Interesting Maps

Kievan Rus was founded by Vikings with red hair (Rurik Prince of Novgorod - Gorod means fortification or courtyard in Swedish), and the name Rus is the same as Finnish people use for Sweden - Ruotsi.

Rus is also a Slavic word for red hair. Kievan Rus stretched form the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and since the middle ages you separate Red Rus (Southern Poland and Ukraine) from Bela Rus or White Rus, which is the area closer to the Baltic Sea (Baltas meaning white in Lithuanian and Bela is white in Russian).

Then red and white were also used in the civil wars after the Russian Revolution for revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries in Russia and Finland. And since the revolution Russia was red meaning communist, and Stalin has been called The Red Tsar. Although red has always been a Tsarist royal colour, from when Moscow took over from Kievan Rus.

And the Red Square (Krasnyy Kvadrat) has had its name since 1660, because of the colour of the bricks surrounding the crowned Tsar´s palace (the most noble, rich and beautiful colour and material).

Rurik means King or Hero, and Russia comes from Greek for the people of Rus, when the Tsars wanted to portray themselves as the rightful successors of Greek speaking Byzantine East Rome in the 15th-16th century.