kultursnubbe skrev:Rus skrev:
Wladyslaw skrev också att det nu fanns en samsyn his ledande forskare i ämnet pm att Ruser var Svear, så det är väl bara du och ryska ultranationalister som febrilt försöker uppfinna andra alternativ.
Vad är ledande forskare, finns det några objektiva kriterier på detta? Exv antalet publicerade artiklar inom en viss tidsperiod eller så, eller är det ett eget subjektivt urval som blir ledande forskare? Är en konsensus detsamma som att det är sant eller nästan sant? Lite rörigt med denna typ av auktoritära kunskapskriterier. Grunden är väl att det är vem som säger vad som är det avgörande inte hur många som är med i hejarklacken? Problemen med att det inte finns några östliga fynd vare sig i Birka eller staroja Ladoga förrän under andra halvan av 800-talet (Ambrosiani) hur kan då du Rus påstå att svear hade bulktrafiken på de Ryska floderna? Det finns inga källuppgifter som entydigt sätter likhetstecken när det gäller stamnamn mellan ruser och svear, hur många som än ropar ut svear =Rus. Nestorskrönikan, dvs rusernas egen historia anger att ruser och svear är olika stamnamn ingående i samlingsnamnet Varjager. Vilket Mats G Larsson verkar av ett förbiseende verkar ha missat i sin bok. En bysantinsk 900-talskälla anger att ruser är en Frankisk stam. Ibn fadlan säger inte mer i en utgåva än att de ruser han mötte vari från Kiev. Dessutom för att återgå till Mats G Larsson anser han i sin bok att ruser "senare" blir ett samlingsnamn. Utifrån detta blir Annales Bertiniani ällt märkligare, då det uppebart inte verkar föreligga några östliga spår i Birka och Staraja Ladoga vid den tidpunkten. Fast å andra sidan till skillnad från de andra redovisade sammantställer den inte heller svear och ruser som stammar. Utan brevet från den Östromerske Theofilus anges dessa några individer de vara rhos men uppenbart har man misstänkt något för vid en närmare utfrågning visade de sig vara svear. Deras kung sägs heta Chakan men det är en hederstitel och kan peka mot kazarer inte minst då Ibn Fadlan använder denna titel.
Genom detta finns det flera olika tolkningsmöjligheter än att svear och ruser avser samma sak entydigt och alltid.
Det är konstigt... Jag hackade in för hand ett långt stycka från Wladyslaw Duczko bok Viking Rus, där de saker du tar upp nämns och förklaras. Det finns inte ett spår av att du har läst detta och tagit några som helst intryck, om så vore fallet så skulle du ju kommentera hans text, men det gör du inte utan du fortsätter med ditt testuggande. Ta bara din sista mening om Chakan/Khagan, det nämns i min text, men den har du naturligtvis inte bemödat dig att läsa...
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Generally scholars accepted the information that the Rhos were Swedes as a very clear statement. For many others it was possible to deny the truth of this information when they decided once and for all to see the Rus as a people of Slav origin. During three hundred years many (predominantly Russian) scholars, have tried to convince themselves and others (kultursnubben) that that the idea that the Rus were originally Northmen was a fantasy, and a very bad one, as it was not possible to accept Germanic strangers as the creators of a Russian state: A Slav state, by definition, could be created only by Slavs. Once the thesis about the Norse origin of the word Rus was repudiated, there was no end to the attempts to find an alternative explanation. One of the earliest expressions of this attitude was the idea that the Varangians were western Slavs from the Baltic coast. In 1749, the great scientist Mikhail V. Lomonosov became an enthusiastic adherent of this thesis, being deeply offended by Gerhard Müller, the German historian from the Imperial Russian Academy, who claimed Scandinavian, especially Swedish superiority over Slav primitvism. Ha was folowed by many others (kultursnubben); at the end of the nineteenth century the most influential was S. Gedeonov, who claimed that the invited Varangian princess were Slavs. There were also some attempts to indentify the island of Rügia in the western Baltic as the place of origin of these Rus - only because because of some similarity of the name. In later time, in accordance with all those ideas which tried to find Rus' roots outside Eastern Europe, was a hypothesis formulated by Omeljan Pritsak who claimed that the Rus originated from merchants living in the town of Rodez in south France, and that the thnonym itself was derived from , otherwise not recorded, Celto-Roman Ruteni. Like some other bold hypothesis of this scholar, this one too has been refuted.
Scholars disliking the idea of a western Slavic origins of the Rus, but still refusing to accept their Scandinavian pedigree, turned their attention to the south of Russia, to the forrest-steppe zone, where one of the numerous Slav tribers - Poliane - was found more suitable than some foreign for the role of the creator of the Rus state. Toponyms and the names of tribes and people from different times, all with the root Rus/Ros, were offered as evidence for the ancient and autochthonous ancestry of the name Rus. The thesis of the autochthonous was built on disparate sources, practically none of real value. In the search of etymologically suitable names were involved names of the rivers, such as the Ros, tributar of the Dnieper, Rusa, tributary of the Seim, the Rsha in the Cherinigov area, or even Rha - the ancient name of Volga. Among the names of various ancient peoples were an Iranian tribe of Roxolani from the beginnings of the of first millenium A.D., the Rosomoni, a Germanic unit from the third century A.D. In Pontia, or the Hros living north of Caucasus and mentioned in a Syrian source from the sixth century A.D. In this desparate search, attentionwas given to Etruscans in Italy and even "prince" Rosh from the biblical prophet Ezekiel.
