It would have been strange indeed if these adventurers, who succeeded in reaching Asia Minor and the coasts of North America, should have overlooked Russia, which lay, as it were, at their very doors.  The Volkhof, flowing through Novgorod, formed part of a great waterway which afforded almost uninterrupted water-communication between the Baltic and the Black Sea; and we know that some time afterwards the Scandinavians used this route in their journeys to Constantinople.  The change which the Scandinavian movement underwent elsewhere is clearly indicated by the Russian chronicles:  first, the Variags came as collectors of tribute, and raised so much popular opposition that they were expelled, and then they came as rulers, and settled in the country.  Whether they really came on invitation may be doubted, but that they adopted the language, religion, and customs of the native population does not militate against the assertion that they were Normans.  On the contrary, we have here rather an additional confirmation, for elsewhere the Normans did likewise.  In the North of France they adopted almost at once the French language and religion, and the son and successor of the famous Rollo was sometimes reproached with being more French than Norman.*

     Strinnholm, “Die Vikingerzuge” (Hamburg, 1839), I., p. 135.

Though it is difficult to decide how far the legend is literally true, there can be no possible doubt that the event which it more or less accurately describes had an important influence on Russian history.  From that time dates the rapid expansion of the Russo-Slavonians—­a movement that is still going on at the present day.  To the north, the east, and the south new principalities were formed and governed by men who all claimed to be descendants of Rurik, and down to the end of the sixteenth century no Russian outside of this great family ever attempted to establish independent sovereignty.

For six centuries after the so-called invitation of Rurik the city on the Volkhof had a strange, checkered history.  Rapidly it conquered the neighbouring Finnish tribes, and grew into a powerful independent state, with a territory extending to the Gulf of Finland, and northwards to the White Sea.  At the same time its commercial importance increased, and it became an outpost of the Hanseatic League.  In this work the descendants of Rurik played an important part, but they were always kept in strict subordination to the popular will.  Political freedom kept pace with commercial prosperity.  What means Rurik employed for establishing and preserving order we know not, but the chronicles show that his successors in Novgorod possessed merely such authority as was freely granted them by the people.  The supreme power resided, not in the prince, but in the assembly of the citizens called together in the market-place by the sound of the great bell.  This assembly made laws for the prince as well as for the people, entered into alliances with foreign powers, declared