RURIK / РЮРИК / HROREK
It is possible that our first competitor might be someone else. Some think he is not even real. At the very least, the dates are a bit shaky.1 However, he is the first in a long line of rulers of Russia and, luckily for this rating, I believe he did exist, so let’s take a look at his life and exploits.
Some of the problem with assessing Rurik comes from the fact that, compared to his successors and even his contemporaries in other parts of Europe, the information about him is very thin, so much so, that we might as well read the source directly, or at least in my translation. The earliest Russian chronicle started to be compiled a century and a half after Rurik supposedly came to power, and in Kiev, a very long way from Rurik’s capital – Novgorod.
There are a number of different versions of the Povest’ Vremennykh Let (PVL), but the Laurentian chronicle gives the following story:
“Year 6367 (a.k.a. 859 AD?) – Vikings from across the sea took tribute from the Chud’, the Slovenes, the Merya and all the Krivichi. And the Khazars took from the Polyane, the Severtsy and the Vyatichi. And they (the Khazars) took a white one and a veveritsa2 from each smoke (i.e. household).
[860 and 861 AD didn’t have much going on, so are blank in the Chronicle.]
Year 6370 (862 AD?) – They chased the Vikings across the sea and didn’t give them any tribute and they started to rule themselves. And there was no truth / justice among them, clan rose against clan, there was emnity between them and they started to fight among themselves. And they said to themselves “We’ll find ourselves a prince who would rule us and judge us fairly.” And they went across the sea to the Vikings, to the Rus’. Those Vikings were called Rus’ like others were called Swedes, others Northmen and Angles, others Geats (like Beowulf!), so were these called (Rus’). The Chud’, Slovenes, Krivichi and Ves’ said to the Rus’ “Our land is great and plentiful but there is no order. Come and rule over us as princes”.
And three brothers were chosen from their clans and they brought with them the whole of the Rus’ and they came: the eldest – Rurik, the second – Sineus, to Beloozero, and the third – Truvor, to Izborsk. After two years Sineus died, and his brother Truvor (864?). And Rurik3 took the power and and gave towns to his men, Polotsk to that one, Rostov to this one, Beloozero to another.
Rurik, Sineus and Truvor in their cities, Radziwill Chronicle.
The Vikings were newcomers in those towns, but the first settlers in Novgorod were the Slovenes, in Polotsk – the Krivichi, in Rostov – the Merya, in Beloozero – the Ves’ and in Murom – the Muroma. And over all of them ruled Rurik.
And he had two men, not of his tribe, but noblemen, who asked to head off for Constantinople with their relatives. And they went down the Dnieper and when going past, they saw a little town on a hill. And they asked, saying “Whose is this town?” and they (presumably the locals) said “There were three brothers, Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv who made this town and they died and we sit here and pay tribute to the Khazars.” Askold and Dir remained in this town and collected together many vikings and began to rule the land of the Polyane, while Rurik ruled in Novgorod.”
Askold and Dir ask Rurik if they can go to Constantinople.
The chronicle then lists 6371, 6372 and 6373 (863 to 865?) as blank and moves on to Year 6374 (866 AD) when Askold and Dir finally set off to raid the Greeks, in the fourteenth year of the reign of Emperor Michael (III, the Drunkard), who was out of the city. The Patriarch Photius dipped the Virgin Mary’s cloak in the waters of the Golden Horn and a sudden storm arose and scattered the Russian fleet. Very few people managed to escape this disaster and return home.
Patriarch Photius dips the Virgin Mary’s robe in the Golden Horn.
We know from the Roman sources that there was a raid in 860 AD while Michael was besieging Samosata in the East, so this date is likely to have been confused by the various versions of calculating when Creation was.
Finally, in Year 6387 (879 AD?), we hear that Rurik died and passed his princely rule over to his relative Oleg, as well as placing his small son Igor into Oleg’s care, as Igor was too young to rule.
