Ladoga is a Russian Babylon

     In ancient times the Finnish tribes populated the banks of the Volhov. In the VIII century, in its first half “ in southern Priladozhye the ways coming from North converged, from the White Sea by boyars from Scandinavian saga, from the areas close to Ural, from West, from the Baltic sea down the Neva, down the Volhov to South to lake Ilmen’ and down the head streams of the Volga and the Dnepr. In the VIII century the Scandinavians moved from North -West to East and the Slavs ranged with them from South. Along this way on the areas populated by the Finns many town-settlements aroused, the ethnic origins of which are hard to determine. (www.oldladoga.spb.ru)

     The most widespread version is that the Slavs came to Priladozhye (area close to Ladoga lake) and to Priilmenye (area close to Ilmen’ lake) from the South, from the bank of the Dnepr. There’s also another point of view that advocates western “venedian” origin of the Novgorod Slavs and Pskov Krivichi. (V. Sedov “The Slavs in the early Middle Ages, Moscow, 1995). The researchers noticed an affinity of religious paradigm, legends and some of the customs as well as of geographical nomenclature and language peculiarities of the “Novgorods” and the Baltic Slavs of Pomorye already in XIX century. A supposition was made about the resettlement of Slavs in Priilmenye from the areas populated by the Baltic Slavs; according to the followers of this theory the archeological evidences and anthropological data of the Ilmen Slavs and the Baltic Slavs (XI-XIII centuries) attests this supposition. V. Sedov affirms that the Slavs settled in Ilmen region didn’t come from the Dnepr but had a western origin. As well as the ancestors of Krivichi, they came from the lands of middle Povislenye and moved the same ways and directions.

     Wherever from the Slavs had come to this place, Ladoga, certainly, became a political Middle Age city, the center of crafts and international trade.