"In English-language scholarship, there is a consensus that Rus' people originated in what is currently coastal Middle Sweden around the eighth century. Basing themselves among Finnic peoples in the upper Volga region, they formed a dispora of traders and raiders exchanging furs and slaves for silk, silver and other commodities available to the east and south. Around the ninth century, on the river routes to the Black Sea, they had an unclear but significant role in forming the principality of Kievan Rus, gradually assimilating with local Slavic populations. They also extended their operations much further east and south, among the Turkic Bulghars and Khazars, on the routes to the Caspian Sea. By around the eleventh century, the word Rus' was increasingly associated with the principality of Kiev, and the term Varangian was becoming more common as a term for Scandinavians travelling the river-routes."
