Re: The 'road from the Varangians to the Greeks' (former etruscan)

--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Torsten Pedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

> The landscape Roslagen (north of Stockholm) has been suggested as a
> cognate of Rus (the Danelaw in England is "Danelagen" in Danish,
> probably a late Romantic loan from Old Norse. That would make
> Roslagen the area where the law of Ros is the law of the land.)
>

According to my reading, Roslagen is etymologized from *roTHs-
'oarsmen' in it's direct sense, not designating the specific
subethnos. Please note that this etymology of Rus' is not commonly
accepted, a lot of others are suggested (< Rugi (Scandinavians),
Rosomoni (Scandinavians), Rutheni (Celts), hydronym Ros' in the
Dnieper region, denotation (by color) of the west in some Iranian
language etc).

> There were a few more 980 dates I have just checked up.
>
> In 980 silver disappears from the Birka market. Consensus
> explanation: the Arabian silver mines were exhausted. But mines are
> not exhausted from one season to the next (well, most mines).
>

It's not exactly a consensus. One of the most plausible explanation,
in my opinion, is that after the defeat of Khazars by Svyatoslav (and
virtual elimination of their state by his successors), as well as
through conciuos anti-Rakhdonits (Jewish Hansa with head-quarters in
Khazaria) policy of Kievan princes one - Khazarian - link dropped out
of the trade chain.

Sergei