>
> Oops. In the sense that I heard that some people have claimed that
> today's Ruthenians are "a kind of" Ukrainians. I retract my claim.
> But I still believe that if Saxo approx 1250 mentions Ruthenians,
it
> must have been a people that lived close to where they live today.
>
Now I got your point. Today's Ruthenians (they call themselves
rusiny 'Russians', because the ethnicon Ukrainian 'borderlander [of
Wthe estern border of Russia, vs. proper 'Russians' from the central
regions]' can't help it - they're 'Ukrainians of Ukrainians' and the
most western 'Russians') can indeed be treated as Ukrainian
subethnos. But. It's a big question if they can be realibly
identified with the Ruthenians of the medieval annalistic tradition
(and the label Ruthenians might as well have had different meaning
with different author). The general 'medieval' meaning of this label
is 'of Rusj' (~='Russian'), but 'Russian' had different meanings in,
eg, V c.(some Germanic ethnical group), IX c.(the East Slavs united
by [the relics of] this group) and XIV c. (Russians in more or less
today's sense).
The etymology of the term is obscure (?< Old Norse roths 'oarsmen as
social>subethnic stratum [?]').
Sergei