
who
entered the military service of the Rus princes and the
Byzantine emperors.
The Scandinavians who penetrated the encountered conditions
far different
interior of
European Russia
from those facing the Northmen who
pillaged the coasts of western Europe. Shallow-draught Viking boats could easily attack
and plunder the
rich
towns and monasteries lying along the
sea-coasts or river-banks of England
away before
local defences
and France, and make a successful get-
could be organized. But there were no lootable
towns or monasteries along the coasts of Russia, while the routes inland involved crossing dangerous rapids and portaging substantial distances
through virgin forests to go from one river system to another. Raiding on the inland seas
was
risky, for the
Muslim
Khazar khagan
auxiliaries of the
could block the escape route from the Caspian Sea, while Byzantine ships in the Black Sea attacked
marauding Scandinavians with Greek
Nevertheless, the Scandinavians
who came
fire.
to north-western Russia
from the mid-eighth century onwards met far less organized resistance than did the Vikings in the west. There was a big difference between Finnic, Baltic,
and East
Slavic tribes
on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon and
Carolingian states on the other.
rewarded trading
far
more than
The geography of European Russia The Vikings
raiding.
no more than take the treasure already accumulated teries.
local
In
in the
in
west often did
towns and monas-
European Russia, by contrast, the Scandinavians had
to organize
systems to collect the natural wealth, and then establish trade centres
and trading routes
to
market these goods.
The Peoples of European Russia The most fundamental developments
in
European Russia
after
about
\i>
500 were growing economic diversification and the mass migration of peoples.
Economic diversification produced
many of the tion
greater wealth
and security
for
native populations, which in turn fostered political consolida-
and the emergence of local
elites.
THE PEOPLE OF
6UK0PÂŁXN RUSSIX
At the same time, mass migrations 135