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Introduction
There are traditionally four lands of Sweden:
* Scanialand (Skane, "Land of the Seamans") is the southernmost land with provinces conquered by Sweden from Denmark in 1658.
* Götaland (Gothia, "Land of the Götar") is between Scanialand and Svealand. Traditionally the Goths are seen as having emigrated from Gothia.
* Svealand (Svealand, "Land of the Swedes") is the central core part of Sweden. It is named after the Svear (Swedes). After the Swedes had conquered the Götar, Sweden has since the Middle Ages been administered and ruled from Stockholm in Svealand. Rurik is believed to have left the Roslagen area north of Stockholm to go to Rus with his Varangians.
* Norrland (literally "Northlands") is the northern part of Sweden. It is territorially the largest of the four lands, covering 60 percent of the total Swedish territory.
For the past 260 years, scholars have been interested in the rise of the East-Slavic kingdom. The Normanists and Anti-Normanists have confronted each other.
Interestingly enough, there is also a Gothic theory, suggested by Friedrich Heinrich Strube de Pyrmont in 1785 and by Roger Latham (1812 - 1888) in 1863. This hypothesis is based on the view that the East Slavic kingdom was founded by the Goths. It could actually be a plausible explanation.
The Swedish scholar Dr. Stefan Söderlind (1911 - 2003) developed this thesis into what he called the Red-Blond-People hypothesis. It is based on the Old Russian forms Rus and Rud derived from the Proto-Slavic stems rusu and rudu, which began to spread in the period 150 - 350 AD. In the palatinized form rusu the form rus was according to Söderlind borrowed directly into Arabic as Rus.
In 370 AD the Goths in what is now Ukraine were defeated by the Huns and migrated westwards. Many Goths, however, remained in what is today southern Ukraine. After the Huns were defeated a new Gothic kingdom was formed in 450 AD. In the Nestor Chronicle there is a passage, which has not yet been deciphered in which Khagan Svjatoslav (d. 972) says:
I do not care to remain in Kyiv, but I should prefer to live in Pereyaslavets on the Danube since that is the center of my realm.
Rus later became the common...