ИСТИНА

This is a presentation of my conference talk given 09 June 2022 at the Vinogradov Institute of Russian language in Moscow. The conference is dedicated to the memory of Alexander V. Nazarenko. I discuss an important observation made by Nazarenko about the special use of the Russian word skotъ, which assumes a borrowed meaning 'money, tax' owing to the influence Old Scandinavian word skattR. A similar observation has been made in a different context by the Russian linguist of the early XIX century, Fyodor S. Shimkevitsch. Both Shimkevitsch and Nazarenko developed a correct intuition concerning the relation of the Old Russian and Old Scandinavian words, since they read both Old Russian and Old Scandinavian texts and compared them directly. My own contribution to this tradition is the proof that the word skotъ4 = 'money' has been borrowed into the Old Novgorod dialect of Russian, but was generally avoided in bookish texts, including the First Novgorod Chronicle, since it was considered colloquial if not vulgar. A remarkable exception is the 1018 episode with Prince Jaroslav and posadnik Konstantin who collected tax (нача емати скотъ4) and hired a Varangian army. This episode has clear Novgorod roots. Скотъ4 is also documented in the earliest layers of "Russkaja Pravda", which originated as an oral text and was influenced by the Varangian oral law.