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495

Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, by 

 Wladyslaw Duczko (Brill: Leiden, 2004; pp. 290. Eur 122).

The value of this book lies in the discussion of familiar theories and documents 
about Russian origins, and of the older archaeology, in the light of the recent 
excavations at Ladoga, Gorodische, Pskov, Yaroslavl, Gnezdovo, Chernigov 
and Kiev. This entails paying some attention to the Slav-nationalist-Soviet 
dream of ethnogenesis, long discredited almost everywhere, as well as mounting 
an attack on the still prevalent notion that the Swedish immigrants of the 
eighth to tenth centuries were ‘a people acting towards one goal, the creation 
of a Kievan state’. The archaeology suggests that Kiev emerged rather suddenly 
towards the mid-tenth century, until when there were several more important 
centres of Rus settlement and power either autonomous or subject to a kagan 
in the north. The strongly Swedish character of most burials and fi nds in these 
places is not inconsistent with the involvement of Nordic families and 
communities with other cultures, of which the Slav was not the most important 
at that date; this was a Nordic society evolving over two or more centuries 
before succumbing to Rurikid hegemony, and so, eventually to Greek 

EHR, cxx. 486 (April 2005) 

496

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christianity and to a version of its past which gave Kiev an anachronistic 
importance. Not until the 940s was that one aggressive kin group controlling 
peoples on the upper Dnieper, and using the partly-Kazar town of Kiev as a 
depot for goods and armaments rather than as a main settlement; the sparse 
archaeology is not inconsistent with the one reference in De Administrando. 
Prince Svyatoslav’s boisterous offensives would have taken the Rurikid Rus far 
from this place if he had lived longer; it was the eventual arrival of his son 
Vladimir from Novgorod with Swedish mercenaries, and his conversion, which 
promoted the southern outpost to their senior city. It is a view of early Rus 
which challenges that of Pritsak (The Origin of Rus, 1981) frequently, and that 
of Franklin and Shepard (The Emergence of Rus, 1996) occasionally; although 
Shepard’s theory of a Byzantine mission to enlist Danish help against Muslims 
in the Mediterranean c.840 is fully endorsed. At times, the author’s readiness 
to deduce direct Swedish immigration from the close similarity between 
Russian fi nds and those of Birka sits uneasily with his contention that the 
oriental Uppland borrowed and adapted several cultural traits; and his 
examination of the Rurikid pitchfork/trident symbol is fascinating but 
inconclusive. On the whole, the argument is well sustained and timely, and 
congratulations must be offered to Dr Duczko, but not to Brill, whose pricing 
puts the work beyond the means of all but a small number of historically-
minded millionaires. The 78 fi gures and maps are however, clear and helpful.†

Oxford

 

E. CHRISTIANSEN

EHR, cxx. 486 (April 2005) 

† doi:10.1093/ehr/cei165