rothsmenn

Updated: May 1, 2025

The Russians are a Slavonic people, with Finnish elements to the North and Mongolian to the South, and old contact with the Swedes, from whom they are supposed to have got their name through the Finnish Ruotsi, a corruption, it is said, of the Swedish rothsmenn rowers. Legends point also to a Scandinavian settlement in the ninth century in Northern Russia.

Richard Hakluyt - Discovery of Muscovy