The Scandinavian Infiltration into Early Russia

Abstract

IN Scandinavia, and particularly in Sweden, the period from 750 to 800 was marked by pronounced activity in organization and conquest. Toward the beginning of the century, Ivarr ViIfaImi of Denmark had built up an extensive confederacy including southern Sweden and portions of the continental Baltic coast. His grandson Harold Hlildit6nn later restored the widespread realm which an intervening generation had dissipated, but ended his career in the battle of Bravellir (sometime between 750 and 770), by which a rival king, Sigurd Hring, vindicated his secession from the Dano-Swedish combination and set up an independent central Swedish kingdom.' In one of the earliest Old Norse genealogical lays, the Ynglingatal, there is evidence that even in the seventh century a king of central Sweden controlled certain property on the Courland coast,2 where the prevalence of contacts between this area and Sweden is corroborated by archaeological discoveries of Swedish ornaments dating from at least 800.3 During the ninth century, Swedish interest in commerce developed rapidly, as is indicated by the development of Birka (Bj6rk6) as an important trading center on Lake Malar, west of modern Stockholm and, coincidentally with the rise of Swedish trade, we discover on Russian soil abundant archaeological traces of Swedish infiltration. During the first half of the ninth century, Swedish settlers appeared on the southeastern shore of Lake Ladoga. About 900, a Swedish settlement was founded at Gnezdovo, near Smolensk, and Swedish immigration reached the headwaters of the rivers Volga and Oka in the former Russian provinces of Yaroslav and Vladimir. Ancient objects of Swedish origin belonging especially to the tenth and early eleventh centuries have been found in Russia, particularly along the courses of the rivers Dvina, Dnieper, and Volga and near Lakes Ladoga and Ilmen. The existence of genuine Swedish colonists is proved by the frequent discovery of fibulae of the type worn in pairs by women, a circumstance which demonstrates the presence of the colonists' families. Finds of Swedish objets d'art of the ninth and tenth centuries along the northern Russian watercourses, particularly those which provide an easy route between the Baltic and the Volga, indicate a lively interest in Oriental trade, the existence of which is amply corroborated by the appearance in Sweden itself of ornaments of post-Sassanid origin dating from the ninth century. The simultaneous occurrence of similar and characteristic reniform plaques of the early ninth century both in the vicinity of Lake Malar in Sweden and also in southeastern Russia (but in no intermediate region except Finland) points to the opening by the Swedes of a new trade route via the