The Slavic World & Kievan Rus

The rivers gave it away. The great waterways of eastern Europe — the Volga, the Dnieper, the Don — run like arteries through a flat, forested landscape. Travel them far enough south and you reach the Black Sea. From the Black Sea you reach Constantinople, the richest city in the medieval world. Scandinavian traders figured this out sometime in the eighth century and began pouring into the region.

They were called The name given to Norse (Viking) traders and warriors who traveled east through the river systems of what is now Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus from roughly the 8th century onward. The word likely derives from Old Norse várar, meaning "pledges" or "oaths" — suggesting bands of oath-bound companions. The Varangians founded trading posts, extracted tribute from local Slavic populations, and eventually formed the ruling dynasty of Kievan Rus. — a name that probably comes from an Old Norse word for oath-bound companions. They were not conquerors in the conventional sense. They were traders, hunting amber, furs, honey, and above all slaves. The slave trade was not a sideline. It was the economic engine of the early Rus economy. The word "slave" in several European languages derives from "Slav," which tells you something about the scale. Slavic men, women, and children were captured in raids, moved down the rivers under brutal conditions, and sold in Constantinople and Baghdad. The wealth that funded Varangian expansion came substantially from trafficking in people. They built fortified trading posts along the rivers. Some of those posts turned into towns. Some of those towns turned into something resembling states.

The Slavic peoples already living across this territory were not blank slates waiting for Scandinavian direction. Older historiography sometimes implied as much, but the archaeological record says otherwise. Before the Varangians arrived, Slavic communities farmed settled land, built fortified hilltop settlements, produced sophisticated pottery and metalwork, and practiced religions centered on deities like Perun (thunder) and Veles (cattle, the underworld), with seasonal rituals tied to the agricultural year. They had tribal governance, kinship networks, and trade contacts reaching into the Byzantine and Avar worlds.