bobsville adventure magazine
volume one, issue two.
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Roderick and Oleg's next move was to send some of the Rus south under Askold and Dir to see what it would take to obtain possession of Kiev. Whoever controlled Kiev and Gorodishe controlled the whole water road from the Baltic to Constantinople. When Askold and Dir and the Rus arrived at Kiev they found out the local Slavs would be very happy to get rid of their Hungarian overlords. They basically took Kiev without firing a shot with the help of the locals. Askold and Dir decided they wanted to rule Kiev and decided to double-cross Roderick and Oleg. In the mean time Oleg and Roderick set about to expand the territory of Gorodishe. In 879 Roderick decided he wanted to go back to the land of his birth (Holland) to retire and get his fief back from the German king, which never happened. Roderick died in 883 in Frisia. Roderick left his son, Igor with Oleg (Igor was to be married to Oleg's daughter Olga and after Oleg retired he would be prince at Gorodishe) and gave Gorodishe to Oleg to rule. Later Oleg gathered an army from the local residents and tributaries and hired Rus mercenaries, they marched south to Kiev and had a parlay with the double crossers in Kiev and killed them with the help of the local residents again. Oleg was now prince of Kiev and Gorodishe. Oleg moved the capital to Kiev and declared himself grand duke. Now you might think the water road to Constantinople was open for trade again, it was, but the Khazars had a lot of influence with the emperor in Constantinople and convinced him to only trade with them and not the Varangians and Rus. Kiev had to fight several wars with Constantinople to get favorable trade treaties. If you would like to read about one of them click here Prince Oleg's raid on Constantinople This story is about Novgorod and back to that. Gorodishe was reduced from capitol to a vassal city of the Grand Duchy of Kiev, but still an impotant part of the trade routes. Gorodishe became wealthy from the trade flowing through it. The son of the grand duke of Kiev was usually the local duke, here he would learn to rule before his time came to be grand duke in Kiev. The city was not very big and the city council decided to build a new much larger city a couple of miles away from Gorodishe. Thus Novgorod was founded.
