Novgorod in the context of "Andrey of Gorodets"

The Varangians (/vəˈrændʒiənz/ və-RAN-jee-ənz; Old Norse: Væringjar; Medieval Greek: Βάραγγοι, romanized: Várangoi; Old East Slavic: варяже, romanized: varyazhe, or варяги, varyagi) were Viking warriors, traders and settlers, mostly from present-day Sweden, who settled in the territories of present-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine from the 8th and 9th centuries and established the state of Kievan Rus' as well as the principalities of Polotsk and Turov. They also formed the Byzantine Varangian Guard.

According to the 12th-century Primary Chronicle, a group of Varangians known as the Rus' settled in Novgorod in 862 under the leadership of Rurik. Before Rurik, the Rus' might have ruled an earlier hypothetical polity known as the Rus' Khaganate. Rurik's relative Oleg conquered Kiev in 882 and established the state of Kievan Rus', which was later ruled by Rurik's descendants.

The Rurik dynasty, also known as the Rurikid or Riurikid dynasty, as well as simply Rurikids or Riurikids, was a noble lineage allegedly founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, who, according to tradition, established himself at Novgorod in the year 862. The Rurikids were the ruling dynasty of Kievan Rus' and its principalities following its disintegration.

The Romanovichi ruled the southwestern territories, which were unified by Roman the Great and his son Daniel, who was in 1253 crowned by Pope Innocent IV as the king of Ruthenia. Galicia–Volhynia was eventually annexed by Poland and Lithuania. The northern and northeastern territories were unified by the Daniilovichi of Moscow; by the 15th century, Ivan III threw off the control of the Golden Horde and assumed the title of sovereign of all Russia. Ivan IV was crowned as the tsar of all Russia, where the Rurik line ruled until 1598, following which they were eventually succeeded by the House of Romanov.

The history of the Russian Orthodox Church begins with the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988 during the reign of Vladimir the Great. In the following centuries, Kiev and later other cities, including Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov, Suzdal and Vladimir, became important regional centers of Christian spirituality and culture. Following the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, the seat of the metropolitan was moved to Vladimir in 1299, and then to Moscow in 1325, which would become the spiritual center of Russian Orthodoxy.

The metropolitans of the Russian Church supported the rise of the Moscow principality and his presence increased the Muscovite prince's authority and ambition to unify the lands. In turn, the metropolitans were able to increase the stability of the Church and to inspire unity among the divided Russian principalities. By the mid-15th century, Moscow was both the political and religious center of the country. The Russian Church declared autocephaly in 1448, shortly before the fall of Constantinople, owing to its protest over the Council of Florence. At the behest of the grand prince of Moscow, a council of Russian bishops elected a local bishop without the approval of Constantinople.

58°31′16.05″N 31°16′30.87″E / 58.5211250°N 31.2752417°E / 58.5211250; 31.2752417

The Millennium of Russia (Russian: Тысячелетие России, romanized: Tysyacheletiye Rossii) is a bronze monument in the Novgorod Kremlin. It was erected in 1862 to celebrate the millennium of Rurik's arrival to Novgorod, an event sometimes taken as a starting point of the history of Russian statehood.

Taibuga (Siberian Tatar: Тайбоға қан, romanized: Tayboğa qan), the first khan of the Khanate of Sibir, came to power in the 13th century as a result of the power vacuum caused by the breakup of the Mongol Empire. Some legendary accounts identify him as a noble from Bukhara and associate him with the conversion of Sibir to Islam.

The facts of his reign remain relatively unclear, but it appears he was a shamanist. Taibuga drove the forces of Novgorod from his land. He was claimed as the founding ancestor by the Taibuga clan of Sibir.

Finnish literature refers to literature written in Finland. During the European early Middle Ages, the earliest text in a Finnic language is the unique thirteenth-century Birch bark letter no. 292 from Novgorod. The text was written in Cyrillic and represented a dialect of Finnic language spoken in Russian Olonets region. The earliest texts in Finland were written in Swedish or Latin during the Finnish Middle Age [fi] (c. 1200–1523). Finnish-language literature slowly developed from the sixteenth century onwards, after written Finnish was established by the bishop and Finnish Lutheran reformer Mikael Agricola (1510–1557). He translated the New Testament into Finnish in 1548.

After becoming a part of the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century the rise in education and nationalism promoted public interest in folklore in Finland and resulted in an increase of literary activity in Finnish. Most of the significant works of the era, written in Swedish or increasingly in Finnish, revolved around achieving or maintaining a strong Finnish identity (see Karelianism). Thousands of folk poems in what came to be called Kalevala meter were collected in Suomen kansan vanhat runot (The ancient poems of the Finnish people). The most famous poetry collection is the Kalevala, published in 1835. The first novel published in Finnish was Seven Brothers (1870) by Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872). The book Meek Heritage [fi] (1919) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888–1964) made him the first Finnish Nobel Prize winner. Another notable author is Väinö Linna.