There are several reasons why Khazar styles of rulership and titles would have resonated among the inhabitants of major river basins north of the Black Sea steppes. This semi-nomadic people showed formidable organisational powers, regularly extracting resources from its neighbours, while the pax khazarica in the steppes between the Crimea and north-east of the Caspian Sea beckoned to traffickers along the 'Silk Roads' from the Far East, Caucasian markets and the core lands of the Abbasid caliphate. The abatement of Arab attempts to submit the Khazars and other steppe-dwellers to Islam, followed by the Abbasids' issue of huge quantities of silver dirhams from the mid-eighth century onwards, gave a fillip to trade nexuses of long standing. The dynamics of these exchanges are unknown to us and they fluctuated according to circumstances. But the predisposition of populations to cluster around lakes and along riverways provided staging posts and potential emporia for longer-distance traders. Great lakes such as Il'men' and Ladoga performed a dual function. Their resources and the fertile lakeside soils sustained sizeable concentrations of persons engaged in hunting, fishing and agriculture with iron ploughs. But they also acted as communications hubs, drawing in miscellaneous groups and individuals and enabling them to practise craftsmanship and trade. The nexuses between fur-yielding northern regions, the peoples of the steppes and Sasanian Persian and Byzantine markets attested in the sixth and earlier seventh centuries were probably not obliterated by the first century of Arab conquests. Their persistence would account for the speed with which silver coins from Abbasid mints reached the Gulf of Finland. At the small trading-post of Staraia Ladoga, Abbasid coins occur in almost the earliest 'micro-horizon'; so does a set of smith's tools analogous to kits found in Scandinavia. Workshops welded knives by an apparently Scandinavian technique, produced nails and boat rivets and by the beginning of the ninth century, if not earlier, glass beads were being worked up. One of the earliest hoards of dirhams uncovered in Russia was deposited early in the ninth century beside the Gulf of Finland, just west of modern St Petersburg. On some, Scandinavian-type runes and Arabic characters are scratched while the name of 'Zacharias' is scratched in Greek on one dirham and others have Turkic runes, such as might have been acquired en route through the Khazar dominions.[5] These markings serve as a paradigm of the types of outsider then active in the fur trade. And it can hardly be coincidental that dirhams feature among grave goods in central Sweden from the end of the eighth century. The region of Sweden facing the Aland islands was known in medieval Swedish law codes as 'Rodhen' or 'Rodhs'. The Baltic Finns' designation for persons hailing from there, Rotsi, probably became attached to all Scandinavians whom they encountered. So did the version subsequently borrowed by the Slavs, Rus'. These Rotsi probably traded in smallish groups on their own account, but emporia east of the Baltic facilitated travel and exchange, while an overarching symbol of authority would have encouraged order. An overlord sporting the same title as the Khazar ruler's - through whose dominions the dirhams, mentioned above, passed - fitted the bill. There is thus some congruence between the Frankish annals' indication of a Scandinavian 'people' headed by a khagan and the chronicle's tale of the native peoples' covenant with 'Varangians'.
Signs of turbulence c.86o-c.8yi
The location of the principal base of the 'khagan of the Northmen' (as a Byzantine imperial letter of 871 termed him)[6] is controversial, but may well have looked onto Lake Il'men', just south of the later Novgorod. Fortified from the start and with outlying settlements dating from the beginning of the ninth century or earlier, this large settlement-cum-emporium dominated communications northwards to Ladoga, eastwards towards the Volga's headwaters, and south towards the Western Dvina. The island-like site of what is now called Riurikovo Gorodishche could well be the inspiration for Arabic descriptions of a huge boggy 'island', three days' journey wide, where 'the khaqan of the Rus' resided.[7] This is presumably where a Byzantine religious mission headed for in the earlier 860s. The mission was requested by the Rus' soon after a great fleet had sailed to Constantinople, looting the suburbs but apparently coming to grief in a storm on the way back. This Viking-style raid had at least the co-operation of the Rus' leadership and our main Byzantine source for the subsequent mission intimates that its purpose was to convert the ruler and notables responsible.[8] Many participants in the 860 expedition are likely to have been newcomers to the lands east of the Baltic and a fresh influx of fortune-seeking war-bands could well account for the disorder and political discontinuity evident for the final third of the century. Staraia Ladoga seems to have been razed to the ground between c.863 and c.871; around the same time there was a conflagration at Gorodishche and other settlements in the Volkhov basin suffered devastating fires in the second half of the ninth century.
One cannot be sure whether the archaeological evidence registers one wave of turbulence or recurrent bouts. But the damage done to two outstanding emporia cannot have been without political implications, and there was probably at least one change of princely regime. The Byzantine mission could well have been dislodged by such upheavals: there is no further trace of a prelate among the Rus' for a hundred years. The violence did not put paid to commercial vitality and may actually have been prompted by it, in that accumulation of silver and other treasure could be used to win followers and spectacularly raise one's status, while one of the main 'products' exchanged for dirhams was slaves, a trade involving at least the threat of duress. But incessant free-for-all violence was deleterious to so intricate a network, consisting of clusters of settlements around major emporia, towards which countless outlying 'feeders' contributed the most important product of all, furs. So it would not be surprising if a rather tighter political order emerged after a period of instability. One hint is the construction at Staraia Ladoga of what was apparently a citadel, surrounded by limestone slabs. Across the river from the expanding settlement, at Plakun, warriors armed in Scandinavian mode began to fill a separate burial ground. In the mid-890s a 'great hall' was built, partly from dismantled ship's timbers, and this could well have been where a prince or governor lived. The ensemble may register an attempt to guard the western approaches of Rus' against further marauders or conquerors from the Scandinavian world.
At the other end of the Volkhov, Gorodishche likewise recovered from physical destruction. By the end of the ninth century structures were being raised on boggier ground below the original hill-fortress. Workshops turned out Scandinavian-style brooches for women, weaponry and other metalwork for men. Silver, glass beads and other semi- de luxe items from eastern markets were dealt in, hoarded or worn as ornaments and, as at other centres of the trading nexus, pottery was beginning to be turned on the wheel rather than moulded by hand. Grandees, full-time warriors and wealthy wives were probably of Scandinavian stock, like the princely family presumed to have presided over them. But the majority of those choosing to work bone, wood and clay at Gorodishche were Slavs and Finns, some having travelled great distances to do so. Finds of their products attest this. The composition of the populations of other centres such as Pskov varied according to circumstances, but a constant is the presence of wealthy, armed, Scandinavians.
5
E. A. Mel'nikova,
6
'chaganum... Northmannorum': Louis II,
7
Ibn Rusta,
8