Rus'

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Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

Rus' people were an ethnic group in early medieval eastern Europe.

Variants

  • Ruotsi
  • Rus' people
  • Old East Slavic: Рѹсь
  • Modern Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian: Русь, romanised: Rus'
  • Old Norse: Garðar
  • Greek: Ῥῶς, romanised: Rhos

Jat clans

Etymology

The name Rus' remains not only in names such as Russia and Belarus, but it is also preserved in many place names in the Novgorod and Pskov districts, and it is the origin of the Greek Rōs.[1] Rus' is generally considered to be a borrowing from Finnic Ruotsi ("Sweden").[2][3] There are two theories behind the origin of Rus'/Ruotsi, which are not mutually exclusive. It is either derived more directly from OEN rōþer (OWN róðr[5]), which referred to rowing, the fleet levy, etc., or it is derived from this term through Rōþin, an older name for the Swedish coastal region Roslagen.[4][5][6]

History

The scholarly consensus holds that they were originally Norse people, mainly originating from present-day Sweden, settling and ruling along the river-routes between the Baltic and the Black Seas from around the 8th to 11th centuries AD. They formed a state known in modern historiography as Kievan Rus']], which was initially a multiethnic society where the ruling Norsemen merged and assimilated with East Slavic, Baltic and Finnic tribes, ending up with Old East Slavic as their common language. The elite of Kievan Rus' was still familiar with Old Norse until their assimilation by the second half of the 11th century, and in rural areas vestiges of Norse culture persisted as late as the 14th and early 15th centuries.[7]

The history of the Rus' is central to 9th through 10th-century state formation, and thus national origins, in eastern Europe. They ultimately gave their name to Russia and Belarus, and they are relevant to the national histories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Because of this importance, there is a set of alternative so-called "Anti-Normanist" views that are largely confined to a minor group of East European scholars.

The Finnish and Russian forms of the name have a final -s revealing an original compound where the first element was rōþ(r)s- (preceding a voiceless consonant, þ is pronounced like th in English thing).[8] The prefix form rōþs- is found not only in Ruotsi and Rus', but also in Old Norse róþsmenn and róþskarlar, both meaning "rowers",[9]and in the modern Swedish name for the people of Roslagen – rospiggar[10] which derives from ON *rōþsbyggiar ("inhabitants of Rōþin").[11] The name Roslagen itself is formed with this element and the plural definite form of the neuter noun lag, meaning "the teams", in reference to the teams of rowers in the Swedish kings' fleet levy.[12]

There are at least two, probably three, instances of the root in Old Norse from two 11th c. runic inscriptions, fittingly located at two extremes of the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Two of them are roþ for rōþer /róðr, meaning "fleet levy", on the Håkan stone, and as i ruþi (translated as "dominion") on the lost Nibble stone, in the old Swedish heartland in the Mälaren Valley,[13] and the possible third one was identified by Erik Brate in the most widely accepted reading as roþ(r)slanti on the Piraeus Lion originally located in Athens, where a runic inscription was most likely carved by Swedish mercenaries serving in the Varangian Guard.[14] Brate has reconstructed *Rōþsland, as an old name for Roslagen.[15]

Between the two compatible theories represented by róðr or Róðinn, modern scholarship leans towards the former because at the time, the region covered by the latter term, Roslagen, remained sparsely populated and lacked the demographic strength necessary to stand out compared to the adjacent Swedish heartland of the Mälaren Valley. Consequently, an origin in word compounds such as róþs-menn and róþs-karlar is considered the most likely one. Moreover, the form róþs-, from which Ruotsi and Rus' originate, is not derived directly from ON róðr, but from its earlier Proto-Norse form roðz[16](rothz).[17]

Other theories such as derivation from Rusa, a name for the Volga, are rejected or ignored by mainstream scholarship.[18]

Jat History

Mangal Sen Jindal[19] writes.... "The north men conquerors gave their names to the new state; Rus had originally connoted the Baltic homelands of the varangians-Sweden and Denmark, but in the eleventh and

History of Origin of Some Clans in India:End of p.98

twelth centuries the terms Rus of 'the Russian land' denoted the region around Kiev. It is significant that the varied stock of which Russia was composed-chiefly Slavs, Finns and Varangians were not at this time called the Russian people." [20] Hence existence of Juts in Russia, centuries before, is a good evidence that the people of Denmark migrated to long distances.

"The economic and political development of Slav Russia in the ninth century owned much to external stimuli exerted by the steppe horsemen to the south. The ninth century witnessed the maritime activities of the viking raiders who from basis in Scandinavia ravaged the coasts alike of the North Sea, the channel and the Baltic and sailed up the rivers of Britain, Gaul and Russia. The Vikings pushed up into Russia by the Neva Nolkhov and Lovat rivers, thence by way of the Narva by short postages they reached the Dnieper itself. The Rusmen were quick to perceive the Trade possibilities of the Russian rivers, and to establish trade intercourse between Russia and both the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire and the Arabs. They settled in the rural trading centres of the Slavs along the Dnieper and its affluents, and these collecting centres of local produce grew quickly under the stimulus of river navigation, into mercantile towns." [21]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Entry Ryssland in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 668 [1].
  2. ↑ Stefan Brink, 'Who were the Vikings?', in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 4–10 (pp. 6–7).
  3. ↑ "Russ, adj. and n." OED Online, Oxford University Press".
  4. ↑ Entry Ryssland in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 668]
  5. ↑ Stefan Brink, 'Who were the Vikings?', in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 4–10 (pp. 6–7).
  6. ↑ Blöndal, Sigfús (1978). The Varangians of Byzantium. Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN 9780521035521.
  7. ↑ Melnikova, E.A. (2003) The Cultural Assimilation of the Varangians in Eastern Europe from the Point of View of Language and Literacy in Runica – Germ. – Mediavalia (heiz./n.) Rga-e 37, pp. 454–465.
  8. ↑ Entry Ryssland in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 668
  9. ↑ Русь in "Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary" online
  10. ↑ Entry Roslagen in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 654
  11. ↑ Entry Rospigg in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 654f
  12. ↑ Entry Roslagen in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 654
  13. ↑ Stefan Brink; Neil Price (31 October 2008). The Viking World. Routledge. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-1-134-31826-1.
  14. ↑ Pritsak, Omeljan. (1981). The Origin of Rus'. Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. p. 348. ISBN 0-674-64465-4
  15. ↑ Entry Roslagen in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 654
  16. ↑ Can also be spelled roðʀ, but ʀ and z are interchangeable.
  17. ↑ Larsson, Mats G. (1997). Rusernas rike in Vikingar i österled. Atlantis, Stockholm. ISBN 91-7486-411-4. pp. 14–15.
  18. ↑ Entry Ryssland in Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk etymologisk ordbok [Swedish etymological dictionary] (in Swedish). Lund: Gleerup. p. 668
  19. ↑ History of Origin of Some Clans in India/Jat From Jutland/Jat Habitations,pp.98-99
  20. ↑ An Historical Geography of Europe, page 218.
  21. ↑ An Historical Geography of Europe, page 217.
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