Antinormannisme

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Normanism and anti-Normanism are competing groups of theories about the origin of Kievan Rus' that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries concerning the narrative of the Viking Age in Eastern Europe. At the centre of the disagreement is the origin of the Varangian Rus', a people who travelled across and settled in Eastern Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries, and are considered by most modern historians to be of Scandinavian origin who eventually assimilated with the Slavs. The Normanist theory has been firmly established as mainstream, and modern anti-Normanism is viewed as historical revisionism. The origin of Kievan Rus' is notoriously contentious, and relates to its perceived importance for the legitimation of nation-building, imperialism, and independence movements within the East Slavic-speaking world, and for legitimating different political relationships between eastern and western European countries. The Norsemen that ventured from what is now Sweden into the waterways of Eastern Europe feature prominently in the history of the Baltic states, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Byzantine Empire. They are particularly important in the historiography and cultural history of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, but have also featured in the history of Poland. Contention has centred around whether the development of Kievan Rus' was influenced by non-Slavic Varangians (this idea is characterised as the "Normanist theory"), or whether the people of Kievan Rus' emerged solely from autochthonous Slavic political development (known as the "anti-Normanist theory"), including some other anti-Normanist and skeptical theories stemming from the scarcity of contemporary evidence for the emergence of Kievan Rus', and the great ethnic diversity and complexity of the wide area where these Norsemen were active.