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family, and small hamlets were the general rule, notcompact villages. Towns, such as Kiev, Smolensk,Polotsk, and Novgorod, grew up out of trading, tribute,or stockaded refuge posts by the main river routes andportages from the Black Sea and the upper Volga to theBaltic, along which trade from eastern lands had longflowed.In the ninth century, while the Norsemen were raidingand conquering in western Europe and the British Isles,their Swedish Viking kinsmen, the Varangians, penetratedthe Baltic-Black Sea river routes and set themselvesat the head of Kiev Russia, a loose bundle of the Russiandistricts, whose tribal organization was by then muchdecayed. Commerce, which grew and flourished untilabout 1200, contributed much to the rapid cultural andpolitical rise of Kiev Russia. Apart from the longdistancetransit trade, the Russians supplied furs andwax and honey, hides and tallow, and slaves; theyreceived luxury goods and weapons, affecting directlyonly the top layer of society. The external contacts ofKiev Russia, particularly with the Byzantine empire,bringing Christianity, writing, and the arts, ultimatelyhad the greatest consequences, but the flourishing tradeand the brilliance of a few centres like Kiev did not alterthe main basis of the great bulk of the population,agriculture and forest life.The prevailing method of cultivation was temporarycropping on the ash of burnt-over forest or scrub or onthe more open spaces of wild grassland. The clearings,after a few years of continuous cropping, were eitherabandoned to revert to waste or kept as rough pastureuntil their productivity might be restored. Graduallythe socketed axe replaced its less effective forebears.Gradually the plough-stick was superseded by the horsedrawnwooden 'hook' plough. This in turn waseventually developed, by the sixteenth century, into thelight wheel-less wooden plough, with coulter, mouldboard,and iron share, which with various modificationsremained until this century the prevailing type of ploughused by the peasantry throughout Russia outside theblack-earth zone.24