By Martyn Whittock
In Western Europe, we typically associate Vikings with the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, the deep Scandinavian fjords and the attacks on the monasteries and settlements of northwestern Europe. This popular image rarely includes the river systems of Russia and Ukraine, the wide sweep of the Eurasian steppe, the far shores of the Caspian Sea, the incense and rituals of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the high walls and towers of the city of Constantinople. Yet for many Viking raiders, traders, and settlers, it was the road to the East that beckoned.
These Viking adventurers founded the Norse–Slavic dynasties of the ‘Rus,’ which are entangled in the bitterly contested origin myths of both Russia and Ukraine. The Rus ruler, Vladimir (Ukrainian: Volodymyr) the Great, converted to Christianity – in its Eastern Orthodox form – in 988, on Crimea, and so they are at the heart of the concept of ‘Holy Russia’.
Go East!
The East played a major part in the start of the so-called ‘Viking Age,’ in the middle of the eighth century. Alongside various suggested causal factors – such as population growth in Scandinavia, cultural conflict with the expanding Christian Frankish Empire, the beginnings of kingdom building in the northern homelands, and agricultural disruption due to volcanic activity – changes taking place in the distant Islamic Caliphate (as the centre of political power there shifted from Damascus to Baghdad) disrupted the flow of silver to Scandinavia. For years, this silver had reached northern Europe, traded for slaves, furs and amber. Facing this change, raiding in the West offered Norse elites an alternative way to get their hands on precious metals and slaves. At the same time, the forest products of the eastern Baltic and the supply of slaves from there drew Swedish adventurers eastward on the austrvegr (the Eastern Way), as it was known in Old Norse.
Utilising the river systems, these Vikings soon became active on the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and in the Byzantine Empire. As a result, vast streams of silver once again flowed north, as evidenced by hoards of Arab dirham coins unearthed on Gotland and in Sweden. By the 790s, merchants from the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate (now centred on Baghdad) were expanding their trading journeys up the River Volga. The revival of the flow of silver had a huge impact on Norse eastern trading activities, including slave trading.
Written evidence regarding the Vikings of the East
Evidence for this eastern Norse movement survives on several runestones in Sweden. A very important one is located beside the driveway of Gripsholm Castle.
Tóla had this stone raised in memory of her son Haraldr, Ingvar’s brother. They travelled valiantly far for gold, and in the east gave (food) to the eagle. (They) died in the south in Serkland.
The ‘Serkland’ that is referred to on this, and on four other, runestones was the name used by Scandinavians for the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate and other Muslim areas of the East.
This runestone is known today as Sö179, and is one of about twenty-six so-called ‘Ingvar runestones.’ Most of these are found in the Lake Mälaren region of southern Sweden; specifically in the provinces of Södermanland, Uppland and Östergötland. They are named from a Swedish Viking named Ingvar the Far-Travelled, who led an expedition to the Caspian Sea. This single expedition is mentioned on more runestones that any another event in Swedish Viking history.
In the late 840s, the Director of Posts and Intelligence in the Baghdad caliphate’s province of Jibal (in north-western Iran), ibn Khordadbeh, recorded that a group of newly arrived foreign traders, who he called the ‘ar-Rus,’ had brought merchandise to Baghdad on camels. ‘Rus’ traders had also been noted further east, in lands described as ‘Sind, India, and al-Sin’. There are debates over whether the last place represented Tang China or the lands of the Uyghurs. Islamic travellers also wrote dramatic accounts of meeting Norse traders and slavers on the River Volga, in the first half of the tenth century.
The Norse and origin stories in Russia and Ukraine
In the twelfth century, a source of information known as the Tale of Bygone Years, but now frequently referred to as the Russian Primary Chronicle, was compiled in what is now Ukraine. In this account, Viking adventurers (called the ‘Varangian Rus’) used force to subjugate the Slavic and Finnish tribes living south-east of the Baltic. But, according to this chronicle, they were then driven out. The chronicle then asserts that, once free of the Rus, warfare broke out between the indigenous tribes and they decided that, perhaps, the rule of the Rus was not so bad after all. Consequently, they invited them back to bring order.
