Ancestors to Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians, the Kievan Rus were a combination of Slavic and Viking influences.
Their origin and identity are much in dispute. Traditional Western scholars believe them to be Scandinavian Vikings, an offshoot of the Varangians, who moved southward from the Baltic coast and founded the first consolidated state among the eastern Slavs, centring on Kiev.
The genetic legacy of the Viking Age lives on today with six per cent of people of the UK population predicted to have Viking DNA in their genes compared to 10 per cent in Sweden.
The Russians were formed from East Slavic tribes, and their cultural ancestry is based in Kievan Rus'. Genetically, the majority of Russians are identical to their East and West Slavic counterparts, unlike Northern Russians, who belong to the Northern European Baltic gene pool.
Slavic tribes and Viking tribes were closely linked, fighting one another, intermixing and trading. “The presence of Slavic warriors in Denmark was more significant than previously thought; this image emerges from new research” Gardeła adds in the release.
Historians say that the Finno-Ugric people were the first inhabitants of Russia, with many of our customs and fairytales descending from their civilization: the cult of ancestors, the love of forests and villages, our patience and communality.
According to most official histories, the great medieval state of Kyiv Rus was founded by a group of Viking trader-adventurers who were invited to bring law and order to the potentially prosperous but disordered and chaotic lands of far eastern Europe.
The first known people to set foot on Russian territory were called the Cimmerians. They ruled between 1000 and 700 BCE and were followed by the Scythians in 700 BCE. The Scythian nomads established a military state and defeated the Persians, but were nonetheless conquered by the Sarmatians in 3 BCE.
Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe.
From about 1500 BC a group of people called the Slavs settled into the area which is now Poland and Western Russia. Although they were often under threat from other groups who wanted their land, they held their ground there until the arrival of the Vikings in the 9th century.
1. Norway. As one of the countries where Vikings originated, there's tons of Viking heritage in Norway.
The Vikings, referred to as Varangians in Eastern Europe, were known throughout Europe as traders and raiders, and perhaps the creators or instigators of the first organized Russian state: Kievan Rus.
Prince Igor (Russian: Игорь) is the rightful heir to the throne of Kievan Rus. He is King Rurik's only son and Oleg's, Dir's and Askold's nephew.
The scholarly consensus holds that they were originally Norsemen, mainly originating from present-day Sweden, who settled and ruled along the river-routes between the Baltic and the Black Seas from around the 8th to 11th centuries AD.
In the Russian Tsardom, the word Russia replaced the old name Rus' in official documents, though the names Rus' and Russian land were still common and synonymous to it, and often appeared in the form Great Russia (Russian: Великая Россия), which is more typical of the 17th century, whereas the state was also known as ...
Russian Kingdom (1547-1721), Russian Empire (1721) -1917), Russian Republic (1917), Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1917-1922, since 1922 - part of the USSR)
Thereafter, the state was called, “Kievan Rus”. Mostly furs, slaves, and wax, were traded for Arabian silver, as well as Byzantine luxury goods.
Genetic studies show that Russians are closest to Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians and to other Slavs as well as to Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Hungarians.
Ethno-cultural subdivisions. West Slavs originate from early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after the East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period. They are noted as having mixed with Germanics, Hungarians, Celts (particularly the Boii), Old Prussians, and the Pannonian Avars.
Stereotypical physical characteristics of Russian people include a broader nose, dark blond eyebrows, fair skin, and a round face. There are a number of factors that contribute to these characteristics. In cultural stereotypes, Russian people are also seen as being individualistic, hard-working, honest, and generous.
While both Ukrainians and Russians consider themselves Orthodox Slavs, Rurik, the founding father of the Kievan Rus' dynasty, which goes back to the 9th Century, was a pagan Viking.
The history of Ukrainian nationality can be traced back to the kingdom of Kievan Rus' of the 9th to 12th centuries. It was the predecessor state to what would eventually become the Eastern Slavic nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
The events of 1066 in England effectively marked the end of the Viking Age. By that time, all of the Scandinavian kingdoms were Christian, and what remained of Viking “culture” was being absorbed into the culture of Christian Europe.