The article deals with the problem of the cultural and ethnic characteristics of first settlers of Novgorod, the place of the Scandinavians in early urban community and their role in the formation of early urban material culture. The previous historiography and methodology are reviewed. The reappraisal of the archaeological reports and collections of 1950s-2000s years allowed seriously increasing the number and categories of Scandinavian objects, while the Slavonic component remains unclear. The Scandinavians should be counted among the founders and first settlers of Novgorod already in 930–950 A.D. This fact is reflected in the archaeologically attested Northern pagan practices of magic protection of new building. The pattern of distribution of Scandinavian objects suggests a free resettlement of Norsemen in the town. The “Poromon courtyard” mentioned in the Primary Rus’ Chronicle as a place of the massacre of the Varangians in 1015 AD can not be regarded as a court of the overseas merchants. The Scandinavians in Novgorod did not present the Rus’-Rhôs, an ethno-social group which was a result of the acculturation of the Norsemen in Slavonic milieu of Middle Dnieper area; they presented the new generations of newcomers appeared directly from the North. The archaeologically attested end of Scandinavian presence in Novgorod was caused by the political reorganization of the Eastern Europe and the lifting of practice of tributum pacis to the Varangians after the death of Prince Yaroslav. The tradition of the Russian historiography to underestimate the participation of the Norsemen in early development of Novgorod takes its origin from the “auto-censorship” of the Stalinist period, later it existed thank to “scientific inertial resistance”.