[gothic-l] Vandal exhibition gives new explanations

[Sigmund]

Herewith  Part II. Enjoy!

Sig


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

Greater Wendonia - The Great Lands of the Wends

   This presentation has already been introduced  by a quotation from Adam of Bremen: "Slavinia, the most extensive of all the provinces Of Germania is inhabited by the Winils, or the Vandals as they used to be known. ,23 It is not only in the past three hundred years that the apparent contradiction of this quotation has provided the basis for heated exchanges.
   Why would Slavinia (in Latin usually Sclavania) be described as the "most extensive province of Germany" if the "Slavs" living there did not belong to the German tribes?  Why would this land be called "the home of the Wends, formerly known as the Winils", when neither name has any Slavonic connection?  Why should the "Vandals" in this quotation from a fundamental documentary source of medieval history suddenly be conceived to be "Slavic Wends", when in the same region the name of the Vandals/Wends as the original inhabitants endures in many cases right up to the present day?  Take, for example, the countless myths and legends of the Spreewald in Lower Lusatia, south of Berlin24, in the "Hannoverian Wend Country" and also in the name of the famous "Wendish Quarter" of the Medieval Hanseatic League, consistently referred to in Latin as Vandalica.
   Let us try to find an explanation.  In his "Vandalia" from the beginning of the sixteenth century, Albert Krantz provides certain criteria for the providing us with a picture of the cumstances which had arisen in this area in the second half of the twelfth century after the final defeat suffered by Lesser Wendonia (in this case, identical to the old province of Vandalia): "Yet, even as the land and country is Wendish, the name of the Wends is so reviled among the newcomers there, the Saxons, that these people will accept no one into their clans and so-
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Johannes Micraelius: Erstes Buch des alten Pommer-landes, (Stettin 1639).
22 Goldmann, Wermusch, Vineta 1999, pp.62-63.
13 Adam 11, 21, p.251.
24 Karl Haupt: Sagenbuch der Lausitz. (Vol. 2) Die
Geschichte (Leipzig, 1863: facsimile edition, Bautzen, 1991).
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ciety who is not born of German parentage... Notwithstanding this they have retained the title for their princes and, after their fatal decline, even passed it on to the Mecklenburgish princes of the next dynasty, so that even today they bear the Wendish name.  Yet this nation, which once spread to the very limits of all Europe has been so contained, that it no longer retains its magnificent and mighty name of old except in this same, small corner of the world.  There are still princes of the old Wendish tribes on their estates, as there also are men and women of noble blood in their great houses and country seats - but the poor farmer folk who fled the heavy yoke have been scattered before the wind, and have abandoned their fields to live in far-flung foreign parts.  Why should anyone be ashamed of their Wendish origins when the ancestors of these people achieved such great deeds in France, Hispania and Africa and still do so daily in Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Istria and Bulgaria, which are all of one people, as proven by the tongues they speak?
   Another apparent contradiction in the sources concerns the size of this "Slav Country".  Its extent from the Elbe to the Danube and on down to the shores of the Black Sea has little in common with the frontiers described in the same sources.
   "Greater Wendonia" is apparently identical to the country of "Vandalia" which, in the Early Middle Ages, may well have been as extensive as described here.  The phenomenon of transferring the name of a tribe to the area under its control is explained by Adam of Bremen when describing the Saxons, the nation to which he himself belonged: "If you now enquire who the first mortals were to inhabit what we now call Saxony, or from which country these people first came, I have discovered from much reading of the old records, that this nation, akin to almost all other nations which walk the Earth, has, after the mysterious ways of the Lord, on more than one occasion exerted their dominance over others and that the lands it has duly conquered have thereafter acquired the name of their new masters."" If we then apply this same reasoning to the Vandals, then "Greater Wendonia" should be that part of Eastern Europe where the Vandals formerly exercised the dominion to which the quotation from Krantz refers.
   At this point it is also necessary to introduce into the account the description of Central and Eastern Europe that Ibrahim Ibn Jakub has bequeathed to us via Arabic sources following his diplomatic mission in the second half of the tenth century to the court of Otto the Great . "The Jew Ibrahim fbn Jakub reports: The lands
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25 Albert Krantz: Wandalia (Liibeck, 1600), Book VII,
Chap.  X (Latin edition: 1519).
26 Adam 1, 3, p.167.
2'Georg Jacob: Arabische Berichte von Gesandten an germanische Filrstenh6fe aus dem 9. und 10.  Jahrhundert. (Berlin, Leipzig, 1927), p.14ff. See also: Klaus Goldmann: "Mdrkischer Weizen fiir Byzanz - zum Reisebericht Ibrahim Ibn jakubs von 965-66" in Ausgrabungen in Berlin, 6, (Berlin, 1982), p.197-210.
28 The original Arab designation is worthy of careful consideration.  Presumably the translation "Slavonic Countries" is an interpretation which owes much to the contemporary picture of history in the early part of the twentieth century.
