Gostomysl

Gostomysl (Russian Гостомысл ) was a legendary Slavic ruler of Novgorod in the 9th century, which was first extensively described by the historian Vasily Tatischtschew in the 18th century. Gostomysls rule is associated with a collar north ostslawischer and other tribes, which was created to address the threat posed by the Varangians. The federal government included the Ilmenslawen that Kriwitschen, the Merja and the Chud. Sergei Platonov and Alexei Shakhmatov believed that there was the capital of the federal government in Russa and Gostomysl was one of their leaders.

According Tatischtschew, who claimed to have derived his information from the now lost Joachim Chronicle, Gostomysl was chosen by the Ilmenslawen to supreme ruler. He allegedly drove the Varangians from Russia, who had conquered the country during the reign of his predecessor Buriwoj. Gostomysl had no male offspring, because all four of his sons died yet during his lifetime. The written down in the Joachim History Legend has it that he once had a dream of his daughter umila from whose womb grew a large tree. The pagan priests interpreted this as a prophecy that Umilas son one day become a great leader and the government would gain over a vast area. This son was, according to the Joachim Chronicle Rurik, who was called by the Novgorod later as Prince, and his grandfather inherited as ruler of Novgorod. Rurik's descendants ruled the largest state in Europe, Kievan Rus. So the legend establishes a connection between the Rurik Dynasty and the preceding Slavic rulers.

The Gostomysl legend was well received by the writers and scholars in patriotic milieu of the reign of Catherine the Great, came up as an anti- Norman matic hypotheses about the origins of Russia. However, the historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller and Nikolai Karamzin sense of history Tatischtschews at no great credibility and expressed the suspicion that it is a misinterpretation of two Slavic words ( Gost for guest and Mysl for thought).

Although Gostomysls existence of many modern historians is doubted, is also clear that there could not be an artificial word creation in the sense of Müller and Karamzin. In German chronicles records found from the fact that Louis the German in 844 pulled into the fight against the " rex Gostomuizli " the Obodrites. The story of Umilas dream carries a striking resemblance to the legend of the birth of Harald's Hårfagre in some Norwegian sagas, the act of a genealogical tree, his mother is said to have seen on the eve of his birth. He should be an icon for the Hårfagre dynasty, which established Harald.