Vinithar attacked the South-Russian Slavs, the Antae, and after one reverse overcame first them and then the Huns, who had come to their help, in two battles, but fell in the third. It is certainly strange that a tribe of the Slavs, who were despised as warriors not only by the Germans but also by the Byzantines, could defeat even in one battle a German leader before whom the Huns themselves recoiled. Still, it is a fact that the Antae were successful warriors, and later in the sixth century possessed the whole region from the Dniester to the Don, which was formerly held by the Goths. It is astonishing that the Byzantine sources of the sixth century distinguish the Antae from all the remaining Slavs, but at the same time emphasise the fact that they spoke the same language. And the name Ἄνταυ is not Slavonic. The military superiority of the Antae is, as Kunik has shewn, to be traced back to a non-Slavonic conquering folk, the Antae, who overcame certain Slav stocks and ruled them long and powerfully as a superior warlike class.[1] This folk then became Slavised, and, as was the case with many such despotisms both German and nomadic, it too fell apart into small States, which however still negotiated common concerns in general meetings, and proceeded as one body in external affairs. We hear the same of the Bastarnae. In the tenth and eleventh centuries we find in the former abodes of the Antae of the Pontus steppe the Slavonic Tiwertzi and Ulichi whose names are equally non-Slavonic. How could they have maintained themselves against the nomads here where they were daily exposed to the inroads of all the Asiatic hordes, if they were pure Slavs without a Germanic or Altaian warrior-stratum?
Still less could the Slavs resist the pressure of foreign conquerors after the Scandinavian Vikings had renewed their attacks. Leaving their families behind them, these appeared at first in small bands of one to two hundred men as well-organised followers (vaeringjar) of a sea-king, and always returned home after selling their plunder. At important points on their route they established trading stations, and in the course of time these became fortified settlements surrounded by a subjected Finnish, Baltic, or Slavonic population. Hence a regulated government was developed, no longer exclusively resting on plunder. From the word vaeringjar came the name of a people Varangians, Βάραγγοι. The Varangians gradually extended their sway over the whole of Russia — over Kiev about the year 855 — covered it with originally independent towns (garðar),[2] and finally formed these little States into a single empire of the Rōs[3] (Russians). In brief, trading Scandinavian
- ↑ On the other hand, cf. Hruševśkyj, I. pp. 175 ff., 577 ff.
- ↑ Hence Russia was called by the Scandinavians Garðariki, i.e. the kingdom of many forts.
- ↑ This name too is Swedish, for which Esthonian has Rōts. In Old Swedish Roþer, Roþin is the name of a strip of coast in Sweden. Roþsmenn = rower, seafarer, and this word, like Varangians, became the name of a people.
