[conspire] How Russia got its name.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Interesting reading from the BBC, especially if you have a Viking heritage.
> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20171002-the-town-that-gave-russia-its-name

It is, but there's still a lot of arguing among scholars over to what
degree, if at all, Kievan Rus was a Viking enterprise.  This is partly 
national politics at work:  Slavic writers tend to stress that the Rus
got going before the Varangians (Vikings) came down the rivers from
Sweden (or wherever else), whereas the 'Normanist' historical view
pictures the entire thing as Sven, Ole, and a bunch of their drinking
buddies drifting down from Stockholm and setting up shop.

Compromise stances are also common such as 'the Rus had a ruling class
of Scandinavians who were almost lost in a sea of Slavs'.

The records are pretty fragmentary for many reasons including the fact
that when the Mongols decided to destroy a land, they tended to do a
_really_ thorough job, and Batu Khan's 1237-1240 invasion destroyed
pretty much every significant settlement and permanent structure in Rus
except the cities of Novgorod and Pskov, which (1) were remote and
would have required crossing marshlands to reach and (2) surrendered
preemptively.