224 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE bands of plunderers, called vaeringjar, or Varangians. By Northmen using Russia's great network of rivers they pene- in Russia trated the interior easily and made their way to the Black Sea. Here and there they seem to have established fortified trading-stations and to have lorded it over the Fin- nish, Slavic, and Tartar populations. As early as 839 they had visited Constantinople and had come home through the Frankish Empire. They were established at Kiev in south- ern Russia about 850. The oldest Russian chronicle tells us that in 859 the Slavs refused to pay any more tribute to the Varangians and drove them away and tried to govern them- selves. Disorder and civil war resulted, however, and they then sent to the Varangians or Russ (Ros is the Slavic name for Swedes) for a king to rule them. This first ruler of Russia was named Rurik and had the title of Grand- Prince and his capital was at Novgorod. Two of his followers set up another kingdom at Kiev, but his successor absorbed it. An Arabian geographer of the ninth century estimates the number of Russ or Northmen in Russia at one hundred thousand, and Arabian historians say that by 900 the Black Sea was called the Russian Sea. The Swedes were also found upon the shores of the Caspian Sea. Ere long they threat- ened Constantinople and were paid tribute to leave its environs alone. In the later tenth century they served in the famous Varangian imperial bodyguard. In 988 the ruler of Russia, who had married a sister of the Byzantine emperor, accepted Christianity and brought Rus- sia into the Eastern Church rather than under the Papacy. The Bible had already been translated into the Slavic tongue in the previous century, and this version was now employed in Russia, where the Northmen themselves soon became Slavized. Many Anglo-Saxon coins and also a large number of Arabic coins dating between 850 and 1000 have been found in Sweden and Russia. Indeed, ir. all, over one hundred thousand Oriental coins have been found in Russia, Scan- dinavia, Iceland, and Greenland, showing that the Northmen carried on a great trade with the East across Russia. We still possess commercial treaties which they made with the
