Древняя Русь и Скандинавия: Избранные труды

Since the 1960s it has been a locus communis in the writings on Old Russian and Scandinavian relations that those Vikings who settled in Eastern Europe in the second half of the eighth to the end of the tenth century underwent rapid assimilation in the Slavic milieu. The second generation of the settlers is considered to have fully adopted the local material culture, to speak Old Russian, and to practice the customs and rituals current among the Eastern Slavs[840].

This conclusion is based on archaeological materials that indeed show that Old Norse ethnically indicative elements were forced out of the material culture of the Old Russian elite already by the end of the tenth century and that they utterly disappeared in the eleventh century. The only non-archaeological argument commonly used to prove this point is the appearance of Slavic personal names in the family of Kievan princes of Scandinavian origin – Svjatoslav, Predslava, and Volodislav, as attested in the Russian treaty with Byzantium of 944[841].

The validity of both arguments is subject to doubt.

Most archaeologists maintain that the introduction of Christianity in Rus’ speeded up the ethno-cultural assimilation of Scandinavians, as the unified religion and rites replaced different heathen cults and practices. It is true that Christianity exerted a deep influence on Old Russian culture as well as on the culture of other previously pagan peoples, first and foremost on their burial customs in which ethnic indicators are more obvious than in other cultural traditions. At the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries the diversity of burial customs in town necropolis in Ancient Rus’ is replaced with a unified Christian rite. Therefore the disappearance of specifically Old Norse features in Old Russian burial monuments at that time can be regarded not as an indication of the end of the process of assimilation of Scandinavians, but rather as a result of the introduction of Christianity. It is worth mentioning, that in Scandinavian countries too conversion into Christianity led to a rapid disappearance of burials typical for the tenth century and to the spread of simple graves with no objects to manifest the ethnicity of the buried in any way.

Another consideration to be taken into account is the fact that clothes, ornaments and weapons served as indicators not only of ethnicity, but of a social status as well, and therefore they could have been rather easily changed when a person entered a new social and political entity.

Thus, speaking in terms of archaeology, the assimilation of Varangians by the beginning of the eleventh century arouses doubts. The disappearance of ethnically indicative objects can be easily explained by the introduction of Christianity and changes in the status fashion of the Old Russian elite that included Varangians.

However, ethnic and cultural assimilation does not consist of changes in material culture only. It is a complicated and manifold process of the replacement of one set of features characteristic of an ethno-cultural community with a different one. Together with material manifestations such as house-building techniques, implements and everyday objects, costume and ornaments, these features include cultural phenomena like language and literacy, folklore and literature, religion and common beliefs. Taken together they form the means for a community to become aware of its integrity and of its opposition to other communities, that is, they provide it with self-consciousness and self-identification. The assimilation then can be considered to have taken place only if all these factors underwent certain changes.

No systematic studies exist so far, which would describe the cultural and mental aspects of assimilation of Varangians in Eastern Europe. The reasons are both the concentration on archaeological evidence and scarcity of non-material sources. In fact, there is no way to learn what language was spoken or what alphabet was used by a noble warrior buried in the Black Mound in Chernigov, which gods were worshipped by those cremated in Gnjozdovo or how Vladimir the Saint and Jaroslav the Wise, Russian princes of Scandinavian descent, regarded their identity. The concrete questions of that kind are doomed to remain unanswered. Still there are indications to provide for more general answers, even if in a preliminary and hypothetical form at the moment.

The most important indications of ethno-cultural self-identification are language and literacy. Their retention by a community living in an ethnically and culturally alien milieu is an unequivocal testimony to isolated position of this community as perceived both by its members and its neighbours. Therefore the time when Scandinavians who had settled in Rus’ stopped to speak their native language and to write with runes is of crucial importance.