BOOK
The Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol IV, The Age of Faith, Bk IV, The Dark Ages, Ch XVIII, The Byzantine World, Sec VII, The Birth of Russia, p447: "...Early in the ninth century an apparently negligible attack came upon Slavdom from the northwest. The Scandinavian Vikings could spare men and energy from their assaults upon Scotland, Iceland, Ireland, England, Germany, France, adn Spain to send into northern Russia bands of one or two hundred men to prey upon the communities of Balts, Finns, and Slavs, and then return with their booty. To protect their robberies with law and order, these Vaeringjar or Varangians (`followers'- of a chieftain) established fortified posts on their routes, and gradually they settled down as a ruling Scandinavian minority of armed merchants among a subject peasantry. Some towns hired them as guardians of social order and security; apparently the guardians converted their wages into tribute, and became the masters of their employers. By the middle of the ninth century they governed Novgorod (`new fort') and had extended their rule as far south as Kiev. The routes and settlements they controlled were loosely bound into a commercial and political empire called Ros or Rus, a term of much disputed derivation. The great rivers that traversed the land connected- through canals and short overland hauls- the Baltic and Black Seas, and invited a southward expansion of Varangian trade and power; soon these fearless merchant-warriors were selling their goods or services in Constantinople itself. Conversely, as commerce grew more regular on the Dnieper, the Volkhov, and the Western Dvina, Moslem merchants came up from Baghdad and Byzantium and traded spices, wines, silks, and gems for furs, amber, honey, wax, and slaves; hence the great number of Islamic and Byzantine coins found along these rivers, and even in Scandinavia. As Moslem control of the eastern Mediterranean blocked the flow of European products through French and Italianoutlets to Levantine ports, Marseille, Genoa, and Pisa declined in the ninth and tenth centuries, while in Russia towns like Novgorod, Smolensk, Chernigov, Kiev, and Rostov flourished through Scandinavian, Slvic, Moslem, and Byzantine trade..."
Another name for VARANGIAN was VAERINGJAR.