[gothic-l] Vandal exhibition gives new explanations

Tue Sep 4 18:14:56 UTC 2001

This is what I scanned in from the exhibition catalogue, as expected full of errors. Nevertheless it makes for an interesting reading, at least for those familiar with northern Germany  geography and topography (the original article comes with beautiful old maps). Foot notes may appear as erratic figures here and there--please disregard.

Since the article runs over 12 pages, I'm sending it in parts. This is Part I.

All the best from

Sig

Part I

The Wends or Vandals in the Early Middle Ages
Klaus Goldmann, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussiger Kulturbesitz, Museum für Vor-und Frühgesichte Berlin.

Lesser Wendonia - The Little Land of the Wends
   One of the most important historical sources for events around the end of the first millennium in northern parts of Central Europe is Adam of Bremen's chronicles of the History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum) written around 1070.  There you will find the following concise comment: "Slavinia, the most extensive of all the provinces of Germania, is inhabited by the Winils, or the Vandals as they used to be known." Approximately a century after Adam penned his account, Helmold of Bosau made a similar assertion in his chronicle of the Slavonic peoples, Chronica Slavorum: "Beyond where Poland now has its frontiers, you move into the enormous territories of the Slaves known formerly as the Vandals, but now called the Wends or the Winils. The sentence which follows immediately afterwards in Helmold's text provides further geographical information: "First come the Pomeranians, whose dominion extends to the River Oder." These declarations in the two sources surely provide the point of departure for an investigation into the enduring continuity of Wendish/Vandal tribal relationships and traditions, perhaps even into the continuing existence of their settlements into the High Middle Ages.
   Both Adam and Helmold, who on occasions repeats Adam verbatim, describe what they both claim to be the original "Vandal-Land" in terms of a region that "extends eastwards from our Hamburg diocese across endless tracts of land as far as Bavaria, Hungary and the Byzantine Empire" . Following this "Preface", which looks back (how far?) into days of yore, the text goes on to provide more exact details of a much smaller "Wendish", or "Slavonic" area.  Many other medieval sources and records provide quite well defined geographical details for this small region, flanked by Poland, Bohemia and Saxony.  Numerous tribes are listed as inhabitants of this "Lesser Wendonia", whose settlements both archaeologists and historians alike have, over the years, been able to pinpoint with greater or lesser accuracy thanks to the locational information provided in the sources.  With the aid of the various documents it is possible to project onto a map of the northern parts of Central Europe this region of "Lesser Wendonia".  It is a region that played a central role in all depictions of historical events between the tenth and twelfth centuries as described not only by chroniclers such as
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Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum), translated into German by Werner Trillmich (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1978). (Henceforward referred to as Adam).  This reference: Adam 11, 21, p.251.
Helmold of Bosau: Chronicle of the Slavs (Chronica Slavorum), translated into German and annotated by Heinz Stoob (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1973).  This reference: Helmold 1, Chap 2, page 39. (Poland is of course also a "Slavonic" country, but the area defined here is not a part of Poland!)
Obviously seen from east to west, from the mouth of the River Vistula.
Adam 11, 20, p.251.
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Adam and Helmold, but also by Herbord' and Saxo Grammaticus.
The dominion that the author will endeavour to define here is identical with that whose inhabitants had split from the Catholic Church as a consequence of the great Wendish uprising of 983, described in the sources as the "Slavonic Rebellion".  All but three of the 18 districts had remained faithful to Rome for almost three generations.  Although, for the most part, posterity has categorised the people of Lesser Wendonia as "Slavs", contemporary accounts have at the same time used the term "Wends", a name which, as the quotation above suggests, derives from the word "Vandals".  It is necessary here to point out that many of the names of the individual tribes are, in fact, of Germanic origin.' The language of all the Wendish tribes, on the other hand, was according to the known sources, not Germanic but belonged to a Slavonic idiom.
This attempt to superimpose the borders of this Lesser Wendonia on our map of Europe is deliberately restricted to the "original" sources, rather than making use of the extensive interpretations and analyses of the same documents which have been carried out over the past three centuries.  As a result of his own interdisciplinary research over the past twenty years, the author is able to confirm that the area specified as that colonised by the Wends was, even as far back as the tenth century, being described as a rather "modern" landscape of cultivated and settled countryside.  However, during the war that raged almost two hundred years from 983, great parts of it reverted to a condition which, to the twelfth-century colonists on their eastern migration seemed to be a natural, untamed wilderness.1' In addition research shows that, as in other parts of the Old World, a systematic programme of constructing and maintaining dikes had been taking place in Central Europe since far earlier times pre-dating even the Christian era.  A corollary of this was the draining of wetlands and the introduction of agriculture de pendent on irrigation, which, at a very early date, had begun to transform swamps into arable and cultivated farmland.  Ascertaining
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5 Herbord: Leben des Bischofs Otto von Bamberg (The Life of Otto of Bamberg).  Die Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit. 2. Ausgabe, Bd 55, Leipzig 1894.

