Their origin and identity are much in dispute. Traditional Western scholars believe them to be Scandinavian Vikings, an offshoot of the Varangians, who moved southward from the Baltic coast and founded the first consolidated state among the eastern Slavs, centring on Kiev.
The Vikings, referred to as Varangians in Eastern Europe, were known throughout Europe as traders and raiders, and perhaps the creators or instigators of the first organized Russian state: Kievan Rus.
The Russians were formed from East Slavic tribes, and their cultural ancestry is based in Kievan Rus'. Genetically, the majority of Russians are identical to their East and West Slavic counterparts, unlike Northern Russians, who belong to the Northern European Baltic gene pool.
From about 1500 BC a group of people called the Slavs settled into the area which is now Poland and Western Russia. Although they were often under threat from other groups who wanted their land, they held their ground there until the arrival of the Vikings in the 9th century.
During the Viking Age, one of Europe's most important trade and communication routes between Scandinavia and Constantinople went through what are now the battlefields in Ukraine.
While both Ukrainians and Russians consider themselves Orthodox Slavs, Rurik, the founding father of the Kievan Rus' dynasty, which goes back to the 9th Century, was a pagan Viking.
According to most official histories, the great medieval state of Kyiv Rus was founded by a group of Viking trader-adventurers who were invited to bring law and order to the potentially prosperous but disordered and chaotic lands of far eastern Europe.
Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; commonly known as the Soviet Union), Russia became an independent country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Russia is a land of superlatives.
In the Russian Tsardom, the word Russia replaced the old name Rus' in official documents, though the names Rus' and Russian land were still common and synonymous to it, and often appeared in the form Great Russia (Russian: Великая Россия), which is more typical of the 17th century, whereas the state was also known as ...
Swedish Vikings and the Eastern World – Vikings in Russia
There are evidence for that a East Slavic empire was created by Vikings in Russia. A Viking called Oleg in Russian. This information comes from the “The Russian Primary Chronicle” that tells about Oleg and the foundation of Kievan Rus.
The traditional start-date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' state in the north in 862, ruled by Varangians. Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod became the first major cities of the new union of immigrants from Scandinavia with the Slavs and Finns.
The first known people to set foot on Russian territory were called the Cimmerians. They ruled between 1000 and 700 BCE and were followed by the Scythians in 700 BCE. The Scythian nomads established a military state and defeated the Persians, but were nonetheless conquered by the Sarmatians in 3 BCE.
Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family. It is a descendant of Old East Slavic, a language used in Kievan Rus', which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries.
Ukraine and Russia go back to Kievan Rus, a medieval Viking federation that ruled first from Novgorod to the north, and then from Kyiv. Its territory included what is now Ukraine, Belarus and part of Russia. Kievan Rus meant “the land of the Rus”. The word “Russia” derives from Rus.
Viking Invasions
In the 800s C.E., Vikings began traveling east from Scandinavia into the land between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. These people began to settle along the many rivers and live with the native Slavs. These settlements helped trade routes and cities to develop.
The reason for these warlike activities was wealth in the form of amber and furs which were looted or taxed from the Finns, Wends, Slavs, and others living in the eastern Baltic region. Russia experienced only scattered raids until ca. 850 AD.
Thereafter, the state was called, “Kievan Rus”. Mostly furs, slaves, and wax, were traded for Arabian silver, as well as Byzantine luxury goods.
The U.S.S.R. was the successor to the Russian Empire of the tsars. Following the 1917 Revolution, four socialist republics were established on the territory of the former empire: the Russian and Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republics and the Ukrainian and Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Russians used Motherland as the symbol of a country that nourished and supported its citizens during times of crisis. As for the gender-neutral "homeland," it first appeared in U.S. English in "Webster's Eighth Collegiate Dictionary'' in 1973.
“On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as the land of Rus.” (“Rus,” which is where the name “Russia” comes from, purportedly derives from an old Nordic word for “men who row.”)
As opposed to full forms used in formal situations, short forms of a name are used in communication between well-acquainted people, usually relatives, friends and colleagues. Short forms emerged in spoken language for convenience as majority of formal names are cumbersome.
The Tsardom of Russia or Tsardom of Rus' (Russian: Русское царство, romanized: Russkoye tsarstvo), also known as the Tsardom of Muscovy, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721.
The events of 1066 in England effectively marked the end of the Viking Age. By that time, all of the Scandinavian kingdoms were Christian, and what remained of Viking “culture” was being absorbed into the culture of Christian Europe.
At the battle of Ashdown in 871, Alfred routed the Viking army in a fiercely fought uphill assault.
Answer and Explanation: No, Ivar the Boneless did not go to Russia. He was fixated on acquiring and keeping land in England. The circumstances of his death are not known, but there is no information related to a campaign in Russia.