APPENDIX A: Princes of Kievan Rus (acc. to Historical Atlas of the Vikings)

c.862-79 Rurik (semi-legendary ruler of Novgorod)

c.879-913 Oleg

913-45 Igor

945-72 Svyatoslav I

972-978/80 Yaropolk I

978/80-1015 Vladimir

1015-1054 Yaroslav the Wise

 

APPENDIX B: RUS-BYZANTINE WARS (SIEGES OF CONSTANTINOPLE) (Wikipedia)

Paphlagonia (830s) – Siege of Constantinople (860) – Siege of Constantinople (907) - Bosporus & Bithynia (941)* - Thrace & Bulgaria (970–971) - Crimea (988) - Lemnos (1024) - Constantinople & Aegean Sea (1043)

* - the Rus fleet is destroyed by Greek fire. Liudprand of Cremona wrote: "The Rus', seeing the flames, jumped overboard, preferring water to fire. Some sank, weighed down by the weight of their breastplates and helmets; others caught fire." The captured Rus' were beheaded.

 

APPENDIX C: RUS-BYZANTINE TREATIES (Wikipedia)

· Rus'–Byzantine Treaty (907) - Oleg

· Rus'–Byzantine Treaty (911), supplementary agreement to the one of 907 - Oleg

· Rus'–Byzantine Treaty (945) – the result of the Igor’s 941 campaign

· Rus'–Byzantine Treaty (971)

· Rus'–Byzantine Treaty (1045)

 

APPENDIX D: Extended quotes from – or paraphrases of – primary sources (2 & 4 taken from Gwyn Jones)

 

1. Ahmad ibn Rustah (after 903) writing in the first half of the tenth century, tells us how the Rus lived on an island (or promontory) in a lake, which was large, marshy, forested and unhealthy. They were much busied with slave-hunting. ‘They have no cultivated land but depend for their living on what they can obtain from the Saqalibah’s land… They have no estates, villages, or fields; their only business is dealing in sables, squirrel, and other furs, and the money they acquire by these transactions they keep in their belts’. They journeyed and made war by ships, were excessively valiant and treacherous, were handsome, clean and well-dressed (Ibn Rustah notes the full baggy trousers gathered kneewards vouched for by Scandinavian picture stones and fragments of northern tapestry, though these may well have been influenced by Oriental fashions – the Viking in general was skartsmaðr mikill, quite a dandy). They were hospitable and protective of their guests; were quarrelsome among themselves and frequently resorted to single combat (reminiscent of saga accounts of hólmganga) to settle disputes; but in the face of a common enemy they closed their ranks and fought as one man. They had priests and made sacrifices of men, women, and cattle to their god. The method of sacrifice was by hanging. They lived in a state of such insecurity and distrust that a man dare not go outside about his natural needs saved with an armed escort. When one of their chieftains died they made a grave like a big house and put him inside, with his apparel and gold armbands, and an abundance of food, vessels with drink, and coins. Finally they put his favourite wife (woman, concubine) inside with him, still living, then closed the door of the grave, so that she died.

2. from De Administrando Imperio by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (written between 948 and 952).

He’s concerned to tell of the convoys of vessels out of the Russian north which descend the Dnieper to Berezani on the Black Sea and from there make their way to the imperial city itself. The boats from further Russia, that is, from beyond north of Kiev, came from Novgorod where Prince Svyatoslav had his seat, the son of that Igor who had attacked Constantinople in 941 from Smolensk and Chernigov, Teliutza and Vyshegrad and they travel downstream till they arrive at Kiev. Meanwhile, the Rus of Kiev had been hard at work. Their life, he says, was a hard one, for during the winter they were out on ‘poludie’, that is on their rounds visiting the Slavonic peoples, the Verians, the Dregovichians, the Krivichians, the Severians, and other who paid them tribute. Some paid in money, some paid in furs and other commodities and there was always a use for slaves. In April with the thaw, they returned to Kiev. The town stands on a series of bluffs on the river’s west bank, and is unaffected by the spring floods, which raise the river’s level as much as 16 feet, and increase its width from less than half a mile to five miles or even six. From April till June the Rus found it unnavigable, but after their return from their rounds they needed this length of time to transfer usable gear and parts from their old boats, hollowed out of a single tree, to the new ones prepared for them by the Slavs, and make all shipshape. By June the river was manageable; it still ran with more than its normal flow, but this served a purpose. The fleet now moved a short way downstream to the stockaded taxing-post of Vitichev (the emperor was writing at a time when the Rus of Kiev had absolute control of the Dnieper), and after a day or two all the boats sailed off ‘to face the perils of the voyage together’. These were of two kinds: the natural hazards of the descent, which were worst at the rapids of the modern Dnjepropetrovsk, and the risk of ambush by the Pechenegs, which was at its most acute on the same stretch of river. The emperor is eloquent on the perils of the forty-mile succession of cataracts where the mighty river is compressed between walls of granite. It was to get over or past the rocks and boulders here that they needed the high water of the June season. Now the Rus go into the water naked, some feel the way with their feet, others ply their stout staffs at prow, amidships, and stern; now they unload their cargoes and use their slaves for a six-mile portage; now they appoint sentinels, lest the same fate befall them as befell prince Svyatoslav in 972, when the Pechenegs slew him near the rapids and made a drinking cup of his close-shaven skull. The emperor has preserved the names of the seven cataracts he knew about, in their Slavonic and Scandinavian (Rus) forms.

3. from The Russian Primary Chronicle (compiled 1113):

859: The Varangians from beyond the sea imposed tribute upon the Chuds, the Slavs, the Merians, the Ves. and the Krivichians.

860– 862: The tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves. There was no law among them, and they began to war one against another. They said to themselves. ‘Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the law.’ They, accordingly, went overseas to the Varangian Rus. These particular Varangians were known as Rus just as others are called Swedes, others Norse, others Angles, and others Goths, for they were thus named. The Chuds. the Slavs, the Krivichians, and the Ves then said to the people of the Rus, ‘Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.’ They thus selected three brothers, with their kinsfolk, who took with them all the Rus and migrated. The oldest. Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, at Beloozero; and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk. On account of these Varangians the district of Novgorod became known as the land of Rus. The present inhabitants of Novgorod are descended from the Varangian race, but aforetime they were Slavs.

[acc. to the Hypatian Codex Rurik first came to S.Ladoga and after the death of S. and T. moved to Lake Ilmen and founded Novgorod – Pig Ginger]

 

 

 

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