Rurik entrusts Igor to Oleg.
At this point, we’ll take a little break from the Chronicle and do a little speculation. Given that dates at this point of the PVL can be up to 10 years out, it looks like somewhere around 850 – 870, the Finnic and Slavic peoples in the area around and to the east and south of modern St Petersburg drove out their Viking overlords, but soon after, called in some more Vikings to put an end to the conflict that had followed the rebellion. The PVL later mentions that Rurik ruled in Novgorod, the chief settlement of the Slovenes, Sineus controlled a fortress on the periphery of the territory of the Ves’ and Truvor, a border fortress of the Krivichi.
After two years, Sineus and Truvor were no more, and Rurik sent his men to occupy these and even more fortresses, a lot further away. Given that the Rus’ were brought in after a rebellion and civil war only a few years before, I suspect that Sineus and Truvor may not have had a peaceful death. Whether they rebelled against Rurik, or their subjects decided they were fed up with their new Vikings and wanted to swap them out for another set, it appears that after Sineus and Truvor went to Valhalla, Rurik was able to impose control over a far greater area of Russia than before:
In addition, two of his followers take some men further to the south and set up shop in Kiev, take control of the Polyane and go on to use this base to raid the Roman Empire. These are considerable achievements, so you may be wondering why people have thought that Rurik isn’t real.
Some of it is politics. Back in the early 12th century, when the PVL was being compiled, the rulers of Kiev and the other Russian prinicipalities clearly believed that their royal house had been founded by a viking named Rurik. Attempts have been made to make Rurik more native. In the 18th century, while Russia was still engaged in a violent rivalry with Sweden, the historian Vasily Tatishchev proposed an alternative or maybe an additional story, based on Novgorodian sources, which suggest that Rurik was the half-Finnish grandson of Gostomysl, an elder of Novgorod and was called in with his brothers as Gostomysl’s heir after a prophetic dream and the unfortunate deaths of Gostomysl’s sons. This story does not exactly refute the bare-bones story in the PVL, but the sources are a lot younger.
Another point that has been picked up on, is that the PVL lists Rurik’s Rus’ as being another group of Vikings giving a list of other peoples we have heard of elsewhere, but there are no nations known as the Rus’ in Scandinavia. So where did these mysterious Rus’ come from? As I mentioned in the initial post, an embassy from the “Rhos”, who identified themselves as Swedes, had visited both Constantinople and Louis the Pious, Holy Roman Emperor, in the 830s. Arab sources also refer to Norsemen as ar-Rus, and the names for Sweden in Finnish and Estonian are “Ruotsi” and “Rootsi”. The area around Uppsala, the ecclesiastical centre of Sweden and back then, site of a central Pagan shrine, is known as Roslagen (the Ros bit derives from a word “roþr”, or rudder). It seems likely that the word that has come down to us as Rus’ was a regional identity of the northern part of the areas inhabited by Swedes at the time.
A third point is the “folkloric” aspect of three brothers, two of whom almost immediately disappear from the narrative and the possibility of whether their names are even real. At one point, it was suggested that this was a mistranslation of a Norse source, where Rurik came with “his household” – sine hus – and “loyal ones” – tru varing and not two brothers called Sineus and Truvor. This theory doesn’t hold much credibility any more, the Norse isn’t grammatical for one thing and these could be perfectly good Norse names like Signjotr and Thorvar, written down by non-native speakers of Norse.
