Crusader Kings II

Crusader Kings II

Varangian Trade Routes
107 Comments
Irlandec666 25 Oct, 2021 @ 5:32am 
После переустановки игры, перестал работать. Может была у кого такая проблема?
retrobarbaari 26 May, 2020 @ 9:50am 
We don't know though did the hämäläiset and suomalaiset have different tribal organization, but their land and tribal names are different, although both come from the same root word.
About the Chud, we don't know if they were ever an actual tribe. If they were, they have totally disappeared. Probably was a common name the Slavs used of (some) Finnic tribes.
The land of the Jem is Häme in Finnish, the land of the Sum is Suomi in Finnish. So there is some likeness in the Slavic names they used in the Primary Chronicles. But Chud doesn't remind any known tribe. The "Chuds" has been translated into Finnish as "tsuudit" and is used when referred to this "lost tribe".
retrobarbaari 26 May, 2020 @ 9:40am 
The Jem are the hämäläiset (Tavastians in English) tribe, the biggest Finnish tribe and are definately the main ancestors of modern Finns. The south-west coast tribe suomalaiset (Finns) were called as "Sum" in the Novgorod Primary Chronicles. It's confusing because the modern country's name comes from this south-west corner of the land. But hämäläiset is still living tribal name and the historical province (Tavastland in English) covered earlier almost all the inhabited Finland (modern Tavastland province is smaller) except the south-west coast. It was the hämäläiset who inhabited Karelia 600 AD and both Karelians (karjalaiset) and Savolax (savolaiset) tribes are descendants of the hämäläiset tribe. It was the fusion of the hämäläiset tribe and Vepsians who lived in Aldeigjuborg (Staraya Ladoga). And it was the hämäläiset who warred against Novgorod.
Flint  [author] 26 May, 2020 @ 7:18am 
@retrobarbaari, the Fins at the time of the Primary Chronicles were several Finnic tribes, and some of them were part of the initial tribal confederation, for instance the Chud and the Veps. One very interesting question is, whether those tribes called "Jam" at the time later became the founders of modern day Finland (https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4%C3%A4mit) .
Flint  [author] 26 May, 2020 @ 7:14am 
@Drax70, HIP Compatibility, I have to pass on that one, I only ever play vanilla, and doesn't HIP already have trade routes all over the map?
retrobarbaari 25 May, 2020 @ 8:50am 
Here's what I think of the Rus creation myth in the Primary Chronicles. Maybe the names of the establishers of the empire are real, maybe the writer made them up, but if real, during the centuries they had become unrecognizable. The writer considers the names must be foreign. And writes them down as he thinks they should be. He can't say which people they were, so he leaves that out. If he knew, it would be there
retrobarbaari 25 May, 2020 @ 8:27am 
I just read that when Novgorodian Primary Chronicles listed Varangians (foreigners), the list was: The Rus, the Svie (Swear), the Gote (Geats), the Angles (Englishmen) and the Urmane (Norwegians). The Geats are the people of Götaland, the Southern Sweden, Svear the people of Central Sweden, northern Sweden didn't have Norse tribes. So who are missing? Many, for example:the Danes, the Gothlanders, the Saxons and the Frisians of the Germanic peoples. The Balts, the Finns and the Estonians. Maybe the Balts, Estonians and Finns weren't counted as foreigners: many of the tribes in Russia spoke a Finnic language.
Antinormannists make a point that even Sagas don't mention people with name like Rus, nor does any historian names them among Scandinavian peoples. The Novgorod Chronicles has this creation myth of the Rus empire, and name the foreign establishers. And then we have a problem when the Rus are listed as foreigners.
retrobarbaari 25 May, 2020 @ 8:06am 
Those treaties between the Rus and Byzantium was made for the Rus ruler Oleg, a Slavic name. Antinormannists make a point that while SOME of the treaty signators have Scandinavian names, others were not. Who signed the document, doesn't mean THEY were actual Rus, they represented the Rus. Meaning they were varangians, foreign employed people by the trade outposts. Princes have always employed foreigners, for the obvious reasons that they have connections the local people do not. I find that very reasonable point.
Drax70 25 May, 2020 @ 5:09am 
Would you please consider a HIP compatibility version?!! That would be awesome!

