Gostomysl is considered the ancestor of the Russian people - a personality so legendary that no one knows anything concrete about him, and even mentions of this person are quite rare in textbook historical manuals and textbooks on Russian history. About Gostomysl's father, Prince Buriv, the Russian chronicles say almost nothing, although the reign of the latter was historically significant.
According to the annals of the Novgorod Bishop Joachim (date of birth unknown, died in 1030), the so-called Joachim Chronicle, which came down to us only in the retelling of the Russian historian V. N. Tatishchev, Buriv had a difficult war with the Varangians and, defeating them many times, possessed all Bjarmia, that is Koreliya up to the river Kyumeni, and finally he was defeated by this river and, having lost almost all the army, went to the city of Korela and died here, and his son Gostomysl succeeded him.
It is believed that the son of Burivoy, Gostomysl, was a prince of Novgorod, and invited the Varangian Rurik with his brothers Sineus and Truvor to reign in Novgorod.
In all modern translations of The Tale of Bygone Years, in anthologies and textbooks, it is said that after arriving in Russia, Rurik began to reign in Novgorod, Sineus - on Beloozero, and Truvor - in Izborsk. But the Ipatiev and Radziwil annals say something quite different: when they came to the Novgorod land, the Varangian brothers first of all "cut down" the city of Ladoga (now known as Staraya Ladoga). It was in it that Rurik began to rule and only after several years moved to Novgorod.
In one of the lists of "Legends of Slovenia and Ruse" there is an interesting clarification: Rurik "cut down" the first capital of the state of Rurik in the wrong place where the well-known Staraya Ladoga was for a long time - not on the left bank of the Volkhov River, 12 kilometers from Lake Ladoga, and on an island in the lake: "And lay your capital Rurik on the island of Lake Ladoga."
Rurik was born, according to the Russian chronicles, in 780 and died in 879 at the age of about a hundred years, and it must be the same, in Korely: “The great prince Rurik went with his nephew Oleg to fight the lopes and Korela. The voivode is Rurik's Valet. And the warrior and the tribute to them I laid … Summer 6387 (879) Rurik died in Korela in the war; tamo and it was laid in the city of Korel."
Curious and mysterious is the message about the capital of the legendary and mysterious Biarmia. She bore the same name as the whole country - Korela. VNTatishchev believed that this place could be an island between two branches of the Vuoksa River, which flows into Lake Ladoga; here, according to the chronicles, at the end of the 12th century, the Russian fortress Korela was built, which was renamed by the Swedes who subsequently captured it in Kexholm (now the city of Priozersk in the Leningrad region).
The Korela fortress in the XIII-XIV centuries was the administrative and cultural center of the Karelian Isthmus, a city of Karelian and Russian settlers, the bulk of which were Novgorodians.
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Historians attribute the foundation of the fortress to 1295, and the time of the reign of Burivoy and Rurik - VIII-IX centuries. Everything here is a mystery! Perhaps, in the question “where did the Russian land come from” not everything is as clear and unambiguous as it seems to us? Moreover, according to Swedish historical sources, the city of Korela had its predecessor, which was located several kilometers down the Vuoksa River.
The mentions of biarms in medieval sources are extremely scarce. The most important of them are the story of the Norwegian Ottar published by the English king Alfred the Great about his journey to Biarmia in the 9th century, some Scandinavian sagas, as well as some Russian chronicles and German chronicles.
The word "biarmia" is associated with the name of the Perm (or Komi) people, known in ancient times under the name of Beormas. However, it is known that the population of the Komi in these places was insignificant, and before everyone else lived here "Zavolotsk Chud", that is, immigrants of Viennese and Karelian origin.
Biarmia extended almost over the entire space of the present northern Russian provinces: Arkhangelsk, Karelian, Vologda, Vyatka and Perm. Biarms became famous for the fur trade and trade. They supplied furs, in particular to the South, through the Great Bulgar located in the middle reaches of the Volga. Biarmia was revered by the Vikings as a richer land than Arabia, and much richer than Europe.
The Greek trade route went to Biarmia. Greek historians pointed out that it was from here, from the “far north”, that gold was exported. Together with gold, “other metals and precious stones” were also exported from Biarmia, which testifies to the high level of technical knowledge and skills of local artisans.
Karamzin's "History" also mentions the Biarmia shopping center, where "merchants from Scandinavia gathered in the summer for a glorious fair and bought furs."
Karelians during the 9th-13th centuries were recognized merchants; the routes of their trade expeditions were very long. The many-sided active trading activity of the Karelians made a strong impression on contemporaries, and then on historians. Already in the literature of the 19th century, the issue of biarmics was closely related to the history of the Karelian people.
The heyday in the history of biarm is probably the "Viking Age", as well as the early Russian period before the raids of the Tatars. The trade ties of the Biarmians with the South were interrupted in the 1240s by the Mongol invasion, which destroyed the Bulgar kingdom and led to the temporary subjugation of vast territories of the Russian state, and trade ties with the West, carried out through Finland, were weakened due to repeated wars between Sweden and Novgorod.
In the new international situation, the Biarmic Karelians lost their former wealth and former glory. But their trading traditions have survived for a long time. They traded in the Novgorod lands, and in Eastern and Northern Finland. The Karelian peddlers who appeared at traditional fairs in Finland became especially famous.
On August 4, 1979, a monument to peddlers was unveiled in the town of Kuhmo, on the ancient trade route of biarmors. The well-known Finnish historian H. Kirkinen made a solemn speech, who emphasized that cultural exchange and cooperation between the USSR and Finland have their origins in the distant past, in the days when the traditions of Biarmia existed.
"UFO", St. Petersburg