THE BIRTH OF NORWAY IN PRE-PETRINE RUSSIAÕS GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION.

The history of Norway\'s name in Russian language is traced from the Ancient Rus period to the eighteenth century. In Old Russian texts up to and including the fifteenth century Norway is designated only by the ethnotoponym Murmanskaia zemlia (from the Murmane, i.e. "Norwegians" in the narrow sense, and zemlia "land"). By the sixteenth century, however, this place-name had started to designate an area in the north of the Kola Peninsula inhabited by the Saami. Making claims for this territory in a border dispute with Denmark, the Russian side identified it in the end of that century with Lopskaia zemlia. At the same time, a new name, Norvetskaia zemlia, has been recorded in diplomatic sources since mid-sixteenth century. Although its appearance had probably to do with the fact that the previous name had proved to be "occupied", the very change of the model of nomination instead of naming territory after its inhabitants the name of the "land" as such is loaned possibly reflects a certain change in the way Norway started to be Ôgeographically imagined during the Muscovite period. The modern form Norvegiia has been attested in the Russian translations of European cosmographies at least since the second quarter of seventeenth century (although the form Nordviia also appears in one translated text form the late 16th century).