“(there was no Russia then)”
Lol, well of course...
” but even if it were overland, it’s likely to have gone by water at least some of the way.”
Absolutely, I spent a month tracing the rivers and there is an almost continuous water route from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The one blockage is a portage only about 15 miles across from one river to another.
And I believe Heyerdahl’s theory that the Norse originated from Azerbaijan and the Caspian. Which would mean the overland route may have existed long before the Atlantic route. :)
Sounds like fun. :^)
Wow, trying to refresh my memory regarding the Varangian routes and portage spot(s) I got results about "The Varangian Way", an album by a Finnish group.
Anyway, [snip] The most essential routes included the Neva River, Lake Ladoga, the Volkhov River, Ilmen Lake, and the Lovat River. This set of rivers in the northeast can be easily connected to the Dnieper River, perhaps the most important river of Eastern Europe, which flows through modern-day Ukraine. And the Dnieper leads directly to the Black Sea. This allowed trade (especially slave trade) with the Byzantine Empire, hence the route's name – the "Route from the Varangians to the Greeks" [/snip] [link]
It wouldn't surprise me that the folks we know as the Vikings/Varangians lived in a lot of spots (because it's known to be true during post-Roman times), the Scandinavians' ancestors seem to have arrived in thee Germanic/Nordic migrations, and lived in the east, somewhere. The Indo-European language family tree is generally thought to be rooted in Central Asia, east of the Caspian.
One thing I read about it as a kid is, the words used for large bodies of water vary based on where the historical descendants wound up, suggesting that they didn't have a word for it and "grew up" in terrain that didn't have any.