We learned that monasteries were set up, but the religion of Rus was not so simple. When they came to the region first, they brought with them some of their Scandinavian religion and mixed it into the local Slavonic culture to establish the first Rus religion. We do not know how much of the Viking and Slavic culture were included in it. Most information about this phase comes from the efforts of Vladimir I to form a unifying element to his upcoming Eastern Slavic state.
A short while after Vladimir took power in 980; he made six wooden idols of Slavonic gods at his estates in Kyiv. These included a statue of the Slavic god Perun, the god of thunder. This figure is generally associated both with the Scandinavian Thor and the northern Iranian gods, who had a head of silver and a moustache of gold. The other idols were of Khors, Dazbog, Stribog, Simargl, and Mokosh.
Earlier, Slavic rulers had an inclination to Christianity but it was not established as a religion back then. The Byzantine patriarch Photius first sent missionaries in 860 – but Christianity formally came as a state religion under the rule of Vladimir the Great, who ruled from 980 to 1015.
Picture Credit : Google
