Šimon

Šimon (Old Norse: Sigmundr) was a Varangian (Viking) whose story is related in the Kievan Patericon and his story concerns the creation of the Kievan cave monastery, where he is reported to have been its most important donor.

Story Šimon was the son of Afrikan (ON: Afreki), a king in the land of the Varangians. Afrikan was the brother of Yakun (ON: Hákon) who took part in the Battle of Listven. When Afrikan died Jakun expelled Šimon and his brother Friand (ON: Friandi).

Šimon would live in Kievan Rus' for the rest of his life, and he first served Yaroslav I the Wise and later his son. In 1068, he joined Yaroslav's three sons in the Battle of the Alta River against the Polovtsians. Omeljan Pritsak, however, opposes this identification as he considers Jakun to have been Jarl Hákon Eiríksson who died in 1029, while Alrekr would not yet have been born.

The first scholar who undertook to identify the people mentioned in the Patericon was Fyodor Braun, and he suggested that Afrikan was based on an archaic pronunciation of the Old Norse dialect of Södermanland. The form would have been an oblique case of *afreki, i.e. *afriką (son) < *afrikan. The name Friand would not have been the name of a person, since the name is otherwise not attested among the Old Norse names, and Braun suggested that it was the appellative form of frjá ("to love"), frjándi, and which meant "nephew" in some Old Norse sources. Likewise, he did not consider Šimon to be derived from Sigmundr because ši reflected the Södermanland pronunciation of si, and thus Šimon referred to a Varangian having the Christian name Simon. According to Braun, the Patronicon was based on the account of a Varangian who would have reported that "Jakun had expelled his nephew (*frjándi) Simon Afrekąson".