SHORTER NOTICES

495

Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, by

Wladyslaw Duczko (Brill: Leiden, 2004; pp. 290. Eur 122).

The value of this book lies in the discussion of familiar theories and documents
about Russian origins, and of the older archaeology, in the light of the recent
excavations at Ladoga, Gorodische, Pskov, Yaroslavl, Gnezdovo, Chernigov
and Kiev. This entails paying some attention to the Slav-nationalist-Soviet
dream of ethnogenesis, long discredited almost everywhere, as well as mounting
an attack on the still prevalent notion that the Swedish immigrants of the
eighth to tenth centuries were ‘a people acting towards one goal, the creation
of a Kievan state’. The archaeology suggests that Kiev emerged rather suddenly
towards the mid-tenth century, until when there were several more important
centres of Rus settlement and power either autonomous or subject to a kagan
in the north. The strongly Swedish character of most burials and fi nds in these
places is not inconsistent with the involvement of Nordic families and
communities with other cultures, of which the Slav was not the most important
at that date; this was a Nordic society evolving over two or more centuries
before succumbing to Rurikid hegemony, and so, eventually to Greek

EHR, cxx. 486 (April 2005)

496

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christianity and to a version of its past which gave Kiev an anachronistic
importance. Not until the 940s was that one aggressive kin group controlling
peoples on the upper Dnieper, and using the partly-Kazar town of Kiev as a
depot for goods and armaments rather than as a main settlement; the sparse
archaeology is not inconsistent with the one reference in De Administrando.
Prince Svyatoslav’s boisterous offensives would have taken the Rurikid Rus far
from this place if he had lived longer; it was the eventual arrival of his son
Vladimir from Novgorod with Swedish mercenaries, and his conversion, which
promoted the southern outpost to their senior city. It is a view of early Rus
which challenges that of Pritsak (The Origin of Rus, 1981) frequently, and that
of Franklin and Shepard (The Emergence of Rus, 1996) occasionally; although
Shepard’s theory of a Byzantine mission to enlist Danish help against Muslims
in the Mediterranean c.840 is fully endorsed. At times, the author’s readiness
to deduce direct Swedish immigration from the close similarity between
Russian fi nds and those of Birka sits uneasily with his contention that the
oriental Uppland borrowed and adapted several cultural traits; and his
examination of the Rurikid pitchfork/trident symbol is fascinating but
inconclusive. On the whole, the argument is well sustained and timely, and
congratulations must be offered to Dr Duczko, but not to Brill, whose pricing
puts the work beyond the means of all but a small number of historically-
minded millionaires. The 78 fi gures and maps are however, clear and helpful.†

Oxford

E. CHRISTIANSEN

EHR, cxx. 486 (April 2005)

† doi:10.1093/ehr/cei165