There is no doubt that they were later continued as an independent narrative, eventually becoming somewhat emancipated from the Palace since the early 840s, first by Prudentius of Troyes (†861) and thereafter Hincmar of Reims (until 882), on whose lost manuscript their tradition is almost entirely dependent.
During the ninth century, these warrior-bands regularly laid waste to the lands of the Frisians, sailed up rivers like the Seine, Loire, and Rhine, where they caused great devastation in the country, and plundered Carolingian monasteries and episcopal cities.
[2] There is much to read in the annals, and the narrative sheds also some light on the many incidents that form the scenario in which Scandinavians came to more formal, i.e. diplomatic and ecclesiastic, relations with their southern neighbours – for example the Normans' fealty to King Charles III of West Francia in 911.
At Ingelheim royal residence, near Mainz, they were queried by Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious, as he suspected they might be on reconnaissance (Latin: exploratores), and they could assure him in the rationale for their northern destination, as they belonged to the Sueones: "eos gentis esse Sueonum".
However, there is an alternative interpretation, that Chacanus is a Latin transcription of the Scandinavian proper name Håkan[9][10][11][12] since in mainstream scholarship the Rus' people, who lived in northern Russia, had their ancestral homeland in Sweden.
[14] Scholars have also sought to establish a connection between the Rus'-Byzantine embassy to Louis the Pious and contemporary events in the Eastern Empire, as recorded in the Life of St. George of Amastris, one of the earliest Greek sources on the Rus'.