Wladyslaw Duczko

The first chapter deals with the Rus who accompanied a Byzantine embassy to the Frankish court in 839; Duczko speculates that there was more to the story than the Rus and Byzantines let on. The rest of the book is mostly about archaeological finds of Norse or Norse-style artefacts in eastern Europe, and Duczko's interpretation of them as reflecting the progress of Scandinavian engagement in the East. There's also a long discussion of Ibn Fadlan's famous description of a Rus chieftain's burial.

The book could have used better editing; Duczko's English is frequently awkward, and the transcription of Russian words is inconsistent, the same word being rendered differently only a couple sentences apart in one case. Get past that however, and I found a lot to like here. The biggest takeaway is perhaps that the nature of Scandinavian presence varied from region to region, with different mixtures with Finnic, Slavic, and Turkic nomad elements. Partly as a result Duczko doesn't believe that the tenth century Rurikids of Kiev ruled all the Rus as the Primary Chronicle would have it a century later.… (mer)