Transit Routes in Eastern Europe in the 9th to 11th Centuries

Abstract

The reports of Arab geographers and numismatic data are combined in a review of the literature on two major transit trade routes in Eastern Europe: the Baltic-Caspian trade route and the route “from the Varangians [Scandinavians] to the Greeks [Byzantium].” Hoards of Arab silver coins, known as dirhems, along major water routes clearly point to the direction of the Baltic-Caspian route along the Volga, and date the earliest use of the route from the late 8th century. Trade along the route involved mainly the Volga Bulgars, Ugro-Finnic and Letto-Lithuanian tribes, but not the Slavs, as had earlier been supposed. The existence of the route from the Baltic to the Black Sea along the Dnieper River (“from the Varangians to the Greeks”) was reported by two 11th-century historians—an unidentified Russian chronicler and Adam of Bremen. The author rebuts recent suggestions that the Dnieper route was not as significant as commonly assumed.