The earliest written record in Ancient Rus’ is a runic inscription on a wooden stick from Old Ladoga[842]. It is archaeologically dated to the first half of the ninth century. Together with three runic amulets coming from the same area and dated to the tenth century it forms a group of runic inscriptions typical for Eastern Sweden[843]. At least one of the inscriptions, on the Gorodishche amulet II, was produced on the site where it was unearthed: it is a copy of another and earlier amulet (Gorodishche I) found on the same site. Even if the stick and the two amulets belonged to occasional visitors to the Ladoga region and were brought there from Sweden, they must have been intelligible and meaningful enough for the settlers of Scandinavian origin to order a copy of one of the amulets. It means that in the tenth century the Varangians, at least in the North-Western part of Rus’, were in full possession of their native language and beliefs.
In the first quarter of the tenth century first traces of the usage of Old Russian by Varangians appear. In a famous «Varangian» site of Gnjozdovo near Smolensk a burial of a warrior contained fragments of an amphora with a Cyrillic inscription[844]. The warrior must have been a Scandinavian buried with his wife or his concubine, a Scandinavian or a Slav by birth. Judging from the ritual, the burial was performed by his compatriots in a traditional Central Swedish way. The inscription on the amphora deliberately broken during the burial rite has several readings and interpretations, gorouhsha or goroushcha being the most probable. According to these readings, the inscription consisted of one word designating the contents of the amphora, either mustard, or inflammable fluid. As the earliest Cyrillic inscription, it raises many questions, its presence in the grave of a Scandinavian being one of them. Whoever made the inscription, a Slavic or a Russian, i.e. Scandinavian, merchant, it was intended to inform the community consisting mostly of Scandinavians about the contents of the amphora which presupposes their ability to comprehend the message. Thus, the Gnjozdovo inscription though not directly witnessing the usage of Old Russian by the Varangians, still suggests their getting familiar both with it and with the Cyrillic script.
The linguistic practices of rus ’ (Old Russian warrior elite of Scandinavian origin) of the mid-tenth century can be convincingly reconstructed on the basis of information preserved in the treatise «De administrando imperio» written by Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (ca. 950). Parallel Old Norse («Russian») and Slavic names of the Dnieper rapids listed in the treatise suggest that Constantine’s informant, a representative of rus \ was bilingual. Moreover, the Old Norse names are rendered in Greek without any significant corruption of the original words.
On the contrary, identification of Slavic names is sometimes uncertain and the correlation of meanings of both names is obscure. All this means that the informant was in full possession of his mother tongue (most probably Old Swedish as some of the names derive from Old Swedish forms) but he was not so sure about Old Russian[845]. The bilinguism of Old Russian elite and professional warrior strata is corroborated by information of a Spanish traveler Ibrahim Ibn Jakub (960ies) and Leo the Deacon, a Byzantine historian of the late tenth century[846].
Two graffiti on the walls of St. Sofia cathedral in Novgorod provide another chronologically precise reference point. Although inscribed by persons with Old Norse personal names, both texts are written in Old Russian in Cyrillic. The first graffito reads «Oh, miserable feel I, Ger(e)ben the sinner»[847]. The name Ger(e)ben is an obvious rendering of ON Herbeinn, OSw. Herben, the name not otherwise attested in Old Russian sources. There can be no doubts that Gerben came from a Varangian (originally Swedish?) family, and his mastership of Old Russian was flawless. He makes no mistakes of any kind and he uses a formula widespread among Old Russian scribes (who entered it in marginalia in manuscripts) and laymen. The grafitto is dated to the second half of the eleventh century.
The second inscription reads: «Lord, help your slave Far’man, Gleb’s retainer»[848]. It has a more precise date, most probably 1137, as the inscription mentions prince Gleb who then ruled in Novgorod. As in the first graffito, this one also contains an Old Norse personal name, or rather a nickname, Far'man < Farmadr in an Old Russian formulaic text. The accuracy of spelling, the usage of correct forms, and the sureness of hand show that both, Gerben and Far’man, were experienced in writing and that their mother tongue was Old Russian though they had Old Norse names – probably due to family tradition.
