Severians

[3] Some scholars have argued that Jews called this tribe the Sawarta, based on the Kievan Letter (c. 930), written in Hebrew as SWRTH (read either as Sur'ata or Sever'ata), derived from Slavic sirota ("orphan"; in the letter, possibly meaning "convert"); or that the name "Severian" comes from the Magyar Savarti ("black"; possibly borrowed from Proto-Germanic swartaz).

[7] The Severians are believed to have continued the East Slavic tribal union along the middle Dnieper valley, after the political disappearance of the Antae and Dulebes, either independently or under Khazar policy.

[11] In 767, the Byzantines kidnapped the Severian prince Slavun, who had made trouble in Thrace, indicating they retained a tributary relationship with the Bulgars.

[12] Those tribes had to pay tribute to the Khazars in 859 in the form of squirrel and beaver skins,[13] which suggests they lived in or near the northern forests.

[15] In the 10th century, in his De Administrando Imperio, Constantine VII wrote that in winter, the Rus princes (archontes) moved to and were maintained in the lands of their Severian and Krivich tributaries.

[18] Archaeologists have found numerous rural settlements associated with the Severians, including burial mounds with cremated bodies, from the 8th–10th centuries.

Like other East Slavs, the Severians were mostly engaged in agriculture; cattle breeding; hunting; and different handicrafts such as pottery, weaving, and metalworking.

[4] In the Primary Chronicle, it is recorded that the Drevlians, Radimichs, Vyatichi, and Severians all lived violent lifestyles, and they did not enter monogamous marriages but practiced polygamy, specifically polygyny, instead.