Древняя Русь и Скандинавия: Избранные труды

The study of the linguistic assimilation of Scandinavians in Rus’, i. e. their transition to usage of Old Russian and oblivion of their mother tongue, can base on at least three kinds of sources. First, it is epigraphic material, represented by inscriptions in Runic or Cyrillic script. Second, it is direct or indirect information preserved in Old Russian and foreign sources on the linguistic situation in Rus’ in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Third, it is the usage of Old Norse personal names, though in itself it might be viewed as a family tradition not supported by other cultural features. Still, the degree of phonetic adaptation of Old Norse names in Old Russian sources as well as the context of name-giving can throw some light on the problem.

The earliest written record in Ancient Rus’ is a runic inscription on a wooden stick from Old Ladoga[842]. It is archaeologically dated to the first half of the ninth century. Together with three runic amulets coming from the same area and dated to the tenth century it forms a group of runic inscriptions typical for Eastern Sweden[843]. At least one of the inscriptions, on the Gorodishche amulet II, was produced on the site where it was unearthed: it is a copy of another and earlier amulet (Gorodishche I) found on the same site. Even if the stick and the two amulets belonged to occasional visitors to the Ladoga region and were brought there from Sweden, they must have been intelligible and meaningful enough for the settlers of Scandinavian origin to order a copy of one of the amulets. It means that in the tenth century the Varangians, at least in the North-Western part of Rus’, were in full possession of their native language and beliefs.

In the first quarter of the tenth century first traces of the usage of Old Russian by Varangians appear. In a famous «Varangian» site of Gnjozdovo near Smolensk a burial of a warrior contained fragments of an amphora with a Cyrillic inscription[844]. The warrior must have been a Scandinavian buried with his wife or his concubine, a Scandinavian or a Slav by birth. Judging from the ritual, the burial was performed by his compatriots in a traditional Central Swedish way. The inscription on the amphora deliberately broken during the burial rite has several readings and interpretations, gorouhsha or goroushcha being the most probable. According to these readings, the inscription consisted of one word designating the contents of the amphora, either mustard, or inflammable fluid. As the earliest Cyrillic inscription, it raises many questions, its presence in the grave of a Scandinavian being one of them. Whoever made the inscription, a Slavic or a Russian, i.e. Scandinavian, merchant, it was intended to inform the community consisting mostly of Scandinavians about the contents of the amphora which presupposes their ability to comprehend the message. Thus, the Gnjozdovo inscription though not directly witnessing the usage of Old Russian by the Varangians, still suggests their getting familiar both with it and with the Cyrillic script.

The linguistic practices of rus ’ (Old Russian warrior elite of Scandinavian origin) of the mid-tenth century can be convincingly reconstructed on the basis of information preserved in the treatise «De administrando imperio» written by Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (ca. 950). Parallel Old Norse («Russian») and Slavic names of the Dnieper rapids listed in the treatise suggest that Constantine’s informant, a representative of rus \ was bilingual. Moreover, the Old Norse names are rendered in Greek without any significant corruption of the original words.

On the contrary, identification of Slavic names is sometimes uncertain and the correlation of meanings of both names is obscure. All this means that the informant was in full possession of his mother tongue (most probably Old Swedish as some of the names derive from Old Swedish forms) but he was not so sure about Old Russian[845]. The bilinguism of Old Russian elite and professional warrior strata is corroborated by information of a Spanish traveler Ibrahim Ibn Jakub (960ies) and Leo the Deacon, a Byzantine historian of the late tenth century[846].