Northern Europe ca. 830 CE

Europe in the 9th Century CE: Trade Routes

Trade routes marked in red have probably been used by Finnish tradesmen transporting our products. Starting as early as in the Classical age, a large part of the "ivory" needed by Europe and Near East came from walruses living along the Arctic Ocean coastline, and in trade the North received untempered swords which were turned into harpoons by the Coastal Lapps, Bjarmians, and Samoyeds. Another Southern wonder was a finding, still relatively recently common in the ancient territories of the Perms: an ornamented silver bowl.

State archaeologist J. R. Aspelin presented several such artifacts in his work, "Archaeological Relics from the Finnish Territories." Our export products were among others furs, beaver 'hausa' and other forest products. A specialty of the Volga Finns was honey while the Ob Ugrians specialized in fish glue, originally used in assembling arrows; in the early Middle Ages this was adopted by European monasteries for bookbinding. Jewelry made in the Finnish style has been found among other places in Scandinavia, so such items must have been produced for export. One probable manufacturing site was the ancient town of Vanaja, by the waterway leading from the Kokemäki river (on the map) through the Vantaa down to the Gulf of Finland.

After the trade republic of Novgorod expanded its purchasing area to the Karelian territories by the White Sea, the market was enriched by sea salt desiccated by boiling, and pig iron. Later on, Karelians even paid their taxes to Russia with these pre-industrial products. Karelian industry ceased only when Peter the Great issued a decree which gave Karelian iron ore over to foreign owners. True enough, history books note that Peter the Great "established" iron industry in Karelia.

The famous "Charta Marina" by Olaus Magnus and its gloss booklet claim that Finland exported many finished ships to Sweden among others (in the 15th century.) It is improbable that the Swedish government would have constructed shipyards in a county without shipbuilding traditions, so obviously Finnish ships were well known and approved earlier than that. In Norway it is common knowledge that in the Middle Ages, Coastal Lapps produced and sold fishing and coastal sailing ships to Norwegian peasants, and this business may have begun as early as in the "Viking era."

The most important Western trading center was Dorestad in the land of the Frisians. The Baltic trade of the Frisians preceded the Hansa Union and competed with Gotland in the same market. The much-discussed Birka was shorter-lived than another trading place of the Mälare area, Helgö. Concurrently with the decline and possible destruction of Birka in 975 CE, archaeological findings of the time in Finland proper began to include silver, other valuables, and scales. Possibly Gotland reinforced her position at the time and supplanted the Sveans among others in the Finnish market, or the Birkan territory was damaged by the increased activity of the Finns in the field of remote trade.

Much attention has been paid to the word family 'birka,' 'birk...' 'björkö,' 'koivisto-' '...pirkkalaiset,' and various theories have been propounded. Although the origin of the word "birk" is still unknown, there is a plausible hypothesis about the concept being connected to trading places and the "legal protection" enjoyed by foreign tradesmen in them and the roads leading to such sites. Several harbor sites with names of the type "birk/koivisto" have been located along the Finnish coast (Unto Salo, The Origin of the Finnish Town Institution and its Early History, Hist. Arkisto 78, 1982,) which foreign merchants could thus enter safely. Since 'birka' is commonly regarded as meaning other things besides a unique place-name of an island in the lake Mälaren, the inhabitants of Aland believe that Birka was located in their archipelago. This view is supported by a surviving report of a Christian missionary about his voyage to a Northern Pagan land called "Birka," in which the route description fits Aland better than the Swedish inland lakes.

In the East, the major purchaser was the Arab world and the rich Middle Asia. At the time, Europe was a poor 'podunk' while all money of the Old World lay in the East. Eastern trade depended upon whomever happened to rule Volga and other downstreams of the Russian rivers, and upon local political stability. The intrusion of various nomads and other troublemakers towards the West caused long hiatuses in the Nordic commerce, and this contributed to poorer centuries with fewer archaeological findings also in Finland.

