Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Staraya Ladoga" in English language version.
Thus mention is often made of the old commercial town Aldegjuborg, the Russian (Old-)Ladoga, standing on the little river Volkhov, at some distance from its fall into lake Ladoga, called by the Scandinavians Aldegja
Archaeology confirms that Old Ladoga, the first town in eastern Europe, had been founded as early as the second half of the eighth century
These two original centres of Rus were Staraja Ladoga and Rurikovo Gorodishche, two points on the ends of an axis, the Volkhov, a river running for 200 km between two lakes, from the Ilmen in the south to the Ladoga in the north. This was the territory that most probably was originally called by the Norsemen Gardar, a name that long after Viking Age was given much wider content and become Gardariki, a denomination for whole Old Russian State. The area between the lakes was the original Rus, and it was from here its name was transferred to the Slav territories on the middle Dnieper, which eventually became "Ruskaja zemlja"—the land of Rus
The first material stage in the establishment of what would become the Rus' state seems to have been the settlement which sprang up near the mouth of the Volkhov, some 12 kilometres upstream from Lake Ladoga. Staraja (that is, "Old") Ladoga seems to have been founded sometime around the middle of the eighth century and served as the primary "gateway community" for Russian contacts with the Baltic and the west
