What year was Yaroslav the wise born in?

Abstract

Swedish libraries and archives contain a great many Slavic texts on sheets of parchment which originally belonged to the parchment manuscripts seized as war trophies in Northern Russia during the latter half of the 1 6th century. These manuscripts have been 'butchered', and the parchment sheets were then used for covering and binding Swedish governmental documents. While making an inventory of these sheets, I came across 10 pages from a Prologue in the National Archives in Stockholm. These sheets had been used to cover administrative documents, and bear the heading 'Import to Stockholm Anno 159 Г and 'Export from Stockholm Anno 159Г. These sheets belong to the same Codex as a number of pages classified as KB A 787 a 5 in the Royal Library in Stockholm. The sheets in the collection 'Finlandskie fragmenty' (Catalogue No. 4.9.20.) in the Leningrad library of the Academy of Sciences are also part of the same Codex. Photostat copies of the fragments in Leningrad (4.9.20.) and those in Stockholm (KB A 787 a 5) have been published by Widnas (1966). When 1. 1. Sreznevskij (1874) catalogized them, he dated them to the 13th century. The sheets I have discovered in the National Archives contain texts which partially or completely cover 17 and 21 October, and 1,3, and 4 November. One of the texts for that last day 'SvjaScenie Svjatyja Sofija' is of particular interest, as it generally agrees with the text for 1037 in the Nestor Chronicle pertaining to Yaroslav the Wise, and ends with information on his age and date of death (1054 in the Chronicle). It is quite clear that the Prologue text is based on the same source as that of the Chronicle. However, if Sreznevskij is correct in assuming that the manuscript was written in the 13th century, we have here a text version that is about 100 years older than the Laurentius manuscript of 1377, which is the earliest manuscript of the Nestor Chronicle. (The Chronicle is quoted below, according to Miiller 1977). The most important variants and deviations from the Laurentius manuscript have been noted according to Scheffler 1977. Passages in the Prologue which lack an equivalent in the Chronicle are within brackets [ ], and those which differ from the Chronicle are indicated ЬуФ. Here follows the text of the Stockholm Ms RA ТА 1591: