The title I have chosen is intentionally precise and imprecise, as a brief comparison with the titles of some recent treatments of this subject will reveal. Take, for example, the title of Wladyslaw Duczko's recent book (2004), Viking Rus; or the title of chapter 9 of Pavel Dolukhanov's The Early Slavs: ‘The Vikings and the Rus’, with its sub-headings, ‘The Vikings in Europe’, ‘The Scandinavians and the Slavs’ and ‘The Beginnings of Russian Statehood’ (1996: 173–7, T77–93 and 193–7 respectively). My title's precision is both instructive in that it rules out of consideration the other terms found in the Arabic sources for Norsemen, that is, Majus (Zoroastrians) and Warank (Varangians), and deceptive, as my avoidance of the definite article indicates – I want to avoid the universalising of these groups which the definite article imposes – to say nothing of its imprecision in my avoidance of a distinction between Scandinavians, Vikings or Varangians.

I want to suggest the possibility that in the Arabic written sources from the ninth to eleventh centuries, we might find evidence of (1) Vikings (broadly conceived), (2) of Rus, (3) of Viking Rus and/or (4) Rus Vikings. I also want to highlight the hegemony, in discussions of these and other ethnonyms, of an astonishing nominalism, an index of what Dolukhanov (1996: 6) has referred to as the ‘cultural-ethnic paradigm’. My title also acknowledges that written sources are highly unreliable and deceptive.