The Eastern World Of The Vikings: Eight Essays About Scandinavia And Eastern Europe In The Early Middle Ages (gothenburg Old Norse Studies)

By E. A. Melnikova, Lamberg Professor in Humanities at Göteborgs Universitet for 1995. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to inaugurate our series with this collection of essays by Elena Melnikova from the Department of Early Russian History at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Professor Melnikova is not only one of the world’s leading experts on Old Norse geography and on Russian-Scandinavian relations in the Viking Age, but is also a truly interdisciplinary historian who knows how to combine data from many different fields, including Old Norse and Russian literature intellectual history, folklore, runeology, numismatics, and archaeology in order to achieve new and surprising results. Foreword, by Lars Lönnroth v Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix List of Maps ix Introduction xi Maps and Plates xiv Part One: The Geographical Setting 1. The Viking Oecumene 3 2. The Oecumene of the Old Russian Annalist 19 3. Water Routes in Pre-Mongol Rus’ 31 Part Two: Scandinavians in the East 4. The Prehistory of the Old Russian State 47 5. The Retinue Culture and the Retinue State 61 6. Graffiti on Islamic Coins 73 Part Three: Oral Tradition and History 7. Oral Tradition in the "Primary Chronicle" 93 8. In Search of a Ruler: The State Origin Myth in Russian History Writing 113 Bibliography 129 Index 136 By E.a. Melnikova. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [127]-135) And Index.