THE ALDEIGJUBORG OF the sagas is considered to be a designation of Ladoga (Old Ladoga). The earliest source where this place-name occurs is Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar by Oddr Snorrason (ca. 1190). However, the presence of Aldeigja in Bandadrápa by Eyjólfr dáðaskáld (ca. 1010) points to Aldeigja as the original form of this name. All in all, Aldeigja/ Aldeigjuborg is mentioned about forty times in skaldic poetry and sagas (though it does not occur in runic inscriptions and geographical treatises). The compound Aldeigjuborg was formed with the help of a geographical term borg “town, fortification” that served in constructing town names in Western Europe, but was not typical for the names of Old Rus’ towns. The reason for this lies in the fact that Scandinavians moved along “the route from the Varangians to the Greeks” stage by stage, and Ladoga, located at the initial stage of this route, was, according to archaeological materials, opened up by them about a century earlier than the remaining part of this route. Scandinavians who settled in Ladoga and are likely to have constituted there “a relatively independent political organization” (Lebedev 1975, 41) created— on the local basis (which will be discussed below)— the name Aldeigja, and then changed it into Aldeigjuborg following the toponymic pattern X-borg that was familiar to them.

Ladoga and Aldeigja

Scholars are unanimous in recognizing the genetic relation of the place-names Aldeigja and Ладога (Ladoga); however, their origin and correlation have been interpreted in different ways. Eugene Helimski has labelled all attempts of deriving Aldeigja (together with Ladoga) from a Finno-Ugric source as fruitless and suggested his understanding of the problem: in his opinion, “the name can either directly result from the Old Norse / Old Germanic name giving, or (if we do not want to shift the chronology of Proto-Germanic presence in the Eastern Baltic area back into mid-2nd millennium Bc) be an exact translation of the corresponding name from the same old Indo-European language the speakers of which witnessed the birth of Neva” (Helimski 2008).