The Varègues were Danish and Swedish which travelled towards the east since the Denmark and the Sweden. Living Commerce, Pirate laughs and offering themselves like Mercenaire S, they foamed the river system of what will be later the Russia, reaching the Caspian Sea then and Constantinople. They created a whole of forts and stations of exchanges, thus installing the first Russian state.

The Slavic and the Byzantine did not distinguish however the Scandinavians from Saxon among these mercenaries. Moreover, the guards varègues of the Byzantine empire were generally the Saxon ones (see below). In the first Russian chronicle this term includes also Angles coming from the island of Brittany.

Rus'

Name that the Varègues were given and who gave the words Russian and Russia.

Varègues ( Varyags , in Russian) are mentioned by the first Russian chronicle as having arrived of beyond the the Baltic, about the 9th century, invited by the Slavic and Finnish tribes to pacify the area. They were carried out by Riourik (Rörek) and his/her two brothers Siniéous and Trouvor, which were established around the Slavic city of Novgorod. These first Varègues were perhaps legendary, but a true Swedish colonization, Aldeigjuborg, were established around the Lac Ladoga at the 8th century. The Slavic inhabitants called these Swedish Rus' .

The role of these Varègues in the Russian history was an important subject of discussion in the Russian histography at the 19th century. Partisans of this theory Norman on the Russian State -   including Nikolai Karamzin and later, Sergueï Pogodin  - thought that, according to the indications of the first chronicle, Varègues had been invited by the Slaves of the east so that they control them and maintain the order. This theory was not without political implication. In the writings of Karamzin the theory Norman justified the domination of the people by the aristocracy, and Pogodin used the theory to explain why the tender of the people was voluntary since the departure -   what was disputed by most liberal of the Russian company, and the Polish historians.

Sources

The Annales of saint Bertin mention the arrival of an embassy varègue at the Court of Louis the Piles with Ingelheim, close to Mainz and specify that “these unknown said to be called Rhos” (May 18th 839). Later, the chronic of last times will indicate that “the Slavic ones and the Russians are the same people and it is of Varègues that the Russians drew their name, whereas, originally, they were Slavic”.

The word rús can be put in relation to the Finnois ruotsi (Sweden), which would go back with the Vieux norrois róthr (to row) and to the Swedish province of Roslagen. Another assumption (Thomsen, Vernardsky) advances that the Scandinaves would have borrowed the word rús from the tribe of the Alains Ruxs. Söderling brings the origin closer to the word to the Goths, originating in Sweden, which reached the Black Sea about the 3rd century. The Slavic ones would have called them Rús , “red-headed people”, then this term would have indicated the whole of the Scandinavian people, of which the Varègues of Novgorod and Kiev.

Certain historians suggest that the Rús , traders and warriors Scandinavian, were locked up, to defend and protect their goods, in field-forts, that they call gardhr . The local populations imitate them and create refuges broader than they name goroda . In these refuge-counters a kind of urban civilization develops which astonishes the Scandinavians, because on their premises, the cities do not exist; this is why Russia is called in Vieux norrois Gardhariki (“country of the cities”). The Slavic ones make these cities the core of their tiny States ( volosti ). To defend them, they call upon Scandinavian mercenaries who, exerting the military power, would have seized the political power after a series of small coups d'etat, as with Novgorod (Riourik) or with Kiev.

A Persan traveller, Istakhri, towards 950, distinguishes three kinds of Rús : those of Kiev, Slawijah (the Slavic ones of Novgorod) and Arthaniyah, whose king lives in Artha (Erz' has, a Finnish tribe fixed on Soura, in the west of Bolghar).

In Of administrando imperio , written into 950, the Byzantine emperor Constantin VII Porphyrogénète notes a commercial route of Grobin (close to Rīga) to Gnezdovo by the Dvina, then by the Dniepr until Kiev and Berezany, in the Crimea. He describes the perilous descent of the seven rapids of the Dniepr whose able the Rhos are made and mentions the name of five of them in languages Slavic, Greek and rhos . He notes that the Rhos perceive tributes of the various tribes Slaves (currencies, furs and slaves).

The Persan diplomat Ibn Rustah describes manners of the Rús towards 950: they make mainly hunting for the slaves and the trade of the furs. They do not cease travelling and make the war in boats. They are valiant and very perfidious. Moreover, beautiful, clean and well vêtus. They are hospital, but quarrellers and related to the duel and never separate from their weapons. They have priests (?) and practice human and animal sacrifices, which are done by hanging.

The Moslem well-read man of Kurdish origin Ibn Fadlân also left them a description, in particular the very detailed description of the burial by boat of one their chiefs of clan including/understanding a human sacrifice.

See also the article Rus' of Kiev.

The guard varègue

See also: Guard varangienne

Varègues appeared in the Byzantine world in 839 when the emperor Theophilus negotiated with them to obtain some mercenaries for his army. Although Rus' generally had peaceful relations with the Byzantine , the raids varègues since north was not rare. These attacks took place in 860, 907, 911, 941, 945, 971, and finally in 1043. These raids had of another success only one renegotiation of the commercial treaties; militarily, Varègues were always overcome by the fleet of Constantinople, which used the Greek fire.

The controlling class of the two city-States powerful of Novgorod and Kiev ends up becoming varègue, and the Byzantines could soon buy the services of an official force mercenary, which became the guard varègue. This occurred 988, when the prince of Kiev, Vladimir Ier converts with the orthodoxy. In exchange of the hand of the sister of Basile II, Anne, Vladimir gave 6  000 Varègues like keeps personal. She was one of the most effective and more honest elements of the Byzantine army, as the chronicle of Anne Comnène brings it back during the reign of his/her father Alexis Ier Comnène. Their principal weapon was long a Hache, but they used also the sword and the arc. They were the only ones to successfully defend part of Constantinople during the Fourth crusade, but it was apparently dissolved after the catch of the city in 1204. On this date, the term “varègue” referred to any Mercenaire of the north of Europe and the guard was made up of British and Norman that Russians or Scandinavians.

One of the most famous members of the guard varègue was that which was going to become the future king Harald III of Norway, the “Last of the Vikings”, a giant of more than two meters, a large also known warrior under the name of Harald Hardrada (the “Severe one”), and which arrived at Constantinople in 1035. It took part in step less than 18 battles, until in Sicily (1038/40), and became ἀκόλυθοςἀ ( acolythos ), ordering guard, before turning over at his place in 1043.

Contrary to the very strong influence Viking in Normandy and in the British Isles, the culture varègue did not survive as such the east and was quickly molten in the Slavic substrate.

See too

Internal bonds

• Riourik, List of the monarchs of Russia
• Roslagen, Svealand, Svear
• Aristocracy and Byzantine bureaucracy
• Gotland (Island of) Sweden
• the monk Nestor, writer of the chronic of last times .

• Age of the Vikings

External bonds

• which was Varangiens on '' missouri.edu ''