of Vikings. Archaeologists think that the Vikings had probably landed on the coast of Europe near the Baltic Sea. The Varangians were a group of skilled warriors and traders. When the Varangians came into the Slavic territory, they intermixed with Slavs and villages were able to advance into towns. One such town is Kiev, which was the capital of Russia for centuries. During this time, the origins of the Kievan State arose, but no one knows exactly how.There are largely two theories to how the Russian state got underway: The Norman Theory, and the Soviet Anti-Normanist Theory. From the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Norman Theory (the theory most widely accepted by experts) was created. What had happened was the Varangians, now confident of their strength, began to take tribute from the Slavs around the middle 800s. There was obvious dissatisfaction with these taxes, and the Slavs rose to push the Varangians back to Scandinavia. With no Vikings to govern them, the Slavic people tried to govern themselves, but chaos and confusion arose, and the asked the Varangians to rule them in 862. Though this theory seems plausible, and archaeological and textual evidence supports it, there is still a large debate.The second theory is the Soviet Anti-Norman Theory. Used by the Soviet Union officially, this theory is based around the fact that most evidence is circumstantial and does not amount to any real information. Soviet historians have invalidated the Norman Theory for two reasons: The unreliable nature of the Primary Chronicle, and that the first Russian state had arose as a result of “socioeconomic changes” among eastern Slavs before the Varangians arrived. Due to these reasons, the historians think that the Russian State was formed before the Varangians came, and that the Viking rule was insignificant. The Varangian rule was in fact insignificant; there was no Varangian influence on Russian laws or culture after th...
