Hraundal, Thorir Jonsson

Foto: UiB

Phone: (+47) 55 58 81 41
Email: thorir.hraundal@cms.uib.no

Project title:
Cultural Contacts and Identity in Times of Conversion: The case of ar-Rūs 

Project summary:
In my doctoral project I examine accounts written mainly by ninth and tenth century Muslim geographers and historians on peoples they termed ar-Rūs. Traditionally, this name is connected with Kievan Rus’ as presented to us by the Primary Chronicle written in Kiev in the early 12^th century, and Rhos which appears in Byzantine sources from the latter half of the ninth century onwards.

The origin of this name and the people bearing it has been contested for over two hundred years, mostly by Slavic and Scandinavian scholars who often have attempted at applying their own nationalities to it, especially with regard to the foundation of the Kievan state. A particularly persistent notion among western scholars is that the Rūs should be read as Viking, more specifically a Viking from Sweden and that Roslagen should be connected to the word that originally gave rise to this denomination. 

My research first of all aims to remove the Rūs from the impinging dichotomy of Slav vs. Viking that has, I believe, all to often caused scholars to ignore the larger geographical and cultural contexts of western inner Eurasia. The Arabic as well as the Byzantine source material clearly conveys that most of this area in the ninth and the tenth centuries was by no means under either Slavic or Scandinavian rule. This was the period in which the chiefly Turkic Khazars and Volga Bulghārs reigned supreme, and imposed their political and not least merchantile powers throughout a large part of the region.

Secondly, when reading the Arabic accounts on the Rūs it becomes evident that they do not describe a homogenous and stable group of people, rather the opposite.  Descriptions of culturally salient elements such as funerary rites both show similarities and yet important differences. 

Another important context for this study is the the northward advance of Christianity where a key moment is the adoption of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity in Kievan Rus´ in 988-989, and also that many of the peoples inhabiting the western regions of Inner Eurasia, were coming into contact with and/or adopting the monotheistic faiths, e.g. Islam with the Volga Bulghārs I ca. 900 and Judaism with the Khazars possibly in the late eighth century. Here, archaeological and numismatic material of religious character will contribute to the analysis.

When addressing these and other subjects related to us by the Muslim geographers and historians it is imperative that we contrast such information with the writers’ own ideological, political and social situation and background. Furthermore, the research will examine the scope of geographical knowledge of these Muslim writers, and also whether it is possible to gain insight into the cognitive processes behind their land-descriptions, i.e. how they imagined unseen and unmapped region.  Here it will be interesting to examine the simultaneous use of second century greek Geography and ninth century Muslim geography.

The exploration and juxtaposition of these contexts allows for a comparison which may enable us to better understand the factors, i.e. the cultural contacts, that were most decisive in shaping the identity of the Rūs in the ninth and tenth centuries.

CV:
I graduated as B.A. in general linguistics at the University of Iceland, mainly focussing on comparative grammar and etymological studies. I studied semitics (Arabic, Hebrew among other) at the University of Salamanca, Spain, from 1998-2001. In 2005 I graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies (now the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) at Cambridge with M.Litt. in Middle Eastern Studies examining the northwards expansion of Islam, specifically the conversion of the Volga Bulghars.

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