THIS CHAPTER's FOCUS is on how, according to Old Norse sources, it was possible to cross Eastern Europe on the way to the East and Byzantium, and on what medieval Icelanders knew about the famous “route from the Varangians to the Greeks.”

Ancient authors had noted the specific character of East European rivers: “Scythia has few really remarkable features, except its rivers, which are more numerous, and bigger, than anywhere else in the world” (Θωμάσια δὲ ἡ χώρη αὕτη οὐκ ἔχϵι, χωρὶς ἢ ὅτι ποταμούς τϵ ποƛƛῶ μϵγίστους καὶ ἀριθμὸν πƛϵίστους) (Herodotus 2003, 298), wrote the “father of history,” Herodotus (IV.82). It was not by accident that, when the compilers of the Russian Primary Chronicle “tried to explain where in the world their land lay, they conceived of it largely in terms of rivers and river ways” (Franklin, Shepard 1996, 3). And this should not surprise us since this vast territory was heavily dependent on rivers: they were the attraction for settlers, they were used as both internal and international “roads.”

The Valdai Hills stand at the junction of the main four river systems, those of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Western Dvina and the Volkhov– Il’men’– Lovat’. Here lie the sources of the rivers, from here the routes go to the Caspian, the Black, and the Baltic Seas. F. Donald Logan points out that “the significance of these hills for the Vikings was that it was possible, via portages in the Valdais, to link these rivers, and thus enable passage from the tributaries of one great river to the tributaries of another great river. The portages of the Valdais gave the Swedes access to the southern and eastern regions of this part of Europe” (Logan 1983, 182).

In spite of the fact that “nature provided fairly convenient means of communications,” it still “threw up massive barriers” (Franklin, Shepard 1996, 5). Thomas Noonan draws an impressive picture of nature in the north of Rus’: “The first thing to note is that the environment was not very hospitable. Northern Russia at this time was covered by dense forests in which there were numerous bogs and marshes.