Velikiy Novgorod

The Sofia First Chronicle makes initial mention of it in 859, while the Novgorod First Chronicle first mentions it in 862, when it was purportedly already a major Baltics to Byzantium station on the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks.[1 The Charter of Veliky Novgorod recognizes 859 as the year when the city was first mentioned. Novgorod is traditionally considered to be the cradle of Russian statehood.

Archaeological excavations in the middle to late 20th century, however, have found cultural layers dating back only to the late 10th century, the time of the Christianization of Rus' and a century after it was allegedly founded, suggesting that the chronicle entries mentioning Novgorod in the 850s or 860s are later interpolations. Archaeological dating is fairly easy and accurate to within 15–25 years, as the streets were paved with wood, and most of the houses made of wood, allowing tree ring dating.

The Varangian name of the city Holmgård or Holmgard (Holmgarðr or Holmgarðir) is mentioned in Norse Sagas as existing at a yet earlier stage, but the correlation of this reference with the actual city is uncertain. Originally, Holmgård referred to the stronghold, now only 2 km (1.2 miles) to the south of the center of the present-day city, Rurikovo Gorodische (named in comparatively modern times after the Varangian chieftain Rurik, who supposedly made it his "capital" around 860). Archaeological data suggests that the Gorodishche, the residence of the Knyaz (prince), dates from the mid-9th century,[21] whereas the town itself dates only from the end of the 10th century; hence the name Novgorod, "new city", from Old Church Slavonic Новъ and Городъ (Nov and Gorod), although German and Scandinavian historiography suggests the Old Norse term Nýgarðr, or the Old High German term Naugard. First mention of this Nordic or Germanic etymology to the name of the city of Novgorod (and that of other cities within the territory of the then Kievan Rus') occurs in the 10th-century policy manual De Administrando Imperio by Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.

Slightly predating the chronology of the legend of Rurik (which dates the first Norse arrival in the region around 858–860), an earlier record for the Scandinavian settlement of the region is found in the Annales Bertiniani(written up until 882) where a Rus' delegation is mentioned as having visited Constantinople in 838 and, intending to return to the Rus' Khaganate via the Baltic Sea, were questioned by Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim am Rhein, where they said that although their origin was Swedish, they had settled in Northern Rus' under a leader who they designated as chacanus (the Latin form of Khagan, a title they had likely borrowed from contact with the Avars).