Gone Medieval - Vikings in Poland

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Poland is not normally thought of as an important part of the Viking world. But as a key geographical location on the Baltic Sea, it was in fact a crucial meeting point between east and west. So what kind of presence did the Vikings have in Poland? And what was the connection between the region and the legendary Jomsvikings, and with King Harald Bluetooth?In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman discovers more from Dr. Leszek Gardeła, an archaeologist and senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. What we now know as Poland is not normally seen as an important part of the Viking world, but that is far from the truth. Occupying a key geographical zone in the Baltic Sea and bordering some very powerful states, this territory was, in fact, a crucial meeting point between east and west. So what do we know about the Scandinavian presence there?

And what's the link to Harold Bluetooth, grandfather of Knut the Great? And was Poland home to Yombsburg, the fortress of the legendary Yombsvikings, a notorious and fearless band of warriors? To tell me all about this and about Poland in the Viking Age, I'm delighted to her with me expert, Dr. Leicke-Cadewa, who's an archaeologist and senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark. Lashik, thanks so much for joining me on Gone Medieval today. Oh, thank you so much and thank you for having me. So I'm really excited about this because obviously my own work and in my book, River Kings, I've been talking about the East, but much further East and going to places like Ukraine and the river routes.

But actually, Poland and this part is sort of in between, but it's a part of the Viking world that has been a bit difficult to grasp and learn about. But, I mean, you've been spending the last 20 years or so working on this area, haven't you? Yeah, so it's been my lifetime passion, really. And it all started when I was a teenager, fascinated with the Vikings and the Viking world. And I always found it really thrilling to hear about Scandinavian or Viking presence in Poland. And very early on, I think back in my high school, I discovered a saga known as the saga of the Yoms Vikings or Yomsvikinga Saga, as it is called in Old Norse. And it's a saga about a brotherhood of Vikings who lived in a stronghold somewhere on the southern.

post of the Baltic, presumably in Poland. So that's how my saga with the Vikings and Poland started. Fantastic. I want to get back to that a bit later on, actually, because that is a topic of research that people have really spent quite a lot of ink and words debating over. So definitely, let's get back to that later on. But I wondered if you could just start us off a little bit for the context of the territory that we're calling Poland now. Obviously, if we go back this long, it doesn't necessarily make sense to talk about the same geographical regions. But if we think of the start of the Viking Age, so mid-late 8th century or so on, what is this territory at the time? And who's living there in the 8th century? I think that's a good beginning. In the 8th century, Poland as a state,

as a country obviously does not exist. So the territory that we will refer to, I guess in this talk, as Poland is a territory roughly located between the Oder River, which today is. essentially the river that separates present-day Germany and present-day Poland. And then to the east there is the river Vistola, which today cuts Poland in half, more or less. The country is, of course, much wider to the east, but we will essentially focus on the territory between the odor and the Vistola rivers. In the 8th century, this was an area dominated by the Slavs. And the Slavs are an ethnic group.

In fact, they are the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe today. But these different groups, they formed tribal societies with different customs and possibly different material culture. They were not unified in any sense, although they probably formed smaller or larger territorial organisms, so to say. And what we can see from fairly early on is we can see a certain difference, between the tribes that lived in the north of what we can call Poland, so in the area known as Pomerania. And this is the area just directly at the southern Baltic coast between Odor and the

Vistula rivers. And then there are tribes that lived further to the south from Posnani, which is a big city in western Poland. And this is where certain things began to happen and certain processes began to take form. Maybe not as early as the 8th century, but we're talking about. about the 9th and especially the 10th century, this was a very hot spot on the map. And this is where later on the Piaz state and then the Polish state was formed. So we are obviously on the Baltic Sea here. And one of the things that happens at this time and one of those sort of origins or triggers really for the Viking Age is the development of trading settlements, especially around the Baltic Sea.

And how about the Polish coastline and what do we have there? What trading settlements were there, if any, at this time? There certainly were some little coastal areas that were involved. Probably at that point, if we're talking about the 8th century, they're involved in trade on a relatively small scale, maybe on a local scale, without any massive international intercultural contacts. But it's a process, so it's all developing.

So by the point of the 9th and certainly 10th century, several places begin to pop up on the coast. Probably the place that is most familiar to our international listeners, and especially from the English-speaking world, is the place known as Volin. And that is a place in western Pomerania. It's not directly on the coast. It doesn't have direct access to the sea, but it's very close to the seaside. So it's about a couple of kilometers only. And this was a port of trade, which then in the course of time grew into a very prominent emporium.