In the ninth century, the Volga waterway was controlled by the Khanate of the Bolgars whose capital was Bolgar. A travelogue by the Arab diplomat and scientist, Ibn Fadlan, mentions the Baltic Finns and especially the Veps. The latter were allies of the Bolgar Khan and possibly paid taxes to him, which is not reported by Fadlan. For practical and commercial reasons the Perms, Volga Finns, and Veps-Karelians were mostly allies of whomever was able to secure peace to the vital trade routes. The claim made by the Gothic historian, Jordanes, about the Mordvans, Meryans, and other Finnish peoples as belonging to the empire of Hermannaric seems plausible considering this background. Even when the Tartars attacked Moscow, documents report that a large auxiliary group of "chuds" attempted in vain to rescue their ally city.

"Great Bolgaria" did not usually allow Arabic or Persian merchants to proceed farther than the city of Bolgar, nor the Nordics souther than that. This caused some conflict since profits remained largely and unjustly with the Bolgarian middlemen; and eventually "varyags" attacked Bolgar, conquering it. Since then, the weakened Bolgar state was unable to withstand the Mongol attacks, and the entire commerce ceased--this time for good. "Silver Road," a commercial network connecting the Nordic fur zones, the wealth of the Caliphate and Byzantium, the silver mines of Turkmenistan and even the source of cowrie shells, important to Ingermanlanders and Volga Finns, the Andaman Isles, was developed during millennia. School instruction and general culture know only its Western fork and its Westernmost name, "Eastern Road." Hardly did the Estonian-Chudian Varyag merchants encountered by Ibn Fadlan on the Volga think they were using an "Eastern Road" of the Vikings.

The position of Bolgar was inherited by the centers of the Westernmore route, Kiev and Novgorod, often associated with the unhistoric account about Rurik and other Viking brothers. Russian historiography has found a great deal of new information about the "riddle" of Novgorod. The Nestor Chronicle mentions two Slavonic and three Finnish tribes as the founders of Novgorod and entire "Russia": the Chuds, the Slavs (Slovenes,) the Krivits, the Veps, and the Meryans. Official research agrees with this. Novyi Gorod, i. e. 'the new city,' was founded by connecting three separate commercial and administrative populations, or fortresses, which thus were the "old cities." Since Nestor mentions that the Varyags were invited to rule, there has been uncritical willingness to believe in the chronicle literally, but also sharp criticism, and several questions still remain unanswered. Nestor himself lists several possible homelands for the "varyags", "Those varyags were called Russ (#1,) although others said they were Sveans (#2,) some called them Normans (#3,) or Anglo-Saxons (#4,) and some even called them Gotlanders (#5.) (The Nestor Chronicle, WSOY 1974, p. 17.)

So the nationality of the Varyags remains uncertain. Lennart Meri supposes the word 'varyag' to be derived from an Old Scandinavian word meaning 'allegiance' or 'fealty'. Probably people embarking upon a long commercial or military journey made a contract in the spirit of "never abandon a buddy" which eventually would have produced the word and concept. Incidentally, another popular word, "Viking," appears in the Edda only in reference to pirates and other unpopular and anonymous characters. Latter-day post-Romantic, Rudbeckian and Freudenthalian writings are another story.

The chronicles mention two privileged groups in Russia, the Varyags and the Kolbyans. If the former were the aforementioned Sveans or Anglo-Saxons, the latter were something else. The most probable explanation is that the Kolbyans were the nobility of the ancient Finno-Ugrian tribes of Russia which partially retained its position and privileges even after slavonization. Among others, one Boyar family descended from Meryan royalty. Associating the Kolbyans with Finnish peoples is justified by reports about the Dvina area, in which the writer should have no reason to shun the word "varyag" unless this tribe is not Scandinavian.

Nestor's incertainty about the nationality of the "Russ" supports the aforementioned "merchant caste" hypothesis. The presence of Gotlanders and even Anglo-Saxons on the ancient Russian river routes is by no means improbable. Also, new information has been found about the nationalities of the founders of Novgorod (Russia.) Russian scientists have analyzed old chronicles and reconstructed the name of the fourth Finnish people that influenced Novgorod: the Nereva. The Nereva tribe lived probably to the East of the Lake Ilma, and the denomination connects easily to the name group 'Merya,' 'Muroma,' 'Mechera.' New light has also been thrown upon 'rhos,' 'russ,' and 'Russia.'

