Rus (folk)

The Rus are an oldtime folk who gave their name to the lands of Russia and Belarus. Their background and selfhood are in much unreckoning. Russian fieldknowers, along with some Westerners, find the Rus to be a south-eastern Slavic folk that grounded a kindred band - the Kievan state. Ibn Khordadbeh, a Persian earthdrawer from the 9th yearhundred also believed the Rus folk to be Slavic. Oldstream Western scholars believe them to be a group of Varangians — sundry groups of Norsemen. From the First Saga of Rus, put together in about 1113 AD, the Rus had shifted "from over the sea", first to north-eastern Europe, starting an early state that in the end came under the leadership of Rurik. Later, Rurik's kin Oleg took Kiev, grounding the Kievan Rus'. The offspring of Rurik were the lordly house of Rus' (after 862), and of forstdoms started in the land formerly besat by Kievan Rus, Galicia-Volhynia (after 1199), Chernigov, Vladimir-Suzdal, the Great Earldom of Moscow, and the grounders of the Tsardom of Russia.