The majority of the written sources pertaining to the Rus clearly distinguish them from the Slavs. No oriental source ever equates the Rus and the Slavs, on the contrary, they are very careful to keep them apart as two different kinds of people. The only exception is a source, originating one generation after the mission of the Rhos, the work of
Uibadallah ibn Khuradbeh, director of Posts and intelligence in the Baghdad Caliphate. In his
Kitab Al Masalik Wa "L-Mamalik" - The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, probably written in the late 840s, he mentions the ar-Rus as:
... a tribe from among the as-Saqaliba. They bring furs of beavers and of black foxes and swords from the most distant parts of the Saqaliba [land] to the sea of Rum [where] the ruler of ar-Rumlevies tithes on them. If they want, they travel on the Itil, the river of the as-Saqaliba and pass through Kamlij, town of the Khazars [where] the ruler of it levies tithes on them. They then arrive at the sea of Gurjan and they land on the shore of it which they choose. On occasion they bring their merchandise on camels from Gurjan to Baghdad [where] as- Saqqliba cunucks serve them as interpreters. They claim to be christians and pay [only] head tax.
This account has always been used by many scholars as an excelent source testifying in the most clear way the Slav origin of the Rus. Matters are, as has been emphasized many times,
not so simple. The attribution to the Slavs may be explained that the author was employing a term
without sharp ethnic connotation, in the same manner the word as-Saqaliba was generally utilised by Islamic authors when depicting not only Slavs but
all people of fair complexion and hair, or sometimes all inhabitats of Eastern Europe. About eighty years later, an Arab diplomat ibn Fadlan calls the Volga Bulgars as-Saqaliba, though these people were certainly not Slavs. The information give by ibn-Khurrdadbeh that the Rus were trading in Baghdad could use Slav eunuchs as interpreters is also of dubious value, it is well-known that the majority of slaves traded by the Rus were Slavs, and the Rus being in constant contact with their living merchandise could have learnt their language.
The account has been recognised by some scholars as a later interpolation, which does not neccesary need to be the case, the book of ibn-Khurrdadbeh has not survived as the original work but in late, careleddly made copies.
The search for the original Rus' was generally a pure linguistic activity. In this special position was occupied by Danish linguist Wilhelm Thomsen. His book "The relation between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia and the Origin of the Russian state", published 1877, contained little original thinking of the author but was instead a very efficient presentation of all the known sources - Latin, Oriental, runic inscriptions-as evidence of the Norse origin of the Rus. In this most influential book, Thomsen offrered a detailed analysis of a theory based on older assumptions, first forwarded 1744 by J. Thunmann, that the name of Russia was not Slavic but originated from a Finnish denomination of Sweden - Ruotsi. By stressing the general use of this word in all west-finnish languages: Estonian-Roots, Vodish-Rotsi, Livish-Ruot's, Karelian-Rotsi, Thomsen could secure the base of the thesis in the linguistic environment of the region. After this work, the detailed analysis of this issue was conducted almost continually.
The names of the Swedes recieved in Ingelheim - Rhos - is understood as a Latin form of the Greek word Ros. The chronicler Prudentius was using official documents, among them the letter from the emperor Theophilus, where he found the strange name of Svear and wrote is as it was in his Latin text. The word Rhos-Ros is equal to the term ar-Rus of the Arab sources, and the name of the first state of the eastern Slavs, the Kievan state.
In the beginning, before the Viking Age, certainly in the early eighth-century, the term was employed as a self-denomination by the Scandinavians, mainly Svear, arriving in those parts of Eastern Europe which were populated by Finish tribes. The original word in old Norse, was the verb róa, to row, and later its derivatives like roðR, meaning both the action of rowing and the sea expedition and its members which derived old Finnish rotsi from compounds in old Scandinavian - roþ(r)smenn. By simplification the Finnish -ts- became -s-thus eventually creating the universally user word rus.
So the self-name of the migrant Scandinavians, the rowers, the crew of a boat, oarsmen - roðsmenn - became accepted sometime during the eighth century as an ethnicon by the Finnsih people, and which eventually, through their mediation, reached Slavs and Turks of Eastern Europe, the world of Eastern Islam and the Greeks of Byzantium. The original word describing the profession of the groups of the Northmen turned eventually - as a result of a long process of socialisation and politicisation - to the name of a state and people of the eastern Slavs. After many heated disputes, the etmology of the word Rus seems to have been settled.
The favourite hypothesis about word´s western or southern origin cherished by generations of Slav scholars is now mostly abandoned.
There is a general consensus among scholars accepting deriving name Rus from a term of Norse-Finnish origin. Thus, we could obtain from the account of Prudentius the information that people of Swedish origin were part of an organization members of which were calling themselves Rus (Rhos). This leads us to the next piece of information, that about their ruler.