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of the Slavs extend from the Syrian Sea (i.e. the Mediterranean) to the Ocean of the North.  People 29 from the interior (the North) have however taken possession of a part of the same and to this present day dwell among them.  These people are composed of many tribes.  In times gone by they were united under a single king... Then dissension arose, and the basis for their,organisation floundered.  The tribes formed clans, and in each of these tribes a king began to rule.  At the present time there are four such kings, the King of the Bulgars, Bûislav, the King of Prague, Bohemia and Cracow , Mescheqqo, the King of the North and Naqidn in the Far West.  The land of Naqûn borders Saxony in the west and part of the lands of the Norsemen (= Danes)." This description also presupposes an erstwhile "Greater Wendonia", but is written according to the situation around 970 when this great territory had declined into four separate "kingdoms".  The four kings mentioned by Ibrahim are known from western, Latin histories.  For example, Adam was not the only historian to be familiar with Nakkun from the "Far WeSt,,.31 It is tempting to consider the prospect of Nakkun as King of "Lesser Wendonia" whose frontiers have been described earlier.  When Ibrahim writes Mescheqqo, he is referring to the Polish duke Mieszko 1, but presumably only a renewed investigation of the Arabic sources can determine to what extent his description as "King of the North" contradicts the map in 110-111, which includes the whole of Pomerania and Wendonia.  As far back as the days of Alfred the Great (871-899) Pomerania was being referred to as "Wendonia ,12 rather than Poland.  What is, however, indisputable is that Mieszko ruled over the greater part of the northern marches of the dominion of Boleslav (King of Bohemia and Moravia).  Perhaps Poland had fiefdom of Pomerania in the tenth century.
   In the first section of this presentation an area was defined, which, according to medieval sources, remained closely associated with the Vandal tribes from the tenth through to the twelfth centuries, despite its frequent description as "Slavinia" in these same sources 110-111.  It would appear that certain of the honorifics of the ruling houses of Europe date back to these distant times: Friedrich Wilhelm, the Great Elector of Prussia, was "Prince of the Cassubians and Wends"; the rulers of Denmark (writes Albert KrantZ33) were known as "Kings of the Goths and Wends" - although even in Krantz's time they had not had any possessions among the Wends for years - and, indeed, so too, until recent years, were the Kings of Sweden.  The memorial to Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689) in the Vatican bears the inscription: "Christinae SvecorumGotthorum et Vandalorum Reginae".
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29 Note in Jacob (1927): "Qabail (plural of qabile) actually means 'nomadic tribes', but is generally used of fairly large federations, which is why Burckhardt (in "Beduinen und Wahaby") uses the term 'nations'."
30 Note in Jacob (1927): Boleslav the Cruel of Bohemia reigned 935-967, and was succeeded by Boleslav the Pious, 967-999.
31 Adam 11, 26, p.261.
32 ,Weonodland".  See Goldmann, Wermusch: Vineta, 1999, p.231f.
33 Albert Krantz: Wandalia (Liibeck 1600) Book I, Chap X.
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The rulers of Mecklenburg also bore this name once they had incorporated the former Pomeranian province of Wendonia into their principality.34 The cartographer Tilemann Stella (1525-1589) marked it as a province of Mecklenburg on his maps, as well as Johann Baptist Homann in his map of about 1715.  Sebastian Milnster's celebrated map of Pomerania in his "Cosmographia" from 1572 35 also includes a region in the eastern marches of Pomerania Ulterior marked as "Vandalia".  This region employs the Pomeranian griffin on its coat of arms, a signum which also appears in the German edition of the map from 1544 bearing the vernacular legend "Wenden" and, in Latin, "Vuandalorum"!
There is much that leads us to suppose that, for some reason or other, around the year 1500 there was some kind of taboo attached to using the name Vandalia in chronicles, documents and even maps so that this description was gradually "forgotten" and consigned to history.
And so, by way of conclusion, it is fitting to pose a question which has a certain topical validity:
Has there ever been a province in the German realm known as "Sclavinia"?  The famous Reichenau Gospels list the provinces paying homage to King Otto III as Roma, Gallia, Germania and Sclavinia.  "Sclavinia serves as a description first and foremost of the Slavonic people and regions which were actually under the direct dominion of Otto, rather than for the entire territory occupied by the Slavs".      Does the word "Sclavinia" over the figure on the left perhaps stand for an original "Vandalia" which the scribes and chroniclers were no longer allowed to acknowledge?  Certainly the following statements by Adam and Helmold bear this out: "The King of the Danes, long may his name be revered, the same who was familiar with all the history and traditions of the barbarians, as if these had been preserved in writing, has told me..." (Adam 11, 43).  In Latin "Narravit nobis diu memorandum rex Danorum et qui omnes barbarorum gestas res in memoria tenuit, ac [sil scriptae essent, Aldinburg civitaem Po-pulosissimam de christianis inventam esse."
Here the source text - and its subsequent translations - have clearly and deliberately been perverted by the introduction of an error that turns the statement on its head.  The "si" is not in the source.  This passage in Adam cannot be translated in any other way than "as they have been written down", in other words, at that time in the chancery of King Sweyn Estridsen of Denmark.  All translators and interpreters of this passage in Adam's chronicle
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34 Albert Krantz: Wandalia (Lilbeck 1600) Book VII, Chap
XLII: "Then the second son of Heinrich / from whom we mark the commencement of this tribe / was Niclotus.  He succeeded in dividing of the realm the dominion of the Wends / who alone among all others of the far-flung nations retain the right and ancient name / being called Vandals or Wends.  In the same area are the townships of
/ Giistraw, / Plawe, / Malchin and others"

