Varangian-Rus Warrior-Merchants and the Origin of the Russian State

Abstract

Kievan Russia, the "mother" of present-day Russia, was an agricultural and commercial state centered in present-day Ukraine. The emergence of the Kievan state was linked to the Varangian-Rus warrior-merchants who exploited the Dnieper and Volga trade routes between the Baltic and the Caspian and Black Seas in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This Norse military aristocracy played an important role in the integration of disparate Slav tribes into a powerful political unit ruled by the Slavicized descendants of the original Norse rulers.