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This article is a synthesis of the knowledge on Russian culture in Western Europe between the end of the tenth century (when the Kievan Russia converted to Christianity and its sovereigns established relationships with other Christian kings) and the middle of the fifteenth century (just before Muscovite Russia, which had succeeded Kievan Rus', joined the political and economic Western world). It presents a systematic survey of all Western European medieval sources about Russia over this long period. These include chronicles, sagas, encyclopedias, travel narratives, maps, or chivalric literature. These sources are analyzed according to a typological approach, i.e., focusing on the authors, their origin and educational background, on the characteristics of the texts and on the information they provide about Russia. This typological approach shows that an image of Russia emerged in medieval Western Europe, however partial and fragmentary it may have been. Not until the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century was Russia really discovered by Western European diplomats and merchants.