The Name of Byzantium in Old Norse Literature
Byzantium was traditionally designated in Scandinavia in the 11th-14th centuries with an ethnic name Grik(k)jar, pl., which is attested in skaldic verses and runic inscriptions from the early 11th century on. The usage of ethnic names as land-names is highly untypical for Scandinavian toponomastics (the usual pattern is ethnic name + land), but it is common in East-Slavic place-names nomenclature including the name of Byzantium - the Greeks. As the contacts between Scandinavia and Byzantium in the 10th-11th centuries were carried out exclusively via Eastern Europe, the author argues that the name Grik(k)jar was borrowed by Scandinavians in Rus’.