Rurik

Rurik is the Scandinavian leader whom medieval Russian tradition names as the first prince of Novgorod, supposedly invited to rule there in 862. Almost everything known about him comes from a single source written about 250 years later, and historians still debate how much of that account is real. Whatever the truth, the princes of Kievan Rus' and the later Russian tsars traced their descent from him, and the dynasty is named after him.

The story of Rurik is told in the Primary Chronicle, a history of the Rus' compiled in Kiev in the 1110s. Medieval readers credited it to the monk Nestor, but modern scholars see it as an anonymous compilation revised by several editors, including the abbot Sylvester in 1116. The original is lost; the text survives in later copies, chiefly the Laurentian Codex of 1377 and the Hypatian Codex of the 15th century. Its authors mixed oral tradition, treaties and Byzantine chronicles, and one of their aims, as scholars have noted, was to explain why the Rurikid princes alone had a right to rule.

According to the chronicle, Slavic and Finnic tribes of the north, among them the Chuds, Slovenes and Krivichs, had paid tribute to Norsemen from overseas, the Varangians. Around 860 they expelled them and tried to rule themselves, but soon fell to fighting one another. To restore order they invited a prince from the Varangian people called the Rus'. Rurik came with two younger brothers, Sineus and Truvor, and a large following.

In the chronicle, Sineus took Beloozero and Truvor took Izborsk, but both died soon afterwards and Rurik gathered their lands into his own. The surviving manuscripts disagree on where he first settled: the Laurentian text puts him directly in Novgorod, while the Hypatian text has him first at Ladoga and only later at the newly built fort of Novgorod near the Volkhov River. The same story says that two of his followers, Askold and Dir, went south and took Kiev.

The chronicle dates Rurik's death to 879, although some historians prefer simply to place it in the 870s. His son Igor was a small child, so power passed to a kinsman, Oleg, who acted as regent. According to the chronicle, Oleg killed Askold and Dir and made Kiev his capital, creating the state that historians call Kievan Rus'. Igor and his descendants went on to rule it, among them Olga, Igor's widow, and Vladimir the Great.

The name is a Slavic form of the Old Norse Hrœrekr. Most historians accept that the Rus' came from Scandinavia, probably from the coast of what is now eastern Sweden, and the most widely held view links their name to an Old Norse word for rowers. Some scholars have identified Rurik with Rorik of Dorestad, a Danish chieftain known from Frankish chronicles, who vanishes from western records after 860 and reappears in 870. Others reject the match. Opinions on the chronicle as a whole range from cautious acceptance of its core to the view of the Ukrainian historian Oleksiy Tolochko, who argued in 2015 that much of it is literary invention.

Whether or not Rurik existed as described, the dynasty that bore his name ruled the Rus' principalities and then Russia until the death of Tsar Feodor I in 1598. A later branch, the Shuysky family, briefly returned to the throne with Vasily IV, who reigned until 1610. Numerous noble families have since claimed male-line descent from him, and the Romanovs were linked to his line by marriage.

Our 900 and 1000 maps show the Rus' lands centred on Kiev and Novgorod that the chronicle says Rurik's heirs built, a generation or more after his death.