Names and Communities. Varangians, Kylfingar and Vikings around the Baltic Sea [Имена и сообщества. Варяги, колбяги и викинги вокруг Балтики]

I follow the distribution of three collective proper nouns VARANGIANS, KYLFINGAR and VIKINGS borrowed by the Slavic languages and compare their coverage in Scandinavian Runic inscriptions ca. 1000 — 1200, with the focus on Swedish Runic inscriptions from the XIth century and in Old Russian non-bookish sources, with focus on the Birch bark letters. From the three proper names, Scandinavian runic inscriptions have two — Viking/Vikings, Kylfing but lack the Varangians. The word ‘Viking(s)’ is primarily used in the singular as a personal name (at least 18 times) but is also attested as a name of the Viking community in PL. The word ‘Kylfing’ is only attested as a personal name in SG (4 times). Old Russian has only Varangians (варягы) and Kylfingar (колбяги) but lacks Vikings (витязи). The last word (витязи) is first attested in 1485 as a possible interim borrowing from South Slavic but its sound form suggests an earlier time of borrowing. As for the Varangians, the standard hypothesis assuming the origin from the Scandinavian suffix –ing-R is to be preferred over the alternative hypothesis basing on the not attested suffix *–ang-R. In Old Russian, both the plural and the singular forms of the words варяги, колбяги are attested. All later Old Russian borrowings with the suffix –ing-R, except for князь, пенязь, витязь show –ѩг- without the final –dz’ in the singular form, which indicates that these words were first and foremost used in Russian as names of the corresponding communities. The singular forms were possible, but had a special meaning “an individual from the set of X-s”. Kylfingar (колбяги) surely had a lower rank than Varangians (варяги), and the singular form ко(л)бяжянин could express pejorative connotations.