[gothic-l] Goths in the East

[george knysh]

--- Bertil Haggman <mvk575b at tninet.se> wrote:
> To continue my chronology
>
> Ca. 800 - 1100 AD
>
> The Finns as well as the Slavs use the ethnic names
> also for the inhabitants of Sweden. The Nestor
> Chronicle mentioned th eRus as being Swedes,
> ca 862).

*****GK: The "Nestor Chronicle" mentioned nothing of
the sort. There were in fact two notions about the
"Rus" conveyed therein (both in the earlier Kyivan
(Old Ukrainian) and in the latter Suzdalian (Old
Russian) recensions). (1)The notion that the "Rus"
were an aristocracy of northerners which arrived in
Kyiv with Oleg [actually the first of three conflated
"Helgis" GK]: they comprised :(a) "Varangians" (but
not ethnically defined) (b)Chuds (probably Estonians)
(c) Slovenians (inhabitants of the Novgorod area) (d)
Merya (a Volga Finnish group)(e) Ves' (another Finnish
group) (f) Krivichi (probably people from Pskov). Now
all of these TOGETHER were the "Rus" in this context,
which you can read in the Chronicle s.a. 882. This
text is generally considered older than the recension
of Nestor, and incorporated by the latter into his
edition, (2) The other notion, perhaps originated by
Nestor himself, or by his successor Sylvester (ca.
1116 AD) is that the "Rus" were a distinct "Varangian"
ethnos from somewhere on the shores of the Baltic.
These "Rus" are NOT, in this context, Swedes, nor
Angles, NOR GOTHS (as the Chronicle called the people
from Gotland) nor anything else except themselves. I
don't propose to comment on this further here. Simply
to point out that your notion of the "Rus" as Swedes
is not found in the source you have cited. Perhaps you
have confused the Chronicle of Nestor with the Annales
Bertiniani s.a. 839.********
>
> (BH)In Old Russian the ethnic name Rus denotes to
begin
> with 'people of a Germanic or Scandinavian origin
> but as
> time passes at the Kievan kingdom was established,
> the
> name came to denote 'the people of Russia'.

*****GK: I don't know what you mean by "Old Russian"
(perhaps the language of Novgorod?) I have just cited
two meanings attached to "Rus" in Old Ukrainian. There
can be no doubt that in the later 9th and most of the
10th centuries "Rus" was used primarily (not
exclusively) in the sense you have indicated (the best
example is from the Treaty of Kyiv with Constantinople
in 944), though in the Rus'ka Pravda the older
"social" meaning (="aristocrat of the first rank") was
retained. By the time of the Baptism of Volodimer
(987/988) "Rus" did become closely associated with the
ethnos of the Kyivan Polani and, by extension, with
their political dominions. The ethnic (as distinct
from the religious and political) appellative "Rus"
(plural) "RUSYN" (singular) never applied to the
people of Russia. In the 15th century these began to
call themselves (beside "Muscovians") "RUSSKII LIUDI"
(and still do today), an adaptation of the religious
designation for practicioners of Eastern Slavic
Orthodoxy. The Ukrainians on the other hand maintained
the secular designation "RUSYNY" as a self-designation
until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the
20th c.*******


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