The same tendency is characteristic of runic literacy[849]. Besides amulets from the Volkhov region (Old Ladoga and Gorodichshe) the tenth century is rich in graffiti on Islamic coins coming from hoards buried in different parts of Eastern Europe, but mostly on the sites along the Dnieper, the Western Dvina, and the Upper Volga, the main river routes of that time. The majority of inscriptions, ca. 200, are made with runes and rune-like signs. There are only about 10 Arabic inscriptions, some 10 made with Turkish runes, up to 5 made with Armenian or Georgian letters, and one Greek graffi to. Quite recently a coin carved with two Cyrillic letters was found in Gnjozdovo. The Old Norse inscriptions are very short, they consist of one word or one or several rune-like signs. The readable graffi ti, not more than twenty in number, contain words guð and kuþ, goð «god», kiltR, gildr «of full weight, of good quality», or personal names like ubi, Úbbi. More numerous are pictures of warrior goods, namely weapons (swords, knives, arrows), ships, drinking horns, banners, and symbols like swastika, Thor’s hammers, or the emblems of the Rurikides. The runic and rune-like inscriptions and the pictures on coins are made in the same technique and must have been executed by warriors and merchants of Scandinavian origin during their stay in or voyage through Eastern Europe[850].
In the eleventh century the number of runic inscriptions found in Eastern Europe decreases and their character shows traces of degradation. Except for the Berezan’ stone that was erected by Scandinavians on their way to or from Byzantium there is only one inscription typical for Scandinavia, which represents a part of futhark carved on a bone from Novgorod[851]. Identification of other inscriptions as runic is uncertain. Though the letters are similar to runes, there are misspellings, syntactical constructions unusual for Old Norse, etc. These features can be probably regarded as a result of gradual loss of writing-in-runes habits of the descendants of the Varangians as well as their loss of native language.
As scanty as the sources for the ninth to the eleventh century are, they seem to reflect different stages in the linguistic assimilation of Scandinavians in Rus’. By the mid-tenth century the Varangians became bilingual; by the end of the eleventh century they used Old Russian as their mother tongue.
The developments in the interval between the mid-tenth and late eleventh centuries are partially attested by personal names current in the family of Kievan grand princes and among the warrior elite. The Old Russian annalist of the beginning of the twelfth century, the author of the earliest extant Russian chronicle (though preserved in manuscripts of the fourteenth century and later) was sure that Russian princes descended from Rurik (<Hrcerekr), a leader of a Norse people rus \ who had been invited by the Novgorodians in 862 to be their ruler[852]. His commander-in-chief Oleg together with Rurik’s son Igor’ moved to Kiev and founded the dynasty of Russian rulers. Though the traditions about Rurik, Oleg and Igor’ were most probably put together in a genealogical sequence by a late eleventh-century annalist and before that existed as separate tales or cycles of tales[853], there can be little doubt that the tales were based on historical memories and preserved some real details, names of the heroes among them.
Up to the middle of the tenth century all the names mentioned by the annalist are of Old Norse origin. These are the names of successive Kievan rulers Olg or Oleg (<Helgi) and Igor’ (<Ingvarr), of the latter’s commander-in-chief Svenel’d (<Sveinaldr), and of a group of Oleg’s emissaries who concluded a peace treaty with Byzantine emperor in 911 (or in 907 and 911) after a successful attack on Constantinople in 907. Among fi fteen representatives of prince Oleg only two have probably Finnish names, while others bear purely Scandinavian names Karly (<Karli), Inegeld (<Ingjaldr), Farlof (<Farláfr), Veremud (<Vermundr), Rulaf (<Hróðláfr), Gudy (<Góði), Ruald (<Hróðláfr), Karn (<Karn), Frelav (<Friðláfr