The three brothers referred to in the Russian Primary Chronicle (and the towns they were credited as founding) were: Rurik (or Riurik) in Novgorod, Sineus in Beloozero and Truvor in Izborsk. The last two may be Slavic versions of original Old Norse names: Signjotr and Thorvar. Rurik, who was to give his name to the Rus dynasty itself (the Rurikid), represents a name that was originally something like Old Norse Hrøríkr or Rorik.
According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Viking brothers were of the Varangian tribe of the Rus. This is a designation designed to clearly signal that they were the people who eventually gave rise to the state of the Kyivan Rus, using the ethnic names known to both Slavs and Byzantines for the Norse in, what is now, Russia and Ukraine. Their return as rulers, the chronicler suggests, occurred sometime around 860/862. When Sineus and Truvor died, Rurik amalgamated their lands under his rule and so was formed the nucleus of what would become the princedom of the Rus. A similar account can be found in the Novgorod First Chronicle, describing events from 1016 to 1471.
The Russian Primary Chronicle also claims that, while Rurik was establishing himself at Novgorod, two other Rus leaders – Askold and Dir – travelled southward down the river Dnieper and established their rule in the settlement later known in Russian as Kiev (Ukrainian: Kyiv). If the Russian Primary Chronicle’s dating is correct, this set up two rival Rus mini-states: Novgorod in the north and Kiev/Kyiv in the south. Rurik ruled until c. 879. His successor, named Oleg or Oleh (a Slavic form of the Old Norse personal-name Helgi) then struck south and seized Kiev/Kyiv in c. 882 and relocated his capital there.
In this way the new state of, what is often called, the Kyivan Rus – which would last until 1240 when it fell to the Mongols – was traditionally established. Over time it became increasingly Slavic in culture, since the Norse were always a minority. However, the last Rurikid (the dynasty claiming descent from the Viking Rurik) to rule Russia did not die until the late sixteenth century.
A contested legacy
After the destruction of the Kyivan Rus state by the Mongols in the 1240s, Russian rulers (based in Moscow) have frequently referenced these Norse origins when trying to enhance their power and secure control over the Ukrainian lands.
Since the eighteenth century the credit that foreign Viking incomers were accorded in the formation of Kyivan Rus has fluctuated over time, in line with changing Russian politics. This is sometimes termed the ‘Normanist debate.’ In the mid eighteenth-century, foreign involvement in the formation of Russia became intellectually unacceptable. However, it became more fashionable again as tsars married into German royal families and relished tales which claimed that Russians needed the strong hand of autocrats to bring order. Then, under Stalin in the 1930s, promoting the idea of foreign founders of Russia could – and did – bring a death sentence.
Under Vladimir Putin the wheel has turned again. The Rus origin story is central to his insistence that Russia and Ukraine are one people, with Moscow now the dominant force.In 2015, Putin justified his 2014 annexation of Crimea by referring to the Christian baptism of the Rus ruler, Vladimir the Great, in 988. In 2016 a massive statue of Vladimir the Great was erected in central Moscow. It was unveiled by his namesake: Vladimir Putin. The erection of the statue was immensely controversial because St Vladimir – called St Volodymyr in Ukrainian – is claimed by both Russia and Ukraine as a founding father.
In 2021, prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Putin once more referenced the ancient Rus as founders of a united state (a view which denied Ukrainian sovereignty). Then, in 2024, Putin explicitly referred to the Norse roots of the Rus as a way of claiming that Russia is now the only legitimate heir of ancient European traditional culture.
In conclusion, the Vikings of the East have been on a journey over time that is comparable to the immensity of their geographical journey in the ancient past. In the conflicted world of the twenty-first century, it is clear that the ‘journey’ of the Vikings of the East is far from over!
You can buy Vikings in the East from Biteback Publishing, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk
Martyn Whittock is a freelance historian and, as a commentator and columnist, writes for several print and online news platforms and has been interviewed on TV and radio news programmes exploring the impact of history on current events in Russia, Ukraine, the UK, the USA and globally. His previous books include Norse Myths and Legends (2017), The Vikings: From Odin to Christ (2018) and American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America (2023).
— Martyn (@MartynHistorian) April 23, 2025
Top Image: Monument to Volodymyr the Great in Kyiv, Ukraine – photo by Mstyslav Chernov / Wikimedia Commons
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