>>>Isn't it true that the actual word "Russia" comes from a viking word (for "red"?), as the vikings sailed right into what is now Russia and settled?
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>>I wouldn't know. The only remaining word in Serbian is "rus" - meaning "blonde" (adj), but it's quite archaic, remained in a single folk song that I know of. But then "belorus" would mean "white blonde", and "malorus" - "little blonde" or "weakly blonde". Don't know whether this has any substance to it, just my conjecture.
>
>These may be of interest, although not derived from a word for "red" (that's what you get for quickly scanning magazine articles whilst waiting to see the dentist) :-)
>
>http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/varangians.shtml
>http://www.angelfire.com/empire/egfroth/rus.html

I may still be right in a way - the Serbian adjective may not be so old (i.e. not of Slavic origin), but may simply denote the Slavic blond hair color.

This is all quite interesting. I remember some bits of that part of the history, the Kiev empire and then later Novgorod and much later Moscow, but have completely lost the Scandinavians from the picture. The people were traveling then a lot then, it seems :).