Staraya Ladoga Staraya Ladoga Staraya Ladoga (); ; ) is a rural locality (a "selo") in Volkhovsky District of Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the Volkhov River near Lake Ladoga, north of the town of Volkhov, the administrative center of the district. It used to be a prosperous trading outpost in the 8th and 9th centuries. A multi-ethnic settlement, it was dominated by Scandinavians who were called by the name of Rus'. For that reason, it is sometimes called the first capital of Russia. Dendrochronology suggests that Ladoga was founded in 753. Until 950, it was one of the most important trading
Lake Ladoga The Germanic toponym (Aldeigja → Aldoga) was soon borrowed by the Slavic population and transformed by means of the Old Russian metathesis "ald- → lad-" to . The Old Norse intermediary word between Finnish and Old Russian word is fully supported by archeology, since the Scandinavians first appeared in Ladoga in the early 750s, that is, a couple of decades before the Slavs. Other theories about the origin of the name derive it from "wave" and "wavy"; or from the Russian dialectal word алодь, meaning "open lake, extensive water field". Eugene Helimski by contrast, offers an etymology rooted in German.