Anthropological measurements of bone remains from the burial grounds of the Ancient Novgorod region made it possible to determine the ethnic history of this region. Until the 13th century, the basis of the local substrate was the Balts and partly the Western Slavs. Since the XIII century, an active cross-breeding of Novgorodians with Finnish tribes begins. At the same time, the Slavic population from the South-East rushes here, fleeing the Tatar-Mongol invasion. Anthropologists were able to find only a few Viking burials. But this did not mean that the Normans were not in Novgorod - they just burned the corpses of their relatives. Until the beginning of the 12th century, the Vikings were the nobility of Novgorod, then they dissolve into the local ethnos.
Serafima Sankina, employee of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great "Kunstkamera" of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2000 in the publishing house "Dmitry Bulanin" published the work "Ethnic history of the medieval population of the Novgorod land according to anthropology." 110 pages of this book are mainly filled with tables of measurements of bone remains from ancient burial grounds of the Novgorod land. Sankin and the anthropologists from her research group are interested in who the ancient Novgorodians were ethnically. Their everyday, political and economic life is painfully different from the rest of the inhabitants of Russia.
The work of Sankina and her collaborators in the literal sense of the word consisted of measuring skulls and other bones. At the very beginning of her scientific book, she cites three previously main hypotheses about the ethnicity of Novgorodians, and says that her excavations of burial grounds showed the opposite:
“There are three main provisions: 1. The Novgorod Slovenes originate from the Western Slavs of the Baltic coast (T. Alekseeva, V. Sedov, N. Goncharova). 2. Both of them lack the “Baltic basis” (T. Alekseeva). 3. Substrate influence on the Novgorod Slovenes was absent or was very insignificant (V. Sedov, N. Goncharova). The inclusion in the study of new material from the territory of the Novgorod land allows you to revise these provisions."
We provide short excerpts from the book of Serafima Sankina.
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In the Northwest, there was a cross-breeding of population groups with different anthropological characteristics. It was reflected in a massive shift in the physical characteristics of the descendants of the Old Russian population, starting from the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries, towards the Finnish groups of northeastern Europe. Actually, the Old Russian series of the Novgorod region have different anthropological features, which, rather, are characteristic of the Balts.
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For the most part, Novgorodians are closely related to each other. Among the Finnish groups, there were two close to the population of the southeastern Ladoga area and Khreple. Basically, different groups of Balts, as a rule, more graceful Yatvingians, Prussians and villages, are getting closer to Novgorodians.
Only two West Slavic series approached the Novgorod ones: the Vislians Konske (Kotorsk) and the population of the Lower Vistula (Khreple). The Baltic Slavs show much more in common with the Germans than with the Slovenes, which may be explained by the mutual influence of these neighboring population groups or a common substrate.
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As a result of cluster analysis of the distance matrix, two very different clusters were identified. One of them consisted of the early Balts and part of the Latvians, Estonians, five Novgorod groups (early Udrai and Ozertitsy, Zaborie, Holguin Krest and southeastern Ladoga area). The second cluster is formed by all other groups and has a very complex structure. Part of the Novgorodian population, usually later, united with various groups of Finns representing different anthropological variants.
Krivichi, Vyatichi, Polyana, Northerners and Radimichi formed a separate sub-cluster, which also included the Kotor group. The series of the Izhora plateau and the southeastern Ladoga area, later the population of Udray, the Viskinians, the Middle Dniester Slavs and the Dregovichi formed several subclusters with the late Lithuanians and Latvians, villages and Yatvyags. The Polotsk Krivichi, the early population of Pskov, and the Estonians of Otepää united into a separate sub-cluster.
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Thus, in the X-XIII centuries, the entire western border region of Rus (from north-west to south-west, from Novgorod to the Prut-Dniester interfluve) was represented by a population of a more or less similar anthropological appearance, uniting it with the Balts, and the early inhabitants of Estonia …
The population of the center and eastern regions of Rus' possessed a different complex of signs, indicating a weakening of the Caucasoid features and bringing it closer to the late Novgorodians who experienced Finnish influence. The anthropological basis of the Vyatichi and northeastern Krivichi are local Finnish tribes. The weakening of Caucasianism among the glades is associated with the influence of the nomads of the Dnieper region, and later - the Crimean ones.
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Thus, summarizing the results of the study, we can say, firstly, that the early population of the Novgorod land was very similar to the Balts: even the extremely massive dolichocranic Baltic series of the 1st millennium have analogies among the early Novgorodians. Secondly, the bulk of the later population demonstrates features that bring it closer to the Finns.
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For some time, collectives of the Slavs and the local population, which included both Caucasoid and Laponoid groups, lived in this territory in stripes. The mixing processes and the transition of the local population to the Old Russian funeral rite probably begins in the 12th century. These processes culminate mainly at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries, most likely as a result of the massive spread of Christianity.
The most pronounced heterogeneity of the population of the Novgorod land falls on the time of the Mongol-Tatar rule in Russia. The Novgorod land did not experience the invasion of the conquerors, and, possibly, groups from the southeastern territories migrated here. Some archaeologists acknowledge the eastern origin of some of the ornaments that appeared in Novgorod burial grounds during this period (for example, earrings in the form of a question mark).
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It is known that each part of Novgorod had its own burial ground, where a variety of types of burials were presented, including Scandinavian ones (in the Plakun tract there was a whole Varangian necropolis of the 9th-10th centuries). Scandinavian graves were usually burned, which excludes anthropological research.
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The only craniological series of the 11th-12th centuries in the Northwest can be attributed to the circle of Norman forms. The burial ground, where it comes from, is unique for its time and has no analogies in this territory.
Body length was calculated from the results of measurements of long bones. In Norman men, it was 172.6 cm. These figures characterize the group as very tall. The body length of modern Russians from the same territory and adjacent areas is 166 cm (at the time of excavations - in the 1960s, BT), and in the Middle Ages, before the general increase in growth, it was probably even less.
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Currently, we have three Scandinavian skull series from the ancient Russian territories. The Shestovitsa group belongs to the X century - the time of active interaction of the Slavs and Varangians. Staraya Ladoga dates back to the XI-XII centuries - the final period of large-scale Slavic-Scandinavian contacts. And, finally, the group from Kurevanikha existed in the XII-XIII centuries, when the era of direct Norman influence was already a thing of the past.
In each of these series, the results of mixing with the local population are observed to one degree or another. All this testifies to the existence of rather stable (primarily in anthropological terms) Norman collectives in the composition of the population of Ancient Rus. The existence of this group spans about two and a half centuries.