More than a millennium ago, as fleets of Viking raiders were striking fear into the hearts of coast- and river dwellers throughout western Europe, other Norsemen of more mercantile inclination were making their way east. With no less boldness and stamina, bearing luxurious furs and enticing nodules of amber, they penetrated the vast steppes of what is today Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and entered Central Asia. There they met Muslim traders who paid for Norse wares with silver coins, which the Vikings themselves did not mint, and which they coveted. 

To the Arabs of Baghdad, the presence of the Norsemen probably did not come as much of a surprise, for the Arabs were long accustomed to meeting people from different cultures and civilizations. They were also keen and literate observers. `Abbasiy historians and Khaliyfal envoys put to paper eyewitness accounts of the roving Scandinavians, leaving a historical legacy that is shedding new light both on Viking history and on a little-known chapter of early Islamic history. 

Waves of so-called "Eastern Vikings," predominantly Swedes, headed southeast to establish trading centers at Kiev and Novgorod, where the elite among them became princes and rulers. It was in these lands that several Muslim historians observed them. 

The Arab writers did not call the tall, blond traders "Vikings," but by the ethnonym Ruws (Pronounced "Roos"). The origin of this term is obscure, and though some claim it stems from the West Finnic name for Sweden, Ruotsi, there is little agreement. Yet consistently, Byzantine and Arab writers referred to the Swedish traders and settlers, as well as the local populations among whom they settled and intermarried, as Ruws, and this is the source of the modern name of Russia.

This name was applied only in the East.  In France and Sicily, the Vikings were known as Normans.  An elite guard of the Byzantine emperors, composed of eastern Scandinavians, was known as Varangians, but that term never came into widespread use outside the region.

Western Europeans called the marauders "Vikings," and this word may come from "vik", gap or bay, and Viken, as Oslo Fjord was called, from which the earliest Viking ships emerged. But "Viking" was never a blanket term for the whole people of the region until it became a popular, modern misuse. "We can refer to Viking-Age society, but not all Scandinavians were Vikings. They themselves used the term to refer to raiders from the region, but it certainly didn't describe the local farmers who were hack on the land." 

In Western Europe, monks and priests whose interests lay in painting them in the darkest, savage colors often penned journal entries about Viking raids. But in the East, the story was different. There the Ruws were primarily tradesmen, and although they were well armed, Muslim accounts describe them as merchant-warriors whose primary business was trade. 

Arab chroniclers bore no grudge against the Rus, and thus the Arab reports are more detached and, in the eyes of many scholars today, more credible. Most experts acknowledge that the Vikings were, in general, victims of a medieval "bad press," for the military excursions of Charlemagne and other Europeans of the time were no less ruthless than theirs. 

In fact, we would know little about these Ruws, these Norsemen in the East, were it not for Muslim chroniclers who wrote in detail about them. One of these chronicles was Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, whose 10th-century Risalah (Letter) is the richest account of all. 

Ibn Fadlan kept a journal detailing his encounters with the Ruws along the Volga, as well as with many other peoples, this account will be the topic of our next installment.

To be continued