Heyhey, you majesty, wasn't that story by Ibn Fadlan about the Scandinavian trader-travellers, also known as Vikings? At least his account of their burial rites (including a kind of suttee) was.

But then, these folks had no problem setting themselves up as masters over the Slavs in Ukraine (Like the Proto-Bulgars in BG).

The only people you peasants will be spitting at will be at each other when you're fighting for food amongst each other after the latest sanctions the West has imposed destroy your already moribund economy. Your country will be finally destroyed, something I only wished I could see in my lifetime.

Another russophobe. Meetings of our Council of Ministers still look the same. We keep up to tradition, accept ourselves as we are and blow our noses and spit onto the decadent west!

Also from foreign dispatches website regarding the Russians::

What's especially interesting about this little etymological expedition is the context in which it came about: I'd run into an online account of the travels of the Arab diplomat Ibn Fadlan, who'd been sent as part of a mission to the King of the Volga Bulghars in 921 AD. His account of the people he called the "Rus" (by which is meant the Scandinavian tribe that originally bore the name before bestowing it on Russia by conquest) is quite an eye-opener, and as is to be expected, there's been many an effort to cast doubt on the reliability his accounts, most of them unconvincing in my opinion. Following are some of the more unflattering excerpts:

They are the filthiest of all All?h’s creatures: they do not clean themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of ritual impurity (i.e., after coitus) and do not wash their hands after food. Indeed they are like asses that roam .

[...]

They gather in the one house in their tens and twenties, sometimes more, sometimes less. Each of them has a couch on which he sits. They are accompanied by beautiful slave girls for trading. One man will have intercourse with his slave-girl while his companion looks on. Sometimes a group of them comes together to do this, each in front of the other. Sometimes indeed the merchant will come in to buy a slave-girl from one of them and he will chance upon him having intercourse with her, but will not leave her alone until he has satisfied his urge. They cannot, of course, avoid washing their faces and their heads each day, which they do with the filthiest and most polluted water imaginable. I shall explain. Every day the slave-girl arrives in the morning with a large basin containing water, which she hands to her owner. He washes his hands and his face and his hair in the water, then he dips his comb in the water and brushes his hair, blows his nose and spits in the basin. There is no filthy impurity which he will not do in this water. When he no longer requires it, the slave-girl takes the basin to the man beside him and he goes through the same routine as his friend. She continues to carry it from one man to the next until she has gone round everyone in the house, with each of them blowing his nose and spitting, washing his face and hair in the basin.

The both Borises - Bulgarian and Russian - were descendants of Byzantine tradition, hence their similiar outlook, long beards and garment. The proto-Bulgarians were indeed of a far Asian descent, but once they arrived, in a small number, to what constitutes the modern Bulgaria, they started to live among the Slavs and melted in. But being a Slav today, after so many wars and migrations, means nothing more than having a Slavic language as a mother tongue.

...;-)
Boris Godunov, Russian:
http://cp12.nevsepic.com.ua/78-4/1355630660-1156538-www.nevsepic.com.ua.jpg

Boris I, Bulgarian?:
http://ukesprof.ru/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/15dca12113a9b1987db12f33d2_142993_p0.jpg
oh, rather the Vietnamese than Russian, really. С'est formidable.

The final touches come in the form of an F-35 badge on the rear panel, and the flags of nine U.S. allies give colorful display on the lower doors.
http://www.rctophobby.com/

Excellent Warfou, I commend you on your follow through and an expansion of the topic. Now to my original point: Bulgarians are ethnically more closely related to the Vietnamese than they are to the Russians (in gene family terms). If they think more like the Russians, c'est dommage.

When Yane insults the Irish or anyone else from the west he/she had better look at the history of the Celtic people

Yane, in your "Blut und Boden" philosophy, you should respect the Pomaks, since they are ethnic Bulgarians, aren't they? And as to how the Persians looked before the Arabs and Djengis Khan moved in, obviously you were around in the early Middle Ages? Might be, you surely sound the part....

Which shows how dangerous al that rant about "race", "people" and genes is. The population of all of Europe is a genetic mishmash, of middle stone age hunter-gatheres, neolithic farmers (probably from Anatolia, see their tells, Indo-Europeans from the steppe, other nomads etc. In all of Europe, at best you can say that some traits (blond hair and blue eyes, round heads and stocky bodies) occur more frequent in one place than another. Go sit on the bench at Slaveykov and see the diversity - wonderfull diversity, as far as I'm concerned. And it might be healtier to - low genetic diversity is dangerous.

to Diogo, when someone says Iranian origins, one refers to Persia prior to being invaded by Arabs n Mongols. They changed a lot in appearance after that.

Naydenov n Boris = Turk/Pomak garbage, do you miss the Sultan? Maybe you prefer Ankara to Moscow? Don't speak of treason when you threw away our identity n served our oppressors.

The one that should go home to Russia is you, miserable traitor. But typical gypsy, willing to sell your mother for a bottle of vodka.

If they don't like it, they can all go home! It's incredible we tolerate their presence at all! They bomb children in Donetsk, kill them all the time n now come here crying about their stupid flags for a country with no history that didn't exist more than two decades ago! Listening to Ukrainian pukes is like listening to Monkeydonians, incredible that we put up with their nonsense!

An excerpt from the said source:

"Various explanations of the name have been suggested, the theory depending upon whether the longer or shorter form has been taken as the basis and upon the acceptance of the vowel o or a as the original root vowel. From the thirteenth century until the shorter form Slav was always regarded as the original expression, and the name of the Slavs was traced from the word Slava (honor, fame) (...) . However, as early as the fourteenth century and later the name Slav was at times referred to the longer form Slovenin with o as the root vowel, and this longer form was traced to the word Slovo (word, speech), Slavs signifying, consequently, "the talking ones", verbosi, veraces, omoglottoi. Dobrowsky maintained this explanation (...), consequently it has been the accepted theory up to the present time. Other elucidations of the name Slav, as ?lovek (man), Skala (rock), selce (colony), slati (to send), solovej (nightingale), scarcely merit mention. There is much more reason in another objection that Slavonic philologists have made to the derivation of the word Slav from slovo (word). The ending en or an of the form Slov?nin indicates derivation from a topographical designation. Dobrowsky perceived this difficulty and therefore invented the topographical name Slovy, which was to be derived from slovo. (...)He did not, however, accept the purely imaginary locality Slovy but connected the word Slov?nin with the Lithuanian Salava, Lettish Sala, from which is derived the Polish zulawa, signifying island, a dry spot in a swampy region. According to this interpretation the word Slavs would mean the inhabitants of an island, or inhabitants of a marshy region. The German scholar Grimm maintained the identity of the Slavs with the Suevi and derived the name from sloba, svoba (freedom). The most probable explanation is that deriving the name from slovo (word); this is supported by the Slavonic name for the Germans Nemci (the dumb). The Slavs called themselves Slovani, that is, "the speaking ones", those who know words, while they called their neighbors the Germans, "the dumb", that is, those who do not know words.

During the long period of war between the Germans and Slavs, which lasted until the tenth century, the Slavonic territories in the north and southeast furnished the Germans large numbers of slaves. The Venetian and other Italian cities on the coast took numerous Slavonic captives from the opposite side of the Adriatic whom they resold to other places. The Slavs frequently shared in the seizure and export of their countrymen as slaves. The Naretani, a piratical Slavonic tribe living in the present district of Southern Dalmatia, were especially notorious for their slave-trade. Russian princes exported large numbers of slaves from their country. The result is that the name Slav has given the word slave to the peoples of Western Europe."