[gothic-l] Re: Greutung, Therving

[Francisc Czobor]

--- In gothic-l at y..., george knysh <gknysh at y...> wrote:
> ...
> *****GK: This is obviously incorrect. The first state
> ("knyazhenie") on contemporary Russian territory was
> that of the Slovenes (in the area of later Novgorod),
> and this is clearly stated in the Primary Chronicle.
> The Varyags came later. The Iranic theory mentioned
> above holds that these Varyags adopted the political
> terminology of the Khazar Empire (which was Iranic
> speaking in the West at that time/ late 8th early 9th
> c.) and were perhaps at first closely connected to it:
> whence "Rus'" and "Kagan" (as the Swedish ruler of the
> Rus' was called by his ambassadors in 839)******
> 

Probably you're right. I'm not very well informed about the old 
history of the Eastern Slavs, and the books usually speak about the 
Kiev state as the first Eastern Slavic state. However, the 
term "knyazhenie" comes from "knyaz", from Old Slavic kunenzu, of 
Germanic origin (*kuningaz, whence König, king, konung, etc. and, as 
an early borrowing from Germanic, the Finnish kuningas. The feminine 
form - knyagina - sounds alike the German Königin).
The Kagan was in fact the ruler of the Khazars, which were in 
variable relationship (war/peace) with the "Rus'" state.

Francisc



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