Ancient trade routes are amazing.
At the peak of the Roman Empire, there was a direct trade connection between Indonesia and Finland, to the extent the the finns could get nutmeg and Baltic amber dated to that era has been found in Indonesia.
It blew my mind when I found out.
The world of the past was a lot more connected than most people assume.
The prefix Sino- to denote Chinese things comes from one of the Roman names for China: Sinae, which might have come from one of the Sanskrit names for China. That would mean there’s possibly a Sanskrit loan word in Latin, which still blows my mind.
Indonesia and Finland
That’s almost exactly 10,000 km as the crow flies, I don’t think I’d go that far for nutmeg
Muslim resettlement of Sweden when?
Besides the memes of fash in shambles. This is pretty cool. Vikings were everywhere.
The vikings that went east through riverways are underappreciated in favour of the ones that went west. Understandable since there isn’t a lot of written info about them from contemporary sources of course.
Very few people aware of how central they were to the foundation of the concept of Russia as we know it (Rus literally comes from the Finnic term for rowers or Roslagen, aka vikings).
Rurikid dynasty is roughly similar to Norman conquest. Mostly just a replacement of nobility that eventually assimilated. Prince Kropotkin of bread book fame was a member of the Rurikid Dynasty.
But the Rurikids is where the concept of a “Russia” and “Russian” as a descriptor comes from. You have Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians feuding about who is the true successor to the Rurikids.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians
Fun fact: the Imperial Russian Navy, the Soviet Navy, and the Russian Navy have all named ships Varyag, after the Varangians.
13th Warrior, baybee!
