Until recently, Normanism was understood as a system of views, resting on three pillars: the first is the Scandinavian origin of the chronicled Varangians, the second - Rurik was the leader of the Scandinavian detachments, moreover, either a conqueror or a contract soldier (for more than 200 years, the Normanists did not agree who he really was), and the third is the Old Scandinavian origin of the name of Rus. In addition to the chronicled Varangians, the synonyms for the Scandinavians among the supporters of this system are the Normans from the Western European chronicles, who are also identified as the Vikings.
Recently, representatives of the named system of views have ceased to like the word "Normanism". Voices began to be heard that, they say, there was no "Normanism" and the talk about "Normanism", "Norman theory", "Normanists" are phantoms that exist only in the imagination of anti-Normanists. Here is the first reason for reflection: there are no Normanism and Normanists, but the anti-Normanists are not canceled.
Further, the supporters of the above system of views are trying to proclaim it as the only correct doctrine. However, for more than 200 years, there is still a debate about how to interpret the "coming" of the Scandinavians to Eastern Europe. Some say: it was a conquest, an aggressive expansion. Well, yes, others argue hotly. - Why did they so blindly conquer that they were not noted in any source ?! No, these were the migrations of colonists from Central Sweden (it is the coastal strip Roslagen, it is also the Uppsala Flax in Svejland, which did not exist in the 9th century).
The fact is that the great mission of the "Scandinavians" in Eastern Europe was not reflected in any written sources - neither in the annals, nor in the Western European chronicles. Therefore, in the works of representatives of "professional circles" (that is, Normanists - let's continue to call things by their proper names, regardless of whether someone likes it or not!), The image of "Scandinavians", caused solely by the power of their imagination, is represented by a variety of species.
Those who are attracted by battle scenes write about the "military units of the Scandinavians", about the "Viking detachments", about the "squads of the Scandinavians", about the "Norman warriors", about the "movement of the Vikings" to the north of the East European Plain, as well as about the "expansion Vikings ". As a result of this phantom "movement" unnoticed by any chronicler or chronicler, a "background of the Scandinavian presence" was allegedly created in Eastern Europe.
More moderate-minded Norman writers paint smooth, calm scenes of "migrations of the free peasant population, predominantly from Central Sweden" to Eastern Europe, similar to the pictures of the settlement of America. Sometimes migrations are carried out as "military and trade travels of the Vikings to Kievan Rus" or as "the population of the Normans that spread over the East Slavic lands." True, from time to time, the characteristics of the mass presence of Normans / Vikings in Russia stray into reservations that “the population of Normans … was relatively small, but influential, seizing power. She contributed to Slavic culture, history and statehood."
The surrogate history has surrogate sources: the most irrefutable "evidence" of the founding of the Scandinavians in ancient Russian history, according to Normanists, may well serve as Norman campaigns from Western European history: "The Scandinavians conquered everything in Western Europe! How naive one must be to think that they did not go to conquer Eastern Europe!"
In my opinion, such an argument, in the language of lawyers, is invalid, since if an event occurs in one place, it is not at all necessary that the same event took place in another place. In addition, the qualitative difference between the known Norman predatory campaigns in the West and those blissful pictures of the actions of the "Scandinavians" in Eastern Europe, examples of which are well known from the works of the Normanists, is striking.
These differences, of course, are ascertained, but they do not confuse anyone and are parried by statements that “the Vikings, ruthless robbers and pirates, who terrified all of Western Europe with sudden raids, played a different, constructive role in Eastern Europe - the role of a catalyst, which contributed to the acceleration of social and political processes”. The professional circles do not condescend to explain why the "ruthless robbers and pirates", having come to Eastern Europe, suddenly began to act as some kind of "constructive catalysts".
In order to get out of this confusion, you should try to bring the available material into some kind of system. I'll start by listing what exactly the supporters of the Scandinavians' coming to Eastern Europe see their role in. In a generalized form, this role, according to the Normanists, manifested itself in three areas:
1. In the formation of the Old Russian state and the creation of the Old Russian institution of the supreme princely power. As it seems to the Normanists, the agreement with the leader of the Viking detachments Rurik, presumably from Middle Sweden, ensured the control of these detachments over the waterways from Ladoga to the Volga and thereby laid the foundations for the emergence of early state structures, first of all, the institution of central authority among the chronicle Priilmen Slovenes. According to the same authors, another Scandinavian leader Oleg captured Kiev and, thus, united the East European north with the center in Ladoga and the East European south with the center in Kiev, due to which the Old Russian state, known in science as Kievan Rus, arose. Let me remind you in passing that only about two decades passed between the vocation of Rurik and the reign of Oleg in Kiev! (Gorsky A. A., Dvornichenko A. Yu., Kotlyar N. F., Melnikova E. A., Puzanov V. V., Sverdlov M. B., Stefanovich P. S., Shinakov E. A. and others.)
2. Together with the aforementioned contribution of the Varangian-Norman-Vikings to ancient Russian history, they are credited with establishing control over the Baltic-Volga trade route, the opening and functioning of which, according to the Normanists' assurances, was the result of the activities of Scandinavian merchants and warriors: “… by the middle of the 9th century. the exit from the Ladoga and Povolkhov regions to the Volga, as well as the movement along the Volga, were firmly mastered. This is evidenced by the emergence of trade and craft settlements and military camps along the way, where the Scandinavian ethnic component is represented everywhere in greater or lesser number. It is thanks to this, according to the Normanists, that a vast territory was consolidated, on which in the middle of the 9th century. the first early state formation appears”(Melnikova E. A.).
