PLACE-NAMES WITH THE root aust- had never attracted particular attention, and, from a cursory glance, it was decided that these toponyms had no common meaning in different sources (or groups of sources). They were even considered to have been vague in their meaning, inaccurate, and uncertain (Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson 1957, 35– 36; Sverdlov 1973, 49; Melnikova 1977b, 198– 99). I have tried to show elsewhere that the “inconstancy” of the place-names with the root aust- reflects their real historical development (Jackson 1988). If we turn to all the texts pertaining to the history of Eastern Europe (from runic inscriptions to the late sagas), we shall be able to see the development of the Old Norse place-names with the root aust- in dynamics.

The analysis carried out in my other works (Jackson 1989, 1993) shows that the ethno-geographical nomenclature of the Old Norse sources was formed simultaneously with the Scandinavian infiltration into Eastern Europe. We may even speak of two different ethno-geographical traditions (those of skaldic poetry, runic inscriptions and early sagas, on the one hand, and of geographical treatises, þulur and late sagas, on the other) that reflect a concrete chronological sequence of Scandinavian penetration into Eastern Europe, a progression in which Scandinavians moved along “the route from the Varangians to the Greeks.” Accordingly, the chronology of written fixation of placenames reflects the sequence of their emergence into the language of early Scandinavians.

Place-names with aust-in Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Poetry

The earliest place-name, and also the one that has the widest meaning (= territories to the east of Scandinavia, from the Baltic Sea littoral to Byzantium), is a special geographical term austr “east.” It occurs in this sense in runic inscriptions and in skaldic poems of the tenth and eleventh centuries. There are only few cases when austr is used as a designation of a region within Scandinavia (Melnikova 1977b, 79); on the contrary, about twenty-five runic inscriptions, the earliest of which (Ög 8) is dated to the tenth century— stikuʀ.