Thanks!
Flint  [author] 25 May, 2020 @ 4:56am 
retrobarbaari 25 May, 2020 @ 4:38am 
Yeh Perun is a Slavic god, whose main temple in Russia by the way was in Novgorod. The same We Finns called Perkele and Piru. The Perkele name comes from Lithunian Percunas and the Piru name from Slavic Perun.
retrobarbaari 25 May, 2020 @ 4:36am 
About the contract between Rus and Bysantium, Slavized names or actual Scandinavian names? Which contract is it, because I'm interested.
Flint  [author] 25 May, 2020 @ 3:32am 
Between pro- and anti-normanism, the final truth seems to be somewhere in the middle. Also the time factor, according to the earliest documents the Rus were scandinavians, but only 50-100 years later they were slavic speaking and indistinguishable from their slavic compatriots. And this is not even unique but very similar to other norsemen, just think of the norse that settled in french normandy, played a deciding role in making france the strongest feudal state, then invaded england under William the Conqueror. Or the norse that settled in England and Ireland and founded some of todays most important cities there.
Flint  [author] 25 May, 2020 @ 3:32am 
The way i see it, there was certainly a scandinavian presence at one point in time, this cannot be denied, the archeological and material evidence is there, but these scandinavians very quickly assimilated into the broader slavic-speaking community.

A very nice example of that is the first written contract between the Rus and byzantine greece, where all or almost all names of the Rus were of scandinavian origin, but the gods to which both parties swore to uphold that contract were Jesus for the greeks and Perun for the Rus. If they were full-fledged scandinavians, they would have sworn to Thor, the fact that they swore to Perun already shows a high degree of assimilation.
retrobarbaari 24 May, 2020 @ 5:33pm 
And after said all that, I have nothing against Scandinavians in Russia. But by far the RUS were not Scandinavians. And that's also why they didn't have Scandinavian names, or if as claimed at one point had, then they were quickly Slavized.
I've heard in Russia there are these normannists and anti-normannists. But anti-normannism is not fake science if it is supported by many Russians. In fact my sense says they are right, and normannism is the fantasy ideology.
retrobarbaari 24 May, 2020 @ 5:19pm 
Wanna see a recent BIG international study of Slavic people genetics? It's interesting to all Europeans, it has many European peoples included where they compare to, and also ancient DNA samples. "Genetic Heritage of the Balto-Slavic Speaking Populations: A Synthesis of Autosomal, Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal Data" https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135820 or https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558026/ The Northern Russians are included among Finns. Also in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Russians .
retrobarbaari 24 May, 2020 @ 5:15pm 
The idea of Scandinavian Rus is definately in the popular culture. The North-Western Russia was in the Viking Age mostly inhabited by Finnic peoples, who got Slavized during the next couple of centuries because of the Slavic population in the trading posts. And it's proven by modern genetics according to which Northern Russians are Finns. And even closer to Finns of Finland than Volga Finnic or Estonians. They are not close to Scandinavians.
Anyway, the people ibn Fadlan met were MOST LIKELY, if not Turkic, then Slavs or Finnic peoples or Balts as they were the people of Russia. Scandinavians would have been like 1 out of 1000 (and then could as well have been Saxons or Flemish too).
Flint  [author] 24 May, 2020 @ 12:16am 
Well, as usual with sciences, nothing is 100% sure, science can only say what is most likely.

Given the facts, the current state of the science says, it is most likely that at least at some point in time, there was a bigger presence of scandinavian peoples in modern day Russia.

This wikipedia page explains these things much better than i can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people

Of course there is also the anti-normanism movement, but it is generally understood as fake science, and it is most often used with a political bias to achieve certain political goals.
retrobarbaari 23 May, 2020 @ 4:03am 
You underlined the point I made, by saying there's travels to Russia mentioned in Swedish runic stones. Hence there should be runic stones in Russia, if Scandinavians were so common there.
Claim that some names could be a Slavized Scandinavian names has been equalled the names being Slavized Estonian names. But what it surely means they didn't speak any Norse language.
retrobarbaari 23 May, 2020 @ 3:58am 
Ibn Fadlan's mission was to Volga Bulgars and his route went through Turkic peoples' lands. He didn't tell meeting any people with Scandinavian tribal names, but he told he met Rus. It's only assumed by Viking enthusiasts that the Rus were actually Scandinavians, no evidense of it. Parts of his stories are clearly fiction, and his whole text has not survived, parts are supposedly quotations of his original writing, that's another problem. He (or someone in his name) also told that many of the Rus are muslims and do not eat pork, and the funeral party prayed in front of wooden poles that represent their gods (at least a Volga Finnic tradition to modern days, about Turkic peoples I don't know).
Flint  [author] 21 May, 2020 @ 11:49pm 
The written documents of the old times, especially ones like sagas, primary chronicles etc, as opposed to purely administrative and bureaucratic documents, are never considered to contain 100% truth by modern history. On the contrary, modern history always looks at the background of the supposed writer, at his motives, his bias, his political interests and the goals that the writer wanted and did achieve with his documents.

