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Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

Yes seems likely related. The Rus' people are believed to have originated in present day Sweden. Does not feel impossible that there were trade routes connecting Greenland to Kyiv theough Scandinavia.

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Native Russians (русичи, "sons of Russia"), were citizens of the town of Russia (now Old Russa, but old town was near to shore), which was on Russia river (now Porussia river). At times of Plague of Justinian, they abandoned their town and spread at large territory from the Caspian Sea to Spain. At about the same time Volyn` Kingdom, last kingdom of all Slavs, was broken into pieces, so tribes were left without a ruler. Nine eastern Slavic tribes and Russians are formed (Kievan) Russia. Later, Russia was broken into pieces (Red, White, Black Russia). Much later, Moscow kingdom captured Kyiv, so Petro I added "tsar of all Russia" to his title, then Catherine the great, born in Prussia, forbid to accept all official letters without "to Imperator of Russia" in the title, so Moscow kingdom changed it name to "Russian Empire", but instead of "R-oo-s-ia" they call themselves with foreign accent: "R-uh-ss-ee-ya". (Use Google Translate to check original pronunciation in various Western languages and in Russian language).

The fact that the slavic people and the Vikings were very close to each other, to the point where it was common for Slav (mostly from Poland) and Viking ruling families to inter-marry, is well established [1].

The Vikings went quite farther than Kyiv, as the existence of the Varangian Guard [2] (part of the Byzantine army) attests to (Varangians was the name the Vikings were known by in the Bizantine Empire). And as we know, they also reached the Canadian coast [3], so it's not the least surprising to me that their trade extended from Greenland to at least, Kyiv.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Intermixing_with_the_S...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians#Varangian_Guard

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows

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