[Kitanna]

A friend of mine is taking a class in Russian history and she passed this bit of information along to me. I didn't take all she sent me so if this doesn't make sense I'm sorry. "The story goes: the leaders of Novgorod ruled their city well, sharing power among themselves and consulting the citizens on every decision. Then one day they began fight amongst themselves, killing each other in the streets. Rumors spread that the fighting had resulted from a pagan-god resurfacing and placing among the Novgorodians a 'stick of power'."
The stick of power is obviously the one ring. There's more stuff about how people kept losing the stick of power and it would sit for many years then someone elese would pick it up and something terrible would happen to their village or their families. Then it would be lost or cast away until someone else found it and thus the procress is repeated.