On the other hand, there is interesting speculation as to whether our Rurik might actually be another historically attested individual – Hrorek or Rorik of Dorestad. Hrorek didn’t actually come from Dorestad, his uncle Harald Krak had been king in Jutland (so a “konung” in Norse, or Knyaz in Russian) but had been exiled. Hrorek had served Lothair I and raided Louis the Pious’s lands on Lothair’s behalf, receiving Dorestad as a base. He was involved in various adventures, even trying to take the Danish throne in 854 without success. He converted to Christianity in the early 860’s but he isn’t mentioned in Western chronicles in 864 to 866. In 867 it says he is driven from Frisia. Given the uncertainty in the dating of the PVL, it is possible that this might be the period at which he benefits from the unrest in Northern Russia to set up shop in Ladoga / Novgorod. In 872 to 3, he is back in Frisia, negotiating then swearing a deal with Louis. No more is heard of him in the western Chronicles except that his lands in Frisia were granted to someone else in 882, so he is assumed to be dead, or missing at that point.
We have a man of the correct royal status, a renowned warrior, with the same name, who disappears from the records of the west at about the same time as our Rurik is active in the Russian chronicles. Maybe it is the same man, but I am sceptical. Rurik is not an uncommon name, for example, King Hrothgar in Beowulf had a son called Hrethric in Old English, Hrorek in Norse. It is a fine, kingly name and although Hrorek of Dorestad had dealings with Slavs, it was the Western Slavs living in what was, not too long ago, East Germany. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, I’m not going to judge Russian Rurik on Hrorek of Dorestad’s achievements.
RATINGS
Length of reign: 17 years. Our upper limit is Ivan IV, the Terrible, the Formidable, the (insert any better translation of Грозный than terrible here), who became Tsar as a teenager and reigned for 51 years. The maximum score is 10, so 17/51 x 10 (rounded to the nearest unit) = 3 out of 10.
World fame: 64 Wikipedia translations. Our top scorer here is Peter I, the Great with 141 translations of his biography as of November 2023. Many of the translations for less famous figures are very slim entries, seemingly added for the sake of completeness, rather than because of any deep interest in the subject person among the nations of the world. To separate real fame from “we’d best put this one in because it will look a bit weird if we miss him out”, I’ve made the calculation a bit more complicated. One half of a maximum score of 20 comes from a direct proportion of the Peter I’s maximum, so for Rurik – 64/141 x 10. For the other ten points, to emphasise the glory of the truly well-known, I have squared the number of articles, so the calculation is 642 / 1412 x 10. Add the two together and round it to the nearest unit and Rurik gets 7 out of 20.
Achievements: In the case of Rurik, the barebones description of his activities in the existing sources doesn’t give a lot of detail to chew over. However, his main achievement must be the foundation of a state that has continued to this day. It is clear from the sources that someone claiming to be “Chacanus” of the “Rhos” sent a diplomatic mission to both the Eastern Roman and Holy Roman emperors in the 830s, but the evidence for this possible Russian Khaganate is so thin and it clearly did not have a particularly long life, that it must be considered a pre-cursor of Eastern Slavic statehood, rather than the final product.
Rurik founded that statehood. He came to Northern Russia in the wake of unrest and internecine warfare and forged a realm that, unlike the holdings of his namesake in Dorestad, survived his death, passed to his chosen successor and finally (spoiler alert), to his son and heir. His descendants ruled Russia until the beginning of the 17th century.
As the founder of both a dynasty and a state, many of his achievements bore fruit after his death. It is difficult to judge whether it was by conscious decision, or by chance, but his initial placing of his brothers in both Slavic and Finnic lands and, after their death, taking control of Rostov and Murom in the semi-Finnic borderlands, gave his realm the opportunity to bring the Finnic tribes of the East and North East into the Russian state. Rather than concentrate on the trading routes to the South, he opened the door to the lands that ended up being the source of enormous wealth and strategic depth for Russia in the coming centuries.
However, Rurik did not completely ignore the trade route to Constantinople. He blessed Askold and Dir’s expedition, which bore fruit under his successor (although not for Askold and Dir), allowing Russia to encompass the more southerly tribes and unite the Eastern Slavs into a single state.
Here, our maximum score is 30 and for forming a country from disparate elements with a surface area larger than modern day Germany which didn’t just crumble as soon as the founder died, but went from strength to strength, Rurik deserves a high score. As the founder of a dynasty that lasted for 750 years and a country that went on to cover 1/6 of the surface of the Earth, I’m going to give Rurik the maximum possible: 30.
