While Norwegian and Danish Norsemen went westward, the Swedish explored eastwards into the Baltic sea. Here they found the estuaries of the rivers that lead inland across Eastern Europe into modern day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, travelling along the Volga and Dnieper rivers until they reached the Black and Caspian Seas. On this journey these Vikings became known as "Rus" or "Varangians" by the Slavic people they encountered. Expanding partly through raiding, but mostly by trade, their influence grew. When they reached the Byzantine city of Constantinople on the Black Sea, it was raided in 860. In the aftermath of the raid, the Norsemen were accepted as trading partners by the Byzantines, an agreement which greatly increased the wealth and influence of the Varangians. The Varangians were here to stay.
In 862 Prince Rurik of the Varangians was invited to rule over the Slavic peoples to the south of the Baltic Sea. He founded his capital city of Norvgorod on the Volkhov river, and his descendant Oleg expanded their territory further into the south along the Dnieper river. Oleg eventually took control of Kiev in 882. It was from here that he decided to now rule, and continue to gain more territory. By 885 Oleg had united the majority of eastern slavic peoples under his rule and thus the country of Kievan Rus was born.
I found a good map and information about this at:
https://www.asncvikingage.com/vikings-east
The below map gives one an idea of how my ancestors living in Courland might have been well placed to have had Viking ancestors. And in 2023 I have found an autosomal dna match who still lives in Finland. I want to add some surnames here so that the search engine will find this blog post when I use surnames: Beuhring, Danneburg, Konig, Koenig, These are the surnames that my 2-gr-grandfather, Frederick Konig Danneburg Beuhring descended from and his parents chose to add them to his name.
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