Kruska
Diamond Member
The Vikings were NOT a European Nation - and they were NOT big slave tradersThe vikings were big slave traders. Read vikings in the east. It's a journal.
The RUS - former Vikings mixed foremost and in majority with Slavic people and folks such as the Magyars and other Eastern Slavic people e.g. those from the Baltic areas - engaged in slave aka serfdom. You have a source that the Rus were "big" in slave trading? AFAIK they were big in promoting and establishing serfdom in their own fiefs, aka the Kiev Rus Federation- which eventually lasted in Russia and some eastern European countries till WW1.
The Black Sea, Russia, and eastern Europe exported slaves throughout the medieval period. Most had been born free but were enslaved through capture or occasionally through sale by relatives. During the eighth through tenth centuries, slaves were traded from eastern Europe and the Baltic to elite households in Byzantium and the Islamic world
Slavers and traders active in the East (in this case signifying the eastern Baltic region, European Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine, the Black Sea region,Byzantium, the Caucasus and beyond), usually appeared under the contested designations Rus’, or Varangians in contemporary sources. Rus’ identity is ambiguous inasmuch as the word variously refers to Slavs, Scandinavians, or an amalgamation of ethnic groups. The term has been the subject of long-standing controversy, and is today mostly understood as a gradually developing hybrid ethnic group, incorporating not only Slavic and Scandinavian but also Finno-Ugric, Baltic, and Turkic elements.
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