We can see it in the archaeology of the town. The town has been extensively excavated since practically the 19th century. But we can also learn about Voline from textual sources. And one of the authors who writes quite a lot about, Voline is the famous Adam of Bremen. And he actually calls it the greatest city of the Slavs. So he's clearly impressed by the magnitude of the town. And he clearly says that this is a cultural,

melting pot. There are people from all around the world. Funny enough, he doesn't speak about Scandinavians, but they were certainly there. We know that from archaeology. But he mentions the Saxons and he talks about all kinds of barbarians, as he calls them. And he also says that everyone's basically welcome as long as they remain secretive about potentially being Christian. So it's like, it's a pagan place on the coast of the Baltic. In some cases, and some scholars call it a sort of an independent merchant republic. So that's one of the places. And then there is another place that should be very well known among English-speaking listeners

and historians and archaeologists. And that's a place called Truzzo. And Truso is mentioned in the account of the Anglo-Saxon sailor, Wolfstam. He talks about it. And this is further to the east from Volin. It's also not exactly on the coast, so you can't see the sea from. Rousseau. It's on the shore of a lake. But this place is interesting because it was established slightly earlier than Bolin, and this place has a very strong Scandinavian presence.

There's a lot of Scandinavian-style material culture, and that includes jewelry, it includes amulets, it includes Scandinavian-style weapons. It's very, very rich in that regard. To the point that we can here say that while Volin was most likely established by the Slavs, Trousseau was probably established by some migrants from Scandinavia. Where exactly they came from? We don't know, but we can try and speculate based on the material culture, and it's either Denmark or somewhere in Sweden or Gotland. That's how the material looks. And I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because actually, you're so close to Scandinavia here. You're sort of almost a part of it. You're far closer to Sweden than west coast of Norway or something like that. So this is all part of the

same territory. And I think also the point you made that this is a bit of a melting pot and there's so many different people because you are right in between so many really quite significant kingdoms. You've got what's like Germany and a very powerful state to the west. That's been a blessing and the curse of my country and my people, so to say, because we are basically between east and west. We are not Eastern Europe or Central Europe. And we have Russia in the East Germany and the West and we're right in the middle. And throughout history, Poland were basically before the Second World War, this was a real melting pot of cultures and languages and religions just because of its geopolitical setting. And we're going to get back to that

a little bit later on as well, actually, the impact that's had on the archaeology and the history and also want to get back to those Scandinavians in a while. But I just wanted to ask, you briefly mentioned earlier some of these states that are forming. And obviously at one point, this becomes Poland. When does that happen? When do you go from these sort of Slavic tribes and smaller settlements to something we recognize as a state? This is a good question. And one of the problems that Polish historians and archaeologists have to deal with is that we don't really have a lot of textual material to work with. In fact, one very prominent Polish historian once said that everything we know about this part of Poland's history can basically fill one newspaper page.

And that's it. That's all we have. There's not much to work with. But what we can can see is that the process of state formation is a process that is initiated by ambitious individuals from what later becomes known as the Piaast dynasty. There is a legendary history about how this happens and one of the key figures is a guy called Piaast and hence the name Piaz dynasty. But of course, as in every story of this kind, he's a sort of a semi-legendary figure. When things really begin to happen is the time of Duke Miesko I call him and he lived at some point between 930 and 990. That is more or less the period we're talking about. So it nicely kind of dovetails with the rule of Harald Blutuf, for instance, in Denmark.

This is the time. So they would have been pals and guys of the same age, basically. And this is the time when interesting things are happening in the east. The interesting things are happening in the West. This is also the time when Christianity is gaining a very strong foothold in this part of Europe. And Mishka is ambitious. He has this plan of uniting all these different scattered Slavic tribes that I mentioned earlier, these petty kingdoms and chieftains and so on.