Novgorod had specific blocks (quarters) for foreign merchants permanently living there; among others, the Karelians had theirs. One block was called "prusskaya." It was inhabited by the Novgorod Lithuanians, but in Russian it is not their denomination; it belongs to the Prussians, the Baltic neighbors to the Slavonics for centuries. Here the word Prussians means a Baltic people, massacred by the German Knights during their "crusade" to the present-day Kaliningrad county (Königsberg.) Since the Lithuanian language sounded like Prussian to the Russians, the name survived even when the Slavs had moved Northward from the Polish regions. When Nestor was writing his chronicle, the Catholic Lithuanians were a formidable competitor both to the Russian state and church. He may have forgotten which group of the Varyag merchants bore the name "russ" and allowed it to mean the social group in question. In addition to Lithuanian-Latvian tradespeople, the Novgorod "prusses" could have been members of the Golyan nation which spoke a Baltic language but was later assimilated with the Slavs and disappeared.

Scholars of today's White Russia consider it a possibility that the Krivits tribe, so important during the birth of the White Russia n (Byelorussian) nationality, was not originally Slavonic but Baltic--that is, Lithuanian-Lettish which was later slavonized. Among others, Professor Georgy Shtykhav has made this conclusion, basing upon archaeological material. If this research corroborates, as is to be expected, the Baltic-Krivits origin of the Byelorussians, it disproves the present opinion about the origin of the 'russ' word family. So the Russians were "russkis" even before they were slavonized?! [The Finnish word for "russki", that is, "ryssä" is highly emotional and most certainly politically incorrect, much more so than several ethnic slurs in America.] Thus Rurik with his Varyags, created by Nestor, remains just a character in world fiction, and the theories about the Scandinavian roots of the word "ryssä" (rhos, Roslagen, etc.) can be finally buried in the dusty archives of false hypotheses. Serves you right, Swedophiles!

Nestor's much-quoted but little criticized report about the Varyags would be more correct if worded thus, "The Pruss (#1,) the Sveans (#2,) the Normans (#3,) the Anglo-Saxons (#4,) and even Gotlanders (#5,) are called Varyags." Five nationalities represented in the international merchant groups in the ninth-century Russia are called correctly by their own names. This catalog includes no Finnish "merchant-warriors" since they had a special denomination: Kolbyans, or Kvens (people of Kainuu; perhaps the same as 'nuijamiehet,' club warriors?) Slavs were called Slavs by Nestor in his chronicle whether they were "varyags" or not.

The Varyag era in Nordic commerce ended when the Hansa took the Baltic trade from Gotland and when the Golden Orda, or the Mongol Khans, conquered entire Russia excluding Novgorod. The tradition of remote commerce, practised by Finnish and Karelian peasants, was continued even during later centuries. It caused much grief to Gustaf Vasa that landowners sailed from Finnish shores directly to Tallinn, Riga, and Danzig (Gdansk) to sell their wares. To end this 'illegal' prosperity, stiff laws were imposed, and privileges were granted to city-dwelling burghers (bourgeoisie); basically the same principle as in today's bank fusions.

Gotland, the ancient center of Baltic commerce, remained more prosperous than the rest of Sweden, and its peasants were also freer, until Valdemar Atterdag annihilated and impoverished the entire island in the 14th century, which also eliminated the last Scandinavian relic of the society of free and industrious men, typical of the "Viking era."

The peasants' free mobility and their right to sell their own products was an abomination to the feudal-centralistic states of the following centuries, but we know of one tradition that was carri ed on nearly to our own time and whose roots were in the seafaring of the "Varyag era": the 'Sepra' commerce between the fishermen of the islands in the Gulf of Finland, and the Estonian farmers. A fisherman would trade his barrels of Baltic herring in for the farmer's potatoes at rates advantageous to both, without middlemen etc. A relation with a commercial partner was permanent--in fact, it could only be inherited. It was only the Second World War that put an end to this traffic.

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