6 Saxonis Grammatici Gesta Danorum (the complete Latin text, published by Alfred Holder, Strasbourg, 1886).

7 Adam 11, 26 (24), p.261.

8 Eichler, E & Witkowski, T, in Herrmann, J, Die Slawen in Deutschland (The Slavs in Germany), (Berlin 1985) pp-12-14.

9 It is well known that the written records from the period concerned have in a great many instances been destroyed or falsified.  Original texts are extremely rare and are unknown of Adam, Herbord and Helmold. 

10 See, for example:
Klaus Goldmann: "Märkische Kulturlandschaft - das Erbe bronzezeitlicher Kolonisation?" in Ausgrabungen in Berlin, 6 (Berlin, 1982) pp.5-50.
Klaus Goldmann: "Landgewinnung in Mitteleuropa Tradition der Jahrtausende" in Gerken, B & M. Görner (eds. 1999): Europäische Landschaftsentwicklung mit grossen Weidetieren - Geschichte, Modelle und Perspektiven.  Natur- und Kulturlandschaft 3, (Höxter/Jena 1999), pp.50-56.
Klaus Goldmann: "Wirtschaft und Umwelt Alteuropas im Fragenraster" in Festschrift Ulrich Willerding (=Frühe Nutzung pflanzlicher Ressourcen, Renate Rolle, Frank M. Andraschkos.), Hamburger Beiträge zur Archäologie, Vol. 4, (Hamburg 1999), pp.35-41.
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the age and structure of this programme throughout the various epochs of prehistory and the earliest recorded times is the task of future research.
   If a basic assumption made by all previous users and translators of the mostly Latin texts concerning the appearance of the region and the lines of its borders as described in the sources is false - quite simply because at certain times the rivers took other courses - then any future re-interpretation of the same texts must take this into account, and revert to translations that are as literal and as faithful as possible.  This means, to cite just one example, that the Latin word palus may no longer simply be translated as "swamp" if it is used to describe a drained marsh, in other words, fertile land, for which even classical Latin used the same word, palus.  A drained marsh, especially in coastal areas, is fertile "reclaimed land", which in terms of the advance of civilisation is the direct opposite of a "swamp".  By the same token this applies equally to other axioms which have found their way into the adaptations and translations of the old sources.
   But let us return to our map of the various domains in the northern parts of Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages.  Helmold has already told us that the first of the Wendish people are the Pomeranians.  Herbord describes the borders of Pomerania thus: "the country forms a triangle, as it were, with three angles on three sides, one of which is greater than both the others.  To the north lies Denmark and the island of Riigen, while on its flanks it is bordered by Saxony, Leuticia and Poland.  "l' Explicit mention of the island of Rilgen bears witness to the fact that in the early twelfth century (Herbord is writing the history of the mission to Pomerania of Bishop Otto of Bamberg in the years 1124 and 1128) great tracts of land, presumably including the whole of Pomerania Citerior (today's Vorpommern) fell under Pomerania.  On this sharp western point of the country began the frontier with Saxony, which probably ran for only for a short stretch along 12 a now non-existent branch of the River Oder.  South-east was the country of the Leuticians, whose territory bordered Pomerania along the same watercourse - the old branch of the Oder along today's Recknitz, Trebel, Tollense, the Great Moat (Der Groge Landgraben), the Randow and the Welse and from there along today's Oder to the confluence with the River Warta at Kostrzyn.  There, in the vicinity of Kostrzyn, must have been what Herbord described as the "oblique angle" of Pomerania.  There too began the border between Pomerania and Poland, running along the Warta and the Notec until it met the Vistula around Bydgoszcz.  By the Gulf of Danzig, marking the frontier with further tribes such as the Pruzzi, was the acute angle of Pomerania described by Herbord.
   However, according to the historical sources, Pomerania was simply a part of Lesser Wendonia, occupying a good deal less than half of the total area of the country.  To the west
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11 Herbord, Book 2, Chap. 1.
12 Klaus Goldmann & Günter Wermusch: Vineta - Die Wiederentdeckung einer versunkenen Stadt, (Lübbe, Bergisch-Gladbach, 1999), pp.141-149.
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were also the settlements of tribes who, in the enth century, fell under the ecclesiastical doinion of the Hamburg diocese.  Adam writes" seen from the west first come the Wagrians, ighbours to the northern Elbian Saxons. main seat is the port of Oldenburg.  Then ome the Obodrites, also known 14 as the gians, whose seat is Mecklenburg.  Moving after them come the Polabs, whose seat is tzeburg.  Beyond them are the settlements of e Linoni and Warnabians, and then come the ssini and Circipanians, separated by the er Peene from the Tholosantians and darians, whose seat is at Demmin.  Here is he frontier of the Hamburg diocese.""
   The information about these tribes enables us to determine the north-western region of Wendonia between the tenth and twelfth centuries.  According to the sources many of these tribes had belonged to the Hamburg Church since the days of Emperor Otto the Great in the tenth century.  The diocese also included er its dominion areas of Saxon lands north f the River Elbe to the Eider.  The frontier beeen the Saxons and the Wends, starting at e Kieler Förde Bay, passes south through hat is today Schleswig-Holstein until it reachs the River Elbe around Lauenburg.  This is "Limes Saxoniae" (the limits of Saxony) whose course Adam describes in such detail. From there, as far as the confluence with the Saale, the Elbe formed the border between the territories of the Wends and the Saxons.
   South of the "Mecklenburgish" tribes that aid homage to the Hamburg diocese were thers whose names have also been recorded by Adam: "Between the Elbe and the Oder are even more Slavic tribes, such as the Hevelli along the River Havel, the Dossani, Lebusi, Wilini, Stoderani and many more besides.  And at their heart are the most powerful of all, the Redarians... Obviously these are the tribes who had sworn their allegiance to the Leutician Federation, for the chapter that follows begins with the words.  "Beyond the Leuticians, who are also known as the Wilzen, you reach the River Oder..."'9 You cannot help but feel that part of the original text is missing, a section to which the piece talking about the Leuticians refers, who shortly before were mentioned merely in passing in Scholien."" At all accounts, the "Brandenburgian" tribes are reckoned up here, as they also shared a border with Poland and lived in the area indicated in several sources as Leuticia.  And so Herbord describes how, on his second mission to Pomerania in 1128, Bishop Otto of Bamberg made his way through Saxony, loading his vessels with provisions and gifts in Halle/Saale, and sailing them along the Saale and the Elbe into the Havel before transferring this cargo to 50 waggons and carria at es and bringing them through Leuticia to Demmin. The information
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13 Adam 11, Chapter 21, p.251.
14

