For two and a half centuries of studying Russian-Scandinavian relations in the IX-XI centuries, a range of constantly used main sources has developed: written, linguistic, and archaeological. Up to the beginning of the 20th century, research on this problem was based almost exclusively on information from written monuments and data from comparative linguistics .1 Their results - from the Normanist point of view - were summed up by the Danish linguist W. Thomsen2 , who summarized philological materials and "canonized" the established set of written sources. Among them are the " Tale of Bygone Years "(first of all, the legend of the calling of the Varangians) - among Russian sources, the ninth chapter ("On the Dew") of the works "On the Management of the Empire" by Constantine Porphyrogenitus - among the Byzantine ones, a message from the Vertin Annals under 839 - among the Western European ones, as well as a number of works by Eastern authors and information five or six Scandinavian sagas ("The Sagas of Eimund", "The Sagas of Olav Tryggvason", etc.). The development of source studies in the 19th century was mainly determined by the tasks of publishing and criticizing individual sources. This period includes the work of K. Lachmann, K. Mullenhof, J. Bedier, the publication of the Monumenta Germaniae historica by G. Pertz, the intensive accumulation and critical study of sources, their manuscript tradition, and authorship. The first scientific publications of the collections of Scandinavian sagas, annals, chronicles, runic inscriptions (some of them still have not lost their significance) lay the foundation for their source study. At the same time, in the context of growing interest in the "Norman problem" in Russia, the first set of Scandinavian monuments of various genres containing information about Russia, the peoples of Eastern Europe and Byzantium was created. It was compiled by K. Ravn 3 on the initiative of O. I. Senkovsky 4 . At the same time, translations int ... Read more