Древняя Русь и Скандинавия: Избранные труды

Two graffiti on the walls of St. Sofia cathedral in Novgorod provide another chronologically precise reference point. Although inscribed by persons with Old Norse personal names, both texts are written in Old Russian in Cyrillic. The first graffito reads «Oh, miserable feel I, Ger(e)ben the sinner»[847]. The name Ger(e)ben is an obvious rendering of ON Herbeinn, OSw. Herben, the name not otherwise attested in Old Russian sources. There can be no doubts that Gerben came from a Varangian (originally Swedish?) family, and his mastership of Old Russian was flawless. He makes no mistakes of any kind and he uses a formula widespread among Old Russian scribes (who entered it in marginalia in manuscripts) and laymen. The grafitto is dated to the second half of the eleventh century.

The second inscription reads: «Lord, help your slave Far’man, Gleb’s retainer»[848]. It has a more precise date, most probably 1137, as the inscription mentions prince Gleb who then ruled in Novgorod. As in the first graffito, this one also contains an Old Norse personal name, or rather a nickname, Far'man < Farmadr in an Old Russian formulaic text. The accuracy of spelling, the usage of correct forms, and the sureness of hand show that both, Gerben and Far’man, were experienced in writing and that their mother tongue was Old Russian though they had Old Norse names – probably due to family tradition.

The same tendency is characteristic of runic literacy[849]. Besides amulets from the Volkhov region (Old Ladoga and Gorodichshe) the tenth century is rich in graffiti on Islamic coins coming from hoards buried in different parts of Eastern Europe, but mostly on the sites along the Dnieper, the Western Dvina, and the Upper Volga, the main river routes of that time. The majority of inscriptions, ca. 200, are made with runes and rune-like signs. There are only about 10 Arabic inscriptions, some 10 made with Turkish runes, up to 5 made with Armenian or Georgian letters, and one Greek graffi to. Quite recently a coin carved with two Cyrillic letters was found in Gnjozdovo. The Old Norse inscriptions are very short, they consist of one word or one or several rune-like signs. The readable graffi ti, not more than twenty in number, contain words guð and kuþ, goð «god», kiltR, gildr «of full weight, of good quality», or personal names like ubi, Úbbi. More numerous are pictures of warrior goods, namely weapons (swords, knives, arrows), ships, drinking horns, banners, and symbols like swastika, Thor’s hammers, or the emblems of the Rurikides. The runic and rune-like inscriptions and the pictures on coins are made in the same technique and must have been executed by warriors and merchants of Scandinavian origin during their stay in or voyage through Eastern Europe[850].

In the eleventh century the number of runic inscriptions found in Eastern Europe decreases and their character shows traces of degradation. Except for the Berezan’ stone that was erected by Scandinavians on their way to or from Byzantium there is only one inscription typical for Scandinavia, which represents a part of futhark carved on a bone from Novgorod[851]. Identification of other inscriptions as runic is uncertain. Though the letters are similar to runes, there are misspellings, syntactical constructions unusual for Old Norse, etc. These features can be probably regarded as a result of gradual loss of writing-in-runes habits of the descendants of the Varangians as well as their loss of native language.

As scanty as the sources for the ninth to the eleventh century are, they seem to reflect different stages in the linguistic assimilation of Scandinavians in Rus’. By the mid-tenth century the Varangians became bilingual; by the end of the eleventh century they used Old Russian as their mother tongue.

The developments in the interval between the mid-tenth and late eleventh centuries are partially attested by personal names current in the family of Kievan grand princes and among the warrior elite. The Old Russian annalist of the beginning of the twelfth century, the author of the earliest extant Russian chronicle (though preserved in manuscripts of the fourteenth century and later) was sure that Russian princes descended from Rurik (< Hrcerekr), a leader of a Norse people rus \ who had been invited by the Novgorodians in 862 to be their ruler[852]. His commander-in-chief Oleg together with Rurik’s son Igor’ moved to Kiev and founded the dynasty of Russian rulers. Though the traditions about Rurik, Oleg and Igor’ were most probably put together in a genealogical sequence by a late eleventh-century annalist and before that existed as separate tales or cycles of tales[853], there can be little doubt that the tales were based on historical memories and preserved some real details, names of the heroes among them.