The Rus - The Normanist theory

The Rus - The Normanist theory

Whether you believe the Vikings founded modern Russia or not depends on your point-of-view. The Normanist Theory suggests that Kievan Rus' may have been named after its Scandinavian overlords (as was the case with Normandy). According to the Primary Chronicle, an historical compilation attributed to the 12th century, the Rus was a group of Varangians who lived on the other side of the Baltic sea, in Scandinavia. The Varangians were first expelled, then invited to rule the warring Slavic and Finnic tribes of Novgorod.

This theory claims that the name Rus, like the Finnish name for Sweden, is derived from an Old Norse term for 'the men who row' (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the Russian rivers, and that it is linked to the Swedish province of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, from which most Varangians came. The name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi. It was the German historian Gerard Friedrich Miller (1705-1783), who was invited to work in the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1748 who, romaticising the superiority of the Germanic people, instigated a Slavic backlash - The Antinormanist theories. Based mainly on etymoligical evidence of Slavic place-names, they suggested the Rus were an indigenous people.