Defence of the Realm: This section has a maximum 20 points. In earlier times, the main duties of a ruler were to defend the land and impose law and order. These may not seem as nice and fluffy as many of the functions the state tries to perform today, but in a land of subsistence agriculture, surrounded by neighbours who might be sorely tempted to fill their pockets by robbing your village, and stealing the hard-earned product of your work, the ability of a ruler to hang bandits is a major source of legitimacy. The ability to scare off or crush foreign raiders who might ride in, burn your house, eat the food that was going to feed you through the winter and take your children as slaves is also a massive factor in deciding a monarch’s success.
With Rurik, we don’t have much to go on as the records were so slim on details. On the positive side, Rurik did rather better than the previous vikings who were driven out in 859. He came to a land riven by inter-tribal war and left it a united realm that he could pass on to a chosen successor. Judging from the cities mentioned as being under his control after the deaths of Sineus and Truvor, he expanded the borders of the territories, which, even if those borders were not peaceful, there would be a far larger safe area inside those far wider borders. He started his rule as overlord of the Finnic Ves’, the Slovenes and at least the northern Krivichi and ended it controlling the whole of the Krivichi, their kin the Polochane as well as the Finnic Muroma and Merya in the east. That is a huge success from the perspective of defence. Releasing Askold and Dir to the south might also hint at intelligent handling of potentially restless followers. Rather than have them and their warbands itching for a fight in his lands, he let them go to cause their trouble elsewhere.
On the negative side, all we have is the slightly suspicious, almost simultaneous deaths of Sineus and Truvor. Was it a rebellion by the natives against the two brothers in their distant fortresses which Rurik managed to put down? Was there a revolt by the two brothers against Rurik, which was crushed, but which was never spoken of again, at least by the chroniclers? Maybe, given that their deaths were associated in the PVL with Rurik sending his men out to rule new lands, there had been a war between Rurik’s Russia and its southern neighbours that took the lives of Sineus and Truvor, but which ultimately ended in victory.
Something didn’t go 100% right around 864 for Rurik and his family, so I can’t give him full marks here, I think a fair assessment for such a successful warrior would be 17 out of 20.
Bonus Points. We have a maximum of 20 bonus points for things not covered elsewhere. For individuals who are far better known in Russia than elsewhere, I think the Wikipedia count is a little unfair. This is particularly true of earlier rulers. Rurik is well known, he is prominent on the famous memorial for the Millenium of Russia in Novgorod from 1862, which used to be on the 5000 / 5 rouble notes. Here he is in the middle, holding the shield:
His fame continues to this day, a memorial to him, Oleg and Igor can be found in Norrtalje, Sweden. He featured on a 2012, 10 rouble stamp to celebrate 1150 years of Russian statehood, a statue to Rurik and his successor Oleg was set up in Staraya Ladoga in 2015, his statue is in the 2017 Alley of Russian Rulers in Moscow, and he even appears in Crusader Kings III. Russia has released a 50 rouble gold coin in his honour in 2012.
As a Viking who sailed overseas to make his fortune, it is only reasonable he should have ships named after his. He had three warships in the Imperial Russian navy and currently there is a river cruise ship in Russia called Viking Rurik, and a Latvian cargo ship called Rurik as well.
Rurik has even featured on the silver screen, in a 2008 Danish film released in English as A Viking Saga: Son of Thor. A 2019 Russian docudrama series “Rurikovichi” unsurprisingly features our hero in the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHmtnxzKI8c&t=26s. The makers of this programme think he was Hrorek of Dorestad, by the way. Only watch the first 15 minutes if you don’t want to find out what happens when Oleg takes over.
I’ll give him 15 out of 20 bonus points.