3. The Varangian-Norman-Vikings brought the very name Rus to the East European Slavs. Norman linguists formulate this in such a way that the word Rus can be constructed from Old Scandal. words with a stem in * roþs-, such as roþsmenn with the meaning "rower, participant in a campaign on rowing boats", which allegedly connects the origin of the name Rus with the Swedish region of Roslagen and Swedish rowers-rods, but through the Finnish name of Sweden Ruotsi. It was from the Finns that the Slavs allegedly learned the name of the Swedish rowers-rods, and from him they formed the feminine name Rus.
This is how the Normanists see the role of the Scandinavians in Russian history. The next question to be answered is the question of what their own objective prerequisites did the natives of the Scandinavian countries have for the implementation of the mission attributed to them. The "western front" of the actions of the Normans, who are identified only with immigrants from the Scandinavian countries (as far as this is true, we will talk later), is well known - there was no need for the participation of the Scandinavians in political genesis, in the construction of trade and craft settlements that existed before the Norman campaigns, etc. …
And in Eastern Europe, the Scandinavians are ascribed a fundamental (or essential, as some cautious Normanists stipulate) role in the process of political evolution and in capital-intensive projects to create a network of craft, trade and political centers, i.e. practically - the foundation of urban culture.
Since the Bertine annals and the Finnish name of Sweden Ruotsi firmly tie the Normanists to Sweden, therefore, we will consider the level of sociopolitical evolution of the main areas of the future Sweden in the early medieval period. These were the regions of the Göt and Svei, ethnic groups often defined as tribes and tribal associations in the territory of medieval Sweden.
The name of Sweden comes from the name of the Svei: Svea rike or Kingdom of the Svei. The name of the Göt can be traced in the names of such historical regions as Västergötland with the city of Gothenburg and Östergötland with the main city of Linköping. Svei and Göth were the main ethnosocial subjects in the process of state formation in Sweden. How is this process characterized in science?
According to the works of Swedish medievalists, the creation of the Swedish statehood was protracted, long-term, the signs of an early state were revealed not earlier than the second half of the 13th - early 14th centuries. The modern researcher of the problems of Swedish socio-and political genesis T. Lindqvist, stipulating that the formation of statehood includes such a criterion as the creation of "territory under the rule of a single political leadership", notes that only from the second half of the XIII century. royal power in Sweden began to appear “as a form of relatively fine political organization, as state power.
It was during this period that the privileged noble classes grew up with precisely defined rights and responsibilities to serve in the favor of the king and society. The codification and writing of laws, as well as the ordering of political institutions, are characteristic of this period. At the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. royal power and the young estates of the spiritual and secular nobility represented state power.
End of the XIII century was the culmination of that specific and long historical process of social transformations characteristic of Sweden during that period, which, according to traditional terminology, can be called the transition from the Viking period to the early medieval period”(Lindqvist Th. Plundring, skatter och den feodala statens framväxt. Organisatoriska tendenser i Sverige under övergången från vikingatid till tidig medeltid. Uppsala, 1995, S. 4-5, 10-11). The Viking period in Swedish history is considered to be the period 800-1050, followed by the Medieval period 1050-1389.
T. Lindqvist emphasizes not only the late formation of the Swedish state, but also its secondary character: “… It arose later than many states in Europe and even in Scandinavia. A number of phenomena and ideas were of an exogenous nature: they were "introduced" from the outside. The ideas about the meaning and functions of royal power, rules and rituals for the bearers of the new state power were introduced from outside,”that is, from the European continent (Ibid.)
He develops the same views in one of his works, written together with Maria Schoberg. Based on the "Life of St. Ansgar", Bishop of Hamburg and the spread of Christianity in Northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden, who visited Birka in 830 with his mission and captured some features of social and political relations among the Svei, T. Lindqvist writes that the territory of the Svei consisted of a number of small estates that did not have a specific structure or hierarchy, the powers of the king were limited by the popular assembly; any centralized or supreme royal power did not exist, due to which it is impossible to determine the degree of its influence on the life of society. Approximately the same picture, emphasizes T. Lindqvist, is drawn to us by the chronicler Adam of Bremen in 1070 after more than 200 years (Lindkvist Th., Sjöberg M. Det svenska samhället. 800 - 1720. Klerkernas och adelns tid. Studentlitteratur. S. 23-33).
Historian Dick Harrison summed up the traditional quest for the beginnings of Swedish political genesis:
“… Jordan, Cassiodorus and Procopius … created the image of Scandinavia, which is characterized by the presence of many small political units … it is absolutely impossible to reconstruct the political boundaries of the regions in the Wendel or Viking periods, based on the names found in the sources of the XIII-XIV centuries. … The area that in Swedish historiography is usually at the center of discussions about power and kingdom in the pre-Christian era is Upland … During the period of great power in the 17th century, or during the development of nationalist tendencies in the 19th century. The Upland was regarded as the cradle of Swedish statehood, and the kings from the Yngling Saga were crowned as ancient Swedish monarchs …
Today science has dismissed these misconceptions as anachronism and sent them to the dustbin of history, although from time to time they appear in tourist brochures or in outdated historical reviews … (Harrison D. Sveriges historia. 600-1350. Stockholm, 2009. S. 26- 36).
So, the creation of statehood in Sweden, which at least implies a shift from autonomous possessions or peasant communities towards a supra-communal organization and the unification of the territory under the rule of one ruler (king, prince), the creation of the institution of supreme power, took about 300 years in the history of Sweden, and most the earliest features of this process appeared in the first half of the 11th century. or 200 years after Rurik. And for many centuries before that, counting from the 9th century, the territory of the future Sweden was a conglomerate of small holdings, none of which was able to nominate a leader who would subordinate these lands to its authority.
