11th Century Genealogical and Onomastic Connections between Old Rus and the British Isles

This paper had its origin with a lecture given at MGIMO University in 2023 on an obscure matter of 11th century history. It seeks to develop the central theme of that talk, which is that genealogical research, combined with linguistic insights taken from onomastics, can contribute to reaching a more accurate understanding of medieval political history. As such, an attempt will here be made to further develop this theme. What will herein appear will be neither a political nor a social history. It will be a genealogically based historical study of a small number of individuals that occasionally uses onomastics and epigraphy as supporting evidence. As such, nothing written was done so in order to prove or disprove a politically motivated point, but rather as a part of what most concerns genealogy, which is the placing of the genealogist, himself or herself (or, in this case, the author), as accurately as possible within the flow of human history by the means of studying one’s direct ancestors and their network of family members. Analysis was done on a certain small prosopographically organized (i.e. centred on a network of specific individuals) set of data dealing largely with the family connections (both marital and genetic) of Vladimir the Great of Old Rus, Vladimir’s wives Rogneda of Polotsk and Anna Porphyrogenita of the Eastern Roman Empire, Vladimir’s children Dobroniega Maria of Poland and Yaroslav the Wise of Old Rus, Yaroslav’s wife Ingegerd of Sweden (known in Russia as Irina), and Agatha, the mother of Saint Margaret of Scotland. The geography of the genealogical relationships involving these individuals covers a multitude of European countries, reaching from Scotland and England at one geographic extreme to Old Rus, the first Bulgarian empire, and Byzantium at another. This study, though genealogical in nature, mirrors the political history the above-mentioned individuals represent, a history that can be seen as following trade routes, meaning that, though mutual impact at both a familial and political level was real between the opposite sides of the European continent, it happened very largely by way of Scandinavia and, to a rather lesser extent, through the Holy Roman Empire. The genealogy shows that Scandinavian countries, as a unit, had a far greater role to play for both the British Isles and for Old Rus than either of these regions had for each other. Likewise, the genealogical backgrounds of the individuals covered in the four tables attached as an appendix to this article would suggest that, in terms of political and, most likely, economic historical importance, the impact of Old Rus would surely have been stronger on the British Isles than that of these islands on Old Rus. And, though the two geographic units the genealogy reflects are on the opposite sides of Europe, what can be shown is that a normally imperceptible, yet very real, relationship occurred which, as the centuries passed, increasingly changed history significantly in both directions.