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 148 THE DECLINE AND FALL At). 839 stantinoplcj they had traversed many hostile nations ; and they hoped to escape the dangers of their return by requesting the French monarch to transport them by sea to their native country. A closer examination detected their origin : they were the brethren of the Swedes and Normans, whose name was already odious and formidable in France ; and it might justly be appre- hended that these Russian strangers were not the messengers of peace but the emissaries of war. They were detained, while the Greeks were dismissed ; and Lewis expected a more satis- factory account, that he might obey the laws of hospitality or prudence, according to the interest of both empires."*' The Scandinavian origin of the people, or at least the princes of Russia, may be confirmed and illustrated by the national annals ^^ and the general history of the Noi-th. The Normans, who had so long been concealed by a veil of impenetrable darkness, suddenly burst forth in the spirit of naval and military enter- prise. The vast, and, as it is said, the populous, regions of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were crowded Avith independent chieftains and desperate adventurers, who sighed in the laziness of peace, and smiled in the agonies of death. Piracy was the exercise, the trade, the glory and the virtue, of the Scandina- vian youth. Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow limits, the)^ started from the banquet, grasped their arms, sounded their horn, ascended their vessels, and explored every coast that promised either spoil or settlement. The Baltic was the first scene of their naval achievements ; they visited the eastern shores, the silent residence of Fennic and Sclavonian tribes, and the primitive Russians of the lake Ladoga paid a tribute, the skins of white squiiTels, to these strangers, whom they saluted with the title of Varangians,^^ or Corsairs. Their superiority in 56See the entire passage (dignum, says Bayer, ut aureis jn tabulis figatur) in the Annales Bertiniani Francorum (in Script. Ital. Muratori, torn ii. pars i. p. 525 [Pertz, Mon. i. 434]), A.D. 839, twenty-two years before the asra of Ruric. In the tenth century, Liutprand (Hist. 1. v. c. 6 [=c. 15]) speaks of the Russians and Normans as the same Aquilonares homines of a red complexion. 57 My knowledge of these annals is drawn from M. Levesque, Histoire de Russie. Nestor, the first and best of these ancient annalists, was a monk of Kiow, who died in the beginning of the twelfth century ; but his chronicle was obscure, till it was published at Petersburgh, 1767, in 410. Levesque, Hist, de Russie, torn. i. p. 16. Coxe's Travels, vol. ii. p. 184. [See Appendix i.] •''S Theophil. Sig. Bayer de Varagis (for the name is differently spelt), in Comment. Academ. Fetropolitanje, torn. iv. p. 275-311. [The Varangians, in the proper and original sense of the word, meant the Scandinavians. In the chronicle of Nestor, the Baltic Sea is the sea of the Variazi (c. 4V Endless attempts have been made, chiefly by Russian scholars, to find other identifications (such as Slavs, Khazars,