Reflected Glory: This is a bit of a bonus bonus round, but without points, to take a look at people who flourished under a given ruler’s reign. We are, once again, a bit short of material for Rurik, having only four named individuals in the more reliable sources whom we have already met. So, we have Rurik’s brothers Truvor and Sineus, who as we see, found northern Russia did not exactly agree with them. Also Askold and Dir, the gentlemen who asked to go on an expedition to Constantinople, set up Viking control over Kiev on the way and who probably wished they had stayed there given how badly the Virgin Mary messed up their fleet when they did eventually arrive in the Golden Horn.
There is a bit of a debate as to whether Askold and Dir are actually two people, or a chronicler’s mistake in reading a nickname as being a separate person. Askold and Dir are always mentioned together, Askold is a proper name, Haskuldr, or Hoskuldr in Norse, but Dir could easily be a transliteration of Norse “dyr”, which means “beast”. Unlike Sineus and Truvor who at least ruled in separate cities, Askold and Dir seem always joined at the hip, except after death, when they at least got buried in different places. Maybe there was only one leader, Askold the Beast, whom Rurik thought best sent far away to do his beastly things somewhere else, whose body ended up in two parts. Al-Masudi, an Arab historian writing in the middle of the 10th century, mentioned an Al-Dair as the first king of the Slavs, but no Askold. This has been used as evidence to suggest that Askold may have died earlier, leaving Dir in charge for long enough to be known in the Arab world, but it might also just mean that they knew Askold the Beast by his nickname.
Rurik’s rating: 72 out of 100.
In our next episode, we see how Oleg deals with the responsibility laid upon him by Rurik.
Visiting:
Novgorod – https://visitnovgorod.com/,
Staraya Ladoga – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g1656810-Staraya_Ladoga_Leningrad_Oblast_Northwestern_District-Vacations.html
Beloozero (now Belozersk) – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g2479242-Belozersk_Vologda_Oblast_Northwestern_District-Vacations.html
Rostov – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g811396-Rostov_Yaroslavl_Oblast_Central_Russia-Vacations.html
Murom – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g777989-Murom_Vladimir_Oblast_Central_Russia-Vacations.html
Polotsk – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g1234777-Polotsk_Vitebsk_Region-Vacations.html
Kiev – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g294474-Kyiv-Vacations.html
Constantinople (now Istanbul) – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g293974-Istanbul-Vacations.html
Dorestad – https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g652340-Wijk_bij_Duurstede-Vacations.html
- The chronicle in question, Povest’ Vremennykh Let (PVL), dates an attack on Constantinople to 866, when the rather more reliable Roman sources say the raid took place six years earlier. The problem is that the dates are not AD, but based on the time that passed since the creation of the Earth. There were three different calculations used by different sources for the PVL and there are a lot of academic arguments as to which dating system should be applied to each date. I’ll be using the original date and the conventional AD equivalent in brackets. ↩︎
- The “white one” might be a silver coin, the veveritsa might be a squirrel (or stoat) fur, another coin with the value of the fur, or possibly the “and” was a later interpolation and it was just a single ermine fur. The problem was that both “the white one” and “veveritsa” had become terms for coins a lot later than Rurik’s time. I think it’s quite likely the tribute was originally intended to be paid in fur, but later copyists from a more monetised time assumed they were talking about coins and edited the text to reflect that assumption – possibly unconsciously. ↩︎
- There is a question about whether Novgorod was Rurik’s original capital, as this city was only named in a single early version of the PVL which no longer exists and the name seemed like it was added later. The Ipatievsky version names Ladoga (now Staraya Ladoga) as the original seat of Rurik’s rule and archeology suggests this city was in existence since the middle of the 8th century. In any case, Rurik’s original settlement at Novgorod was actually just outside the present site of the city. Novgorod (meaning New City) was new in comparison to Rurik’s fortress. Novgorod was called Holmgard in Norse, which may well have been the name of Rurik’s fort. ↩︎
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