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by int_19h
2104 days ago
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The ruling elite of Kievan Rus was originally all Scandinavian, speaking Old Norse, and holding to their customs. This was still the case when they conquered Kiev. But then they gradually intermingled with the local Slavic nobility, switched to Eastern Slavic as the native language, and adopted the local names. It's the bit about the names that's most telling, IMO. If you follow the Primary Chronicle (the earliest source on this), the first rulers of Rus were Rurik, Oleg, Igor, Olga, Svyatoslav, and Vladimir. The first four names are unambiguously Slavic adaptations of Scandinavian names: Hrorekr, Helgi, and Ingvar. Svyatoslav is an unambiguously Slavic name, but if you deconstruct it, its constituent parts are "holy" and "glory", which correspond to the earlier names Helgi and Hrorekr, respectively - so it's quite possible that it was deliberately constructed as a subtle translated reference. And then Vladimir is a purely Slavic name (Waldemar is a Norse / High German cognate, but it was derived from Vladimir, not the other way around). |
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