The russian primary chronicles in particular, and the chroniclers who wrote them down, did have a very strong interest to write a "foundation story" for the russian state, and to present the leadership at the time of writing in a certain light, give this leadership or certain parts, certain dynasties of this leadership more credibility, to help them solve current issues and ensure that their kids will keep the throne.
Flint  [author] 21 May, 2020 @ 11:40pm 
There is some archeological evidence to the presense of a Norse military elite in early Rus, many uncovered graves with typical norse arms and equipment, writings of contemporary visitors from the south like Ibn Fadlan telling about how a thin layer of nordic rulers treats their slavic inhabitants like slaves, several runestones in Sweden mentioning travels to the east and cooperation with eastern Kings with very slavic names e.g. "Yarisleif". Many modern russian names with no slavic history but apparently based on norse names e.g. Igor from Ingvar, Oleg from Helgi. Linguistic development of the russian language which would have turned the original "Ruotsi" into modern "Rus". First official documents of the early Rus state - peace contracts with the byzantine Greeks, signed by people with mostly nordic names.

As to how much this nordic military elite was related to the supposedly "Rurikid" dynasty, we will probably never find out.
retrobarbaari 21 May, 2020 @ 7:22am 
The modern Rurikid-dynasty descendants have been genetically studied in the Rurikid DNA Project, and their Y-DNA haplogroups are of haplogroup N, a Baltic subclade more precicely. So the first dynasty had apparently much to do with Lithuanians. Novgorod Primary Chronicles do have some credibility when they were written contemporary, but when they tell things generations back, credibility is very weak. And then there is the propaganda the writer wants to tell with story. Same as with sagas: many of the sagas are absolutely made up claims and stories, in the spirit of Paradox games, to gain prestige and claim. For example as a Finn I can tell that Finns really didn't throw magic rivers and mountains on invading Danes, nor were Finns giants establishing Nordic kingdoms. These are myths and stories.
retrobarbaari 21 May, 2020 @ 7:20am 
Yeah, that Uppsala region (most populated area of Roslagen) has couple of thousand runic stones from Viking Age, but Russia and Finland have none, and only one is found in Ukraine Odessa, kinda underlines that Russia was not a Scandinavian colony, they were a very small minority, some traders and adventurers. The pre-historic Rus empire's creation story is a myth, written centuries later. Early Rus empire's population was mostly Finnic and Slavic peoples, with Balts, Turkic, Ugric, Samoyed and Iranian peoples.
Flint  [author] 18 May, 2020 @ 6:34pm 
Very nice comments @retrobarbaari, it is always good to remember that Russia/Rus was a multiethnic and multiconfessional nation from the beginning, it started as a kind of confederation of 3 very different ethnics, the slavic the finno-ugric and the norse peoples, and with time the amount of different peoples and religions only grew bigger. Today there are IIRC over 100 different ethno-cultural groups in Russia, probably all the religions that exist on this planet, and 2 of the humans main races, europeans and asians, with many steps inbetween.

Where western Europe wants to be in the future, Russia already was 1000+ years ago.
retrobarbaari 17 May, 2020 @ 11:10pm 
Actually the "Karelian tribe" is couple of centuries later construct... the Finnic people of Aldeigjuborg were a fusion of Western Finns and Vepsians (other Finnic people). The Western Finns (Tavastians tribe, hämäläiset in Finnish) migrated to the region in about 600AD so when Aldeigjuborg started about 750AD, they would rather not be called Karelian tribe yet, but Tavastians and Vepsians. Earliest Aldeigjuborg was a Finnic town with Slavic traders.
retrobarbaari 17 May, 2020 @ 3:22pm 
The name "Rus" is explained as the name Finns used of rowing boat crew (ruotsi, meaning boat crew in Finnish). If the Rus were Scandinavians, why not use their own tribal name? Well, if the name really comes from Finnish, then because it's the name the Finns used. Aldeigjuborg (Staraya Ladoga) located in Karelian tribe's land, who are eastern Finns, and the town's original name is not norse but Finnish, possibly Alajoen linna (low river castle). Novgorod primary chronicles uses the Rus name of Slavs, Varangians, and people who are neither Slavs nor Varangians but something else. So it could just mean boat crews, without notion of nationality. Also Saxons and Flemish traders played a role in the Northern Silk Road, as its European end was the Frankish empire. And the Slavs did use similar boats, too. Later Novgorod had a very independent pirate organization, Ushkuyniks, whose name comes from the Finnish name of the long boat (uisko = snake). The town was really multiethnic.
Flint  [author] 13 Dec, 2019 @ 9:50am 
Oh yes of course, the reason is historical authenticity. Ladoga is where all the trade went through.