35 Sebastian Miinster: Cosmographia universalis (Basle, 1572) Latin version.

36 The Centre of Europe around 1000, Catalogue of the
Council of Europe Exhibition (Theiss, Stuttgart, 2001),
Vol. 111, p.456f (Kerstin Schulmayer)
37 Trillmich (Note 1), p.278.
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throughout the following centuries must (either as a result of coercion or by their own conviction) have assumed that their own ancestors, the Wends, were unable to read and write - an assumption which may be amply refuted by the copious evidence of writing slates among the archaeological finds of the Early Middle Ages in the selfsame region.  Obviously the original sources were deliberately manipulated at a very early stage.  Could the reason for this have been the desire to obliterate the identity of a whole people, namely the Vandals?
   In chapter 16 of Helmold's work the same passage has been changed even further, despite its obvious status as an excerpt from Adam's work: "Narrant seniores Slavorum, qui omnes barbarorum gestas res in memoria tenent, Aldenburg civitatem populatissimam de Christianis inventam fuis'se. , 38.  In translation: "Older Slavs, who can still remember everything that happened in connection with the barbarians, relate that the bishopric of Oldenburg was found to be heavily populated by Christians." This remarkable change to the wording of an original source document - undertaken in two stages as far back as the Middle Ages - has had far-reaching consequences.  First, because of their opposition to the Saxons, Danes and Poles in the belligerent disturbances following the uprising of 983, the
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38 Stoob (Note 2), p.86f.
39 Olaus Magnus: Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus
(Rome, 1555). (Facsimile edition: Rosenkilde & Bagger,
Copenhagen,1972).
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Wends' literary tradition was denied and then they were robbed of their identity, by referring to them merely by their language as "Slavs".  There is a clear analogy here to the political conflicts of the twentieth century, in which numerous peoples of eastern Central Europe have often been referred to en masse as "Communists", a soubriquet which, for their part, there was no need to regard as a term of slander used by their enemies.


Postscript

The author of this article is aware that the thesis presented here interprets the history of Central Europe around the year 1000 in a way far beyond the bounds of what currently accepted conventions in teaching permit.  It has, however, always been a sincerely held "credo" of historical enquiry to return to the sources, using the interpretation of them provided by later investigators, but doing so critically and posing new questions.  However, for reasons not yet apparent, from a very early date this "credo" does not seem to have applied to historical research relating to the centuries preceding and following the end of the first millennium.  Until now what we know of the history of these centuries has been based on axioms, "postulated truths that neither require proof, nor are capable of being proven".  One possible explanation for this may ultimately be the effect on world history of the conflict between the Vandals and their Roman opponents in the era of the great migrations, which was renewed in the Wend Rebellion of 983.  Perhaps the descendants of their second wave of victims in the twelfth century have finally "demonised" them, expunging all traces of their advanced civilisation from history.  In Scandinavia the Archbishop of Uppsala, Olaus Magnus (totally omitting all mention of the Vandals as part of the "septentrional" people) was still describing the advanced civilisation of these people as exemplary as late as in 1555. 39 Subsequently, however, it was not only the old Vandals/Wends who would be transmogrified into cultureless barbarians, but with them all the other inhabitants of Central Europe.  In the post-medieval histories, even the people of the earlier, "prehistoric" epochs would be affected, no longer regarded as part of the ancient world, despite having had close and fruitful ties with its inhabitants for thousands of years.  The question is: Why?  KG









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