Finno-Ugrian impact on Russian ethnos

 

Yes, there are some Slavic names in the second treaty, but nothing close to Orthodox influence. All the names seem originally and indigenously pagan to me.

 

Well, in fact it's obvious that those names do reveal ethnicity. You wouldn't find any other "Russian" names like these in later Ancient Rus chronicles. In fact it's somehow shocking for Russians to discover what were the first "Russian" names mentioned the first international treaty Russia ever signed.

Finnish valta is a loanword from Germanic though. When did the word start appearing in names?

 

About Kari/Karn. It was spelled "Karn" in the Russian text. My guess that it should have been "Kari" instead was a pure guess and shouldn't be taken so seriously.

 

This is also my understanding that Finno-Ugric loans are old also because they have stayed in their original form (to a large extent) in our language. Kaarna was the exact thing what I would have linked with Karn. Actually Tuohikirje means birchbark.

 

The primary meaning of "Slav" is glory. It indeed has some secondary meaning as "famous" but these meanings are somehow interconnecting it basically means "glorious for smth."

I believe Volodslav or Vladislav should mean the one that posses glory. Vlad means "to posses "to have."

Originally posted by Torsten Stålhandske You wrote that Russians get a small shock when first time encountering the names of "early Rus'". How about descriptions of Rus' livelihood described by Ibn Rustah ? Are those excerpts generally known in Russia ? I would think that they would cause even greater shock, considering that the Rus' were slave traders and main source for slaves were the east Slavic tribes.

 

As you correctly noted, the results of Normanist vs Anti-normanist struggle are actually widely visible among the general Russian public; cause most of it isn't actually aware of the above case. Moreover, most of them would think of Rus as somekind of ancient, mighty Slavic warriors without any connection to Germanic/Scandinavian or other people what so ever. While in fact, it's clear that Slavs and Rus were not the same.

Mysterious Ancient Sepulchers Discovered under Staraya Ryazan
8.12.2008

Researchers suppose they belonged to an ancient civilization that appeared long before the Slavic population. Experts call these tribes Ryazan-Okski and attribute them to the Volga-Finnish branch of Finno-Ugric peoples.

Initially the archeologists thought the tribes had come here from the East. However the traces of material culture of Ryazan-Okski tribes are indicative of their relation to the German tribes of Goths. This likeness can be found both in details of national costume and their weapons. Besides, the researchers managed to establish that heads of Ryazan-Okski tribes had worn crowns of almost the same type as Gothic kings. On the assumption of this one can assume that the local tribes were in a military alliance with the Goths.

The Sarmatians, Sarmatae or Sauromatae (Old Iranian Sarumatah 'archer'[1], Greek: Σαρμάτες) were a people of Iranic origin[2][1]. Mentioned by classical authors, they migrated from Central Asia to the Ural Mountains around fifth century B.C. and eventually settled in most of southern European Russia, Ukraine, and the eastern Balkans.

Pliny the Elder (Natural History book iv) wrote that the Latin Sarmatae is identical to the Greek Sauromatae. At their greatest reported extent these tribes ranged from the Vistula river to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, and from the mysterious domain of the Hyperboreans in the north, southward to the shores of the Black and Caspian seas, including the region between them as far as the Caucasus mountains.[3] The richest tombs and the most significant finds of Sarmatian artifacts have been recorded in the Krasnodar Krai of Russia.

The old name of Paraćin in Serbia was Sarmatae.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the boundary between the so-called Centum-Satem isogloss in the Indo-European languages apparently split at the European border of the Sarmatians.

Around the year 100 BC, Sarmatian land ranged from the Barents Sea or Baltic Sea ("Oceanus Sarmaticus") to a tributary of the Vistula River, to the Carpathian Mountains, to the mouth of the Danube, then eastward along the northern coast of the Black Sea, across the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea and north along the Volga up to the polar circle.

The Sarmatians flourished from the time of Herodotus and allied partly with the Huns when they arrived in the fourth century AD.

 

Sarmatian tribe Gythones and their origin the Guti were native to Gutium, presumably in the central Zagros Mountains, almost nothing is known about their origins.

 

The oldest history of the Gutar is retold in the Gutasaga. The legend goes that they descended from a man named Þjelvar who was the first to discover Gotland. Þjelvar had a son named Hafþi who wedded a fair maiden by the name of Hvitastjerna. These two were the first to settle on Gotland. Hafþi and Hvitastjerna later begat three children by the name of Guti, Graipr and Gunfjaun. Coming to manhood and after the death of their parents, the brothers divided Gotland into three parts and took each one part, but Guti remained the highest chieften, and gave his name to the land and its people.

 

(What geneology and other research tell about Gothland is another story than the above saga).