Pages: 153-157

This article is dedicated to a study of foundation of Rus’. The author used archaeological findings in the Baltic basin, toponymy and hydronymy, as well as linguistic data to restore the developments from the middle of the first millennium till IX century A. D., the least studied period in the history of the Ancient Rus’. First of all, he recognised the etymology of the word rus’ as related to the Finnish ruotsi (something or someone connected with rowing ships), borrowed from Northgermanic into Finnish approximately in the middle of the first millennium A. D. The author identifies this people with the inhabitants of Aland Island who were middlemen between the ‘Scandinavians’ and the ‘Finns’ owing to their linguistic and cultural competence. They started penetrating into South-Western Sweden and the Ladoga Basin as early as the end of VI century – VII century, the fact suggested by Scandinavian finds in these region belonging to this period.