15 The Latin name is "Magnopolis".
Accordingly the Tholosantians and Redarians did not
come under the dominion of Hamburg, as the River Peene (presumably the eastern Peene) formed the frontier of the diocese.  According to Adam the confluence was in Demmin.
16 Adam 11, 18, p.247.
17 Adam I, 2, p.165.
18 Adam 11, 21, p.251f.
19 Adam 11, 22, p.253.
20 Herbord 111, Book 1.
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mentioned and its connection with details from other sources concerning the "Wend Rebellion" enables us to extend the map of Lesser Wendonia to the south: from Luther's Wittenberg the frontier ran to an area unaffected by the great uprising, almost due west-east along the Marches of Lusatia, "Lausitzer Grenzwall" - a geographic name of Highlands between Upper and Lower Lusatia (is that where we get the name for this area?) until it reached Zagan on the River Bobr, a tributary of the Oder, which at the time formed the border with Poland.  From there it changed course north along the Bobr until it met the Oder at Krosno, which subsequently completed the frontier with Poland as far as Kostrzyn.  This means that Lesser Wendonia included Lower Lusatia but not Upper Lusatia, whose Sorbian population had not joined the great uprising of 983.
   Thus the map of Lesser Wendonia on the south shores of the Baltic Sea in the northern reaches of Central Europe has the following appearance when drawn based on quotations and information in the contemporary sources.
   Details from countless more recent maps from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be used to supplement this map drawn using tenth to twelfth-century sources.  For example, in the introduction to his history of Pomerania'l Johannes Micraelius reproduces a map showing the area between Rostock and Danzig south to Glogow.  The map is filled with a wealth of towns and tribal names.  The Oder bears the name "Viadrus: Suevus" and the title of the map, written over the expanse of the Pomeranian Bay, is "Vandalia Teutonica et Gothonica nunc Pomerania" - a sure indication that Pomerania had also been known as Vandalia, or the country of the Vandals.  The same applies to the ma-p produced by Abraham Ortelius in 1584.  Its title runs "Rugiae, Usedeomiae et julinae, Wandalicarum insularum vera descriptio".

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