The Greatest Viking Conquest
For many, the Vikings are best known for what they did in Britain and Western Europe, where their legacy endures to this day. However, the greatest Viking success story – and one often overlooked, especially in the West – is what they did in Russia, whose origins can be traced back directly to Viking conquerors. The story of Russia literally begins with the Vikings. Specifically, Rurik (circa 830 – 879), a Viking chieftain who gained control of the town of Ladoga near today’s Saint Petersburg, around 855. He then built a settlement named Holmgard near Novgorod, founded the Rurik Dynasty, and his descendants conquered a vast region from the Baltic to the Black Sea. That territory encompassed most of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and the western parts of European Russia.
Rurik’s progeny divided that land amongst themselves into states that came to be known collectively as Kievan Rus – the historic heartland of Russia. Our knowledge of Rurik comes from a twelfth century history of Kievan Rus, The Russian Primary Chronicle, written by a monk named Nestor. It states that the Eastern Slavs of Novgorod had warred with invading Vikings and defeated them. However, the Slavs then fought amongst themselves, and to end their civil strife, they changed their minds about the Vikings, and decided to invite a Viking chieftain named Rurik to rule them. So Rurik showed up with two of his brothers, a Viking entourage, to rule Novgorod and its environs. At least that is how the early Russians liked to imagine how they came to be ruled by Vikings.
