Interesting article about Variags

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

when it comes to Russia my gut reaction is "Where did you get that? There's no way there's ancient Russia in Middle-earth. That's us, we can't have been one of these mythical races, we were definitely something different. We definitely don't fit the bill".

I suppose it's worth bearing in mind that "variag" seems to be a word in the tongue of Khand in the same way that the Men of Rohan "speak Old English" or the Men of Dale "speak Old Norse", which is to say that they don't really; it's just a relational linguistic equivalent. Even if Professor Tolkien used "variag" to suggest that the Men of Khand were linguistically the equivalent of ancient Russians in relation to Westron, they still wouldn't really be Russians or Slavs. They would just possibly occupy an equivalent position in the linguistic landscape of Middle-earth.
That being said, it's odd that we seem to see the "real" tongue of Near Harad in the word mûmak and yet the tongue of Khand is represented by a Slavic language. Off the top of my head I can't think of any words we hear that are in any tongue of the Easterlings of the Third Age.

Originally Posted by Andsigil

I noticed in the Hobbit film that the men of Dale had a slavic look to their armor, with spiked helmets, just before Smaug came and roasted everyone.

I wonder if this was a lazy way to represent that they're "from the North" (which they aren't any more than Bilbo is especially; they're just Northmen in relation to Gondor) or if the filmmakers thought making them look like Scandinavians (of which the Men of Dale are meant to be an equivalent) would have caused them to look too much like the film version of the Men of Rohan (which they wouldn't have, really).