OLD NORSE SOURCES have preserved the names of twelve towns that were considered by medieval authors, as well as by their modern editors, to have been Old Russian towns. These are Hólmgarðr, Aldeigjuborg, Kænugarðr, Súrdalar, Pallteskia, Smaleskia, Móramar, Rostofa, Sýrnes, Gaðar, Álaborg, and Danparstaðir. The first eight of them are in effect unanimously identified with Novgorod, Ladoga, Kiev, Suzdal’, Polotsk, Smolensk, Murom, and Rostov. Firstly, these are the oldest, and as well the largest, Old Russian towns: seven of them are among the ten towns named by the Russian Primary Chronicle in the entries under the ninth century. Secondly, what is very important about them is that they are connected with the main trade routes of the late first and early second millennium. Polotsk, Smolensk, Suzdal’, Murom, and Rostov belong to the water route of the Western Dvina— the Dnieper— the Oka— the Volga; Ladoga, Novgorod, Smolensk, and Kiev are stopping places on “the route from the Varangians to the Greeks” (the Volkhov— the Lovat’— the Dnieper). This fact helps explain why, on the one hand, Scandinavians were familiar with these towns and, on the other hand, the names of these towns have been preserved in Old Norse literature. Information about Russian towns in the Old Norse sources is diverse, from laconic mentions of their names and stereotypical ideas to concrete details verified by other sources, and sometimes really unique material. In this chapter we shall deal with two of them— Hólmgarðr and Kænugarðr— whose names are formed with the same root (garð- ) as the designation of the whole state, Garðaríki.

Novgorod

The Old Norse place-name Hólmgarðr has traditionally been considered to be the designation of Novgorod. In one of the redactions of Göngu-Hrólfs saga this identity is voiced: “Hólmgarðaborg […] þat er nú kallat Nógarðar” (“Hólmgarðaborg […] which now has the name of Nógarðar”) (Göngu-Hrólfs saga 1830, 362). The earliest occurrence of Hólmgarðr is in a runic inscription on Esta rock (Sö 171), of the first half of the eleventh century, and there are two cases more (G 220; U 687). The skalds are not familiar with the name. Still the name is popular in Old Norse literature, where it occurs more than hundred times, in all other types of sources.