Rurik

Rurik
Prince of Ladoga
Rurik in the Tsarsky Titulyarnik, 1672
Reign	862–879
Predecessor	New creation
Successor	Oleg
Died	879
Issue	Igor
Dynasty	Rurik Dynasty
Religion	Paganism

Rurik or Riurik (Old Church Slavonic: Рюрик, from Rørik; c. 830 – 879) was a legendary Varangian chieftain who gained control of Ladoga in 862, built the Holmgard settlement near Novgorod, and founded the Rurik Dynasty, which ruled Kievan Rus (and later the Grand Duchy of Moscow and Tsardom of Russia) until the 17th century.

There is a debate over how Rurik came to control Ladoga and Novgorod. The only information about him is contained in the 12th-century Primary Chronicle, which states that Chuds, Eastern Slavs, Merias, Veses, and Krivichs "...drove the Varangians back beyond the sea, refused to pay them tribute, and set out to govern themselves". Afterwards the tribes started fighting each other and decided to invite the Varangians, led by Rurik, to reestablish order.

According to the Primary Chronicle, Rurik was one of the Rus, a Varangian tribe likened by the chronicler to Danes, Swedes, Angles, and Gotlanders. In the 20th century, archaeologists partly corroborated the chronicle's version of events, but mostly the excavations denied most of the chronicle's data about Rurik's arrival when it was apparent that the old settlement stretched to the mid-8th century and the excavated objects were mostly of Finno-Ugric and Slavic origin, dated to the mid-8th century, which showed the settlement was not Scandinavian from the beginning.