In the later ninth century a number of settlements, some quite sizeable and accommodating new arrivals from the Aland isles, appeared near the largely Finnish settlements flanking major lakes and rivers connected with the upper Volga. Their inhabitants, like many of the locals, engaged in the fur trade and it was probably prospects of self-enrichment as well as the fertile soils around Lake Nero and Lake Pleshcheevo that attracted them. The area offered good hunting and trapping, and connections between centres such as Sarskoe and fur-yielding regions much further north were long established. The newcomers' boatmanship provided means of reaching lucrative markets by water. Towards the end of the ninth century a new political structure formed on the middle Volga, under the auspices of the khagan of the Bulgars; the Bulgars themselves amassed huge quantities of furs from the north through barter and tribute collection. Two or three weeks' river journey to the Volga mouth brought one to the Khazar capital, Itil, while caravan routes led overland to the Samanid realm in Transoxiana. From the end of the ninth century the Samanids issued immense quantities ofdirhams to stimulate trade. The Bulgar khagan took from them his first silver coins' designs, and soon the Bulgar elite was Muslim, with mosques and schools. The Rus' newcomers to the upper Volga fully exploited their relative proximity to ample supplies of silver. Tenth- century Samanid dirhams form easily the largest group of Islamic coins found in what is now Russia and a high proportion of those found in the Baltic world. These exchanges did not, however, require a particularly high level of regular co-ordination or armed protection. So although the Volga Rus' and their collaborators made up a kind of polity, perhaps for a while distinct from that in the north-west, they did not create a tight politico-military structure. Silver in the north-east was too easily obtainable and shared out too widely; the routes to northernmost furs were too multifarious. In so far as order needed to be maintained along the middle and lower reaches of the Volga, the Bulgars and Khazars were already there in force.
The installation of northerners on the middle Dnieper towards the end of the ninth century may be viewed against this background. Their cultural characteristics - including language - were still preponderantly Scandinavian and they will have been deemed Rhos, much as the envoys to Byzantium in 838/9 had been. But in so far as status in the burgeoning 'urban' networks was attainable by wealth, advance was open to a wider range of individuals and outriders willing to adopt the elite's working practices. Besides, a likely by-product of the trade in nubile slave girls was children of mixed origins. The newcomers from the north used building techniques characteristic of settlements such as Staraia Ladoga rather than the middle Dnieper region. Log cabins were built on the damp soil beside the river at Kiev in the 890s, judging by dendrochronological analysis, and many structures served as workshops or warehouses. The riverside took on a new importance in the economy of what was still a small town. Kiev had been of significance as an emporium in antiquity, a convenient point for bartering forest produce for products of the steppes and southern civilisations. And it may well have been a staging post for Radhanite Jewish traders shuttling between Western Europe, Itil and China. But only around the end of the ninth century did the Dnieper gain primary importance as a waterway. Kiev became the trading base of navigators capable of negotiating the fearsome Rapids downstream and then, from the Dnieper's mouth, raising masts and setting sail for markets across the sea. It was essentially for this purpose that northerners installed themselves in force at Kiev, Chernigov and nearby Shestovitsa.
Within a few years emissaries were negotiating with the Byzantine emperor and gaining the right for Rus' to trade toll-free in Constantinople itself, entering the city in groups of fifty 'through [only] one gate, without their weapons'. Provided that they brought merchandise, free board and lodgings were theirs for six months as well as 'food, anchors, ropes and sails and whatever is needed' for the return journey.12 An initial charter of privileges was soon followed by a bilateral treaty laying down procedures to settle likely disputes between individual Rus' and Byzantines, and also regulations for shipwrecks and due restitution of cargo. The emissaries' provenance is uncertain, but all five of those named as responsible for the first agreement recur among the fourteen listed for the September 911 treaty. Such continuity and regard for law and order implies a political structure, while the emissaries' names have a Nordic ring: Karl, Rulav, Stemid.
The northerners' move to Kiev might initially have been an attempt at secession from the other Rus' strongpoints, reminiscent of the tale of Askold and Dir. But these traders could scarcely have stood alone for very long, seeing that the finest furs originated far to the north. The 911 treaty, if not its precursor, most probably involved northern-based princes, as well as magnates newly installed on the middle Dnieper. By contrast with Kiev a centre such as Gorodishche was huge and populous, and the military potential of its ruling elite correspondingly formidable. In the early tenth century as earlier, this elite had a paramount leader. An Arab envoy to the Bulgars, who observed Rus' traders on the middle Volga in 922, evoked the court of the Rus' ruler. Residing on a huge throne together with forty slave girls, he mounts his horse without ever touching the ground; 400 'bravest companions' live in his 'palace', 'men who die with him and kill themselves for him'. A lieutenant commands troops and fights his battles.[9] The Rus' debt to Khazar political culture is clear from this and other evidence, including the style of dual rulership, the title ofkhagan and use of variants of his trident-like authority symbol. It may well be that their sacral ruler was ensconced in the north, at Gorodishche, as late as the 920s. The Rus' on the middle Dnieper, while affiliated to this polity, may also have paid tribute to the Khazars. In the mid-tenth century a Khazar ruler still regarded the Severians, Slavs near the middle Dnieper, as owing him tribute, while Kiev had an alternative, apparently Khazar, name, Sambatas.[10]
Princes of Kiev and the 'Byzantine connection': challenge and response
The earliest firm evidence of Rus' paramount rulership based in the region of Kievisforthe son ofRiurik, Igor', andheis only clearly attested there c.940.Itis
significant that the politico-military locus of Rus' shifted south little more than a generation after northerners first arrived in force on the middle Dnieper. This registers the rapid development and allure of the 'Byzantine connection', in terms oftrading and the wealth it could yield. But it also reflects a unique state of affairs. Demand in Byzantium was particularly strong for slaves and this was of practical convenience to the Rus' because, unlike inanimate goods, slaves could disembark and walk their way round the most hazardous of the Rapids. Other perils, including steppe nomads and shipwreck, tipped the Rus' self- interest in favour of an agreed command structure for voyages in convoy and regular dealings with the Byzantine authorities. So did the need to ensure a steady influx of slaves and confront the relatively well-organised and well- armed Slav groupings in the region of the middle Dnieper. Possessing towns and led by 'princes', they could resist tribute demands deemed excessive. Perhaps most important of all, the Rus' leadership needed to deal diplomatically or otherwise with the Khazar realm, whose resilience is easily overlooked. Events from c.940, the first in Rus' relatable with any degree of confidence, tend to bear this out.
9
Ibn Fadlan,
10
P. K. Kokovtsov