From wiki: "It used to be a prosperous trading outpost in the 8th and 9th centuries. A multi-ethnic settlement, it was dominated by Scandinavians who were called by the name of Rus'. For that reason, it is sometimes called the first capital of Russia. "

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staraya_Ladoga
Hawktangerine 12 Dec, 2019 @ 5:38pm 
Is there a reason the trade post is in Ladoga and not Novgorod?
zlatky 9 Sep, 2019 @ 6:33am 
Yeah, I thought so maself...Just needed a verification from your side-cheers! \m/\m/
Flint  [author] 9 Sep, 2019 @ 6:06am 
No, these mods have different goals,

HIP is a popular mod that changes so many things that HIP-compatible mods live in their own world.

When you play vanilla, you use regular vanilla mods like my mod. And when you play HIP, you need special HIP mods, like the one you linked.

Vanilla mods are not friends with HIP mods, they will bite each other and break the game.
Flint  [author] 26 Jun, 2019 @ 12:56pm 
Thank you for the compliment, but what exactly is broken? I just did some testing and they seem to work, here is what i got: https://imgur.com/a/XWrTjTU

If you see any particular bugs then let me know and i will fix, other than that i wouldnt even know what exactly to update. Are there some missing links that i have overseen? Is something about the trade posts and their buildings broken? Please let me know.
Roszek 26 Jun, 2019 @ 3:36am 
I love both of your trade routes mod mate, but please update them to the new Iron Century map if you can. Regards.
Flint  [author] 19 Jun, 2019 @ 11:41am 
Update? Is anything broken? Any feature requests?

HIP compatibility, i have no idea, but most likely not, doesn't HIP already have a shitton of trade routes that connect to almost every province on the map?
Drax70 19 Jun, 2019 @ 3:23am 
HIP compatibility???
76561198148577520 18 Jun, 2019 @ 10:18pm 
update?
Flint  [author] 27 Jan, 2019 @ 5:14am 
@Drax70, thank for the compliment!

I am not sure if its compatible, i don't know the other mod, but this mod is designed for maximum compatibility, and if its still not compatible then there is nothing i can do.

Save game compatible, yes, you can add and remove this mod to/from existing savegames. If trade posts or buildings were built, they will simply disappear if the mod is removed.
Drax70 27 Jan, 2019 @ 5:05am 
Hello @Flint!
Great mod! I love historical immersion in games!
Just a few questions,
Is your mod compatible with the "In heaven’s Graphics overhaul" mod?
I'm asking you because, I'm not sure if it changes the hall map entirely or just the textures..
And secondly, is it save game compatible?

Thanks!
Flint  [author] 24 Jan, 2019 @ 9:45am 
I will consider this, and thanks for the compliment!
steno19 23 Jan, 2019 @ 1:40pm 
Gostynin makes more sense for a trade post than Sandomierz, just FYI. Great mod anyways!
Flint  [author] 21 Jan, 2019 @ 4:29am 
I understand.

This mod is supposed to be historical though.

Ladoga has sea access. And Ingria was swampland and some tiny finnish tribes living there, all the way until Peter the Great.

I have no problem with anyone forking this mod and changing it in any way, feel free to copy it and publish your own variation.
Unidog 20 Jan, 2019 @ 11:08am 
To be honest I wasn't aiming for historical accuracy, more like a trade node with sea access.. It was a request, not an accusation or remark about your own intellignece.
Flint  [author] 14 Jan, 2019 @ 5:07pm 
Ladoga in particular, was one of the main trade posts on this trade route. Way before Peter the Great.

Homework for you, Unidog:
1) read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staraya_Ladoga
2) write here, 20 times, "i will do at least some basic research on wikipedia before telling others what is right and what is wrong"
Unidog 14 Jan, 2019 @ 4:37pm 
A quick question, since Ladoga doesn't have sea access, until Peter the Great, can you maybe move the node to Ingria?
AntonSofron 24 Dec, 2018 @ 3:59am 
А вот)
Flint  [author] 24 Dec, 2018 @ 3:05am 
рад за тебя дорогой мой, но зачем же меня так напрягать, заставлять меня эти иероглифы в гугл копировать..
AntonSofron 24 Dec, 2018 @ 1:34am 
Flint, ибо Японский для меня сейчас более простой, чем Русский, но люблю Русский, как мать своё родимое дитя
Strawman Army 23 Dec, 2018 @ 6:10pm 
Great idea--thanks for making this.
Unidog 23 Dec, 2018 @ 1:13pm 
*insert "ThankYou" GIF here*