complexity is good--but I have seven pages to cover seven centuries

[redbird]

I can summarize the history of Kievan Rus quickly, because I don't know much about it. That's a matter of a little quick reading, and the highlights of two or three sources. "Barbarian invasions" of Europe is harder. Which ones are important? And in what sense of "important"? The sample test has nothing on any of this, so it's no help. And does it matter, for this purpose, that the Rus, who we generally think of as Slavs, seem to be kin to the Vikings, if not just Vikings trading under a different name?

I am glad to have found the Oxford History of Medieval Europe sitting on a bookshelf in our bedroom, though.

Comments

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

It's generally accepted that the Rus were Vikings, mainly from Sweden (I did a degree in Scandinavian Studies, of all things). The main source for this is the writings of Ibn Fadlan (I think that's how it's spelt - it's some time since I graduated!)

[redbird]

It's complicated, though, because they seem to have been speaking a Slavic language by then. Thanks for the ibn Fadlan link, but I have to doubt the quality of the translation, at least, of something that takes an Arab source and has the phrase "assumed the garb of Muslimism".

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

TBH I just skimmed the page, but it seemed to list the important points - Ibn Fadlan describing the Rus as filthy, and then the explanation of why it would seem that way to someone of his culture etc

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

A quick search on Google has turned up the following which seems to be a pretty good summary: http://www.geocities.com/sessrumnirkindred/risala.html

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Barbarian invasions -- I find it interesting to consider them as something that starts somewhere and goes in different directions. Thus the Rus are the Vikings going East. The Huns invaded China as well as Europe and pushing everyone else into Europe before them, especially the poor Visigoths. Then the Patzinaks and all those who came out of the Steppes into the Eastern Empire before them were there because they had the stirrup now. They're not barbarians milling around and bashing people, they're people of different tech levels expanding as they can. They broke a lot of visible level stuff, but they also brought a lot of daily life improving invisible tech stuff with them. (Stirrups, soap, horse collars, waterwheels -- OK they had waterwheels already, but the use of small ones for grinding corn nearby rather than big factories of them.) It's easier to lament over a broken aqueduct than see the end of slavery in the horse collar, but even so.

[redbird]

I gather the whole stirrup thing has been discredited, but yes, it's definitely migrations. I do have a sentence (this is all rough draft) that includes the phrase "who the Romans called 'barbarians'". And I haven't gotten to the Mongols, yet. Or the Huns, who settled down quietly to be pastoral Europeans, speaking their own language and enthusiastically adopting hot peppers centuries before any of the cultures near them. But I don't think I can get paprika into this chapter (or justify it in something this short).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I've always been amused by the Rus: a bunch of Vikings who conquered Russia in order to get a better trade route to Bahgdad. I mean, that takes chutzpah.

[redbird]

It's as good a reason for conquering Russia as anyone has come up with yet.