Rus' did take over the Itil-Volga trade road, though.At the very best, I could see Scandinavian taking over the Itil-Volga trade road and overruning Bolgars, but that's it (and that's not hugely plausible in itself).
I mean regularly and territorialy so : Rus' never really managed to take the control of lower half of Itil-Volga.Rus' did take over the Itil-Volga trade road, though.
Frankly, I doubt it : holding it all was maybe a bit too much for for the confederation Rus' was, as what happened after his death does points (or rather, how the division of Rus' even before his death does points to a degree).They didn't defeat the Bolghars, but if Sviatoslav the Brave lived a few years longer and avoided the Balkan campaign, he probably could have conquered the Bolghars.
Silent trade is common enough. at least in Africa. it's hard to tell how much it was used, because it tended to be a literary tropes about remote peoples trade, but there's no reason to believe that it wasn't customary of peoples encountered by both Arabs and Scandinavians. Note these prractices are at least well written down, and not just oral tales, and that it was more located around their settlement in northern Rus' and in Volga trade network than Siberia.K I just read soak arc tiles speculateing Vikings had a small trading networks there due to oral stores about a traders who are never seen simply left there stuff and we take and leave the deal and then they take it without them ever touching it