c. 750–839
Staraya Ladoga and the Rhos, c. 750–839
A Scandinavian settlement grows up in the middle of the 8th century on the Volkhov River, about 10 km above its mouth in Lake Ladoga. Tree rings date its earliest buildings to 753, and East Slavs form most of its people by the 770s. The Norse call the place Aldeigja, and it controls the Volkhov, the way from the Baltic into the interior of Eastern Europe.
The Volkhov at Staraya Ladoga, with the stone fortress of the 12th to 16th centuries on the far bank, photographed in 2020Wikimedia Commons, Александр Байдуков, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Volkhov River view upstream.jpg)
From Ladoga traders go up the Volkhov to Lake Ilmen, haul their boats over a portage to the upper Volga and sail down it to the Khazar capital Atil near the Caspian Sea, from where caravans go on to Baghdad. They sell furs, honey and slaves for silver dirhams, and the oldest dirhams found in European Russia, the earliest struck in 786–787, come from Ladoga. A hoard at Peterhof on the Gulf of Finland ends with coins of 804–805, and more than half of the graffiti scratched on its coins are Norse runes.
Burial mounds of the 8th to 10th centuries above the Volkhov near Staraya Ladoga, photographed in 2009Wikimedia Commons, Wilson44691, Public domain (VolkhovRiverMounds.jpg)
In 839 envoys of the Byzantine emperor Theophilos come to the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim. With them are men who say that their people are called Rhos and that their king, the chacanus, sent them to Constantinople in friendship. Theophilos asks Louis to let them travel home through his empire, because the road they came by runs through fierce and savage peoples. Louis finds that they are Swedes, suspects them of spying and holds them until he can learn whether they came in good faith.
The Annals of St Bertin record the visit under 839, the earliest mention of the Rus' in a Western source. Historians still debate whether chacanus stands for the Khazar title khagan or for the Norse name Håkon.
Sources
- Annals of St Bertin, year 839, translated by Janet L. Nelson, The Annals of Saint-Bertin (1991).
- Władysław Duczko, Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe (2004).
- Ildar Garipzanov, The Annals of St. Bertin (839) and Chacanus of the Rhos (2006).
Prev: The rout at high tideNext: The Rus' at Constantinople, 860