And he wants it for himself. So he sees basically a godfather mobster, you could say. He's got his warriors. He's got his plan. He's got his ambitions. He wants it for himself. And he achieves this goal by my mom. means of the sword and all sorts of military campaigns and cunning tricks. He manages to build the

root of a state and he builds this state essentially around the stronghold of Poznan and then the strongholds around Poznan. He initiates the construction of these massive wooden fortresses. And they are on the one hand serving as defensive structures of his realm, but also they probably perform all kinds of administrative functions. They are also barracks. They are also barracks. for his warriors. And then because the state is born in the interior of Poland, Meshko knows that the real wealth and the real greatness can be achieved if one gains access to the sea. That is his great ambition, because that opens up a huge world. That's also the path to Scandinavia, for instance, trade to all these emerging and flourishing ports of trade all around the Baltic. And he kind of

succeeds in some ways and fails in others. And it is basically his son, Boleslav the Brave, who then continues his father's ambitions and he expands the Piaz state and he strengthens the strongholds. And he probably manages to take at least partial control of Pomerania because we see this sort of Piaz material culture in certain interesting locations in Pomerania. So yeah, so this is what's going on. And I mentioned Christianity. I think, at that point, for Miesko, at least, Christianity and the whole idea of conversion, because Miesko converted to Christianity, it didn't really result from some great religious illumination or something. I often say it was a passport to the European Union. If you want to be part of the club and you

want to play with the biggest players on the political arena of the time, you have to be Christian, or at least pretend that you're one. And I think he was very good at pretending, because in the 10th and 11th century, if you're looking for Christian material culture in this part of the world between the odor and the Vistula River, there's almost nothing. You don't see crosses or any massive investments, architectural investments, churches and so on. There are some, yes. But the material culture of the elite is just full on pagan. You have like images of flying dragons and serpents and all these mythological things. It just explodes. Kind of in the way that it does in Scandinavia, as well, because if you look at Denmark of the 10th, 11th century, this is the time when all these

wonderful amulets begin to pop up. This is exactly the same thing. There's this kind of need to manifest identity and difference through this beautiful, evocative material culture. Yeah, fantastic. Well, that's really good context. And I think actually brings us really nicely talking about material culture and science of identity and all of this to talk about the archaeology and talk about some of the Scandinavian artefacts. So you mentioned already in some of the trading settlements that you have the material culture from Scandinavia. So it's giving us a quite clear idea that we have Scandinavians there. But in terms of the discovery of artefacts in Poland, can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, is that something that's been going on for a long time? Have they found lots of objects

and artefacts and really understood what that meant? Or how is that developed in Poland? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, the earliest discoveries of Scandinavian style objects were made as early as the 19th century, mainly by amateurs or sort of semi-professional antiquarians of the time. And most of the finds obviously came from Pomerania, so that's this coastal area. And that comes as no surprise, because this was the closest you can get to the Scandinavian world. But there were also some discoveries made in the interior of the country, in the interior of Poland, including the area of Greater Poland. that is the area around Poznan.

It's mostly jewelry and it's mostly female jewelry. So this can also give us some ideas about who the Scandinavians were and who was among the migrants, that it was not only or at all warriors raiding and pillaging. The people who came also came with women and maybe with the intention to settle, maybe with the intention to trade. But overall, if we're talking about numbers

and we're talking about statistics and we're trying to compare the amount of Scandinavian-style material in Poland to, for instance, Ukraine or Russia, we don't have as much. The reason is probably many-fold for this. One is the fact that we don't have a very liberal metal-detecting system in Poland. Essentially, metal-detecting, if you're not an archaeologist and if it's not part of an excavation, is essentially illegal. metal detecting as a hobby searching for early medieval prehistoric artifacts, it's not something you can do, like in Denmark, for instance.

And obviously, as I said, if the material culture from Scandinavia is mostly metal stuff, this is how you find metal, you find it through metal detecting. Otherwise, it just can disappear under our academic radar if we're not using metal detectors on site. The other reason may have been that the sort of Scandinavian penetration, so to say, into the interior of the Piaz state wasn't that strong. It may be came in certain waves, but it was not a huge wave of settlers or invaders or so on. And what is also interesting is that a lot of the Scandinavian style jewelry that we have from Greater Poland is jewelry of very high status. And a very particular kind. For instance, around Poznan, there are actually three localities that have produced cross-shaped pendants of the type that is very well known. from the realm of Harald, the Bluetooth.

And some scholars have speculated that this is not loot, this is not your average type of jewelry that normal people would wear, that these could be things produced in the workshops of the king and then distributed as diplomatic gifts for allies and good friends and so on. And the fact that we have this type of material culture in the heart of the Piaz state, I think that tells us something really interesting about what's going on and about the contacts that existed between the piasts and the yelling dynasty.

But yeah, but in addition to these possibly female-related objects, there are also some male-related items, including weapons or parts of weapons. And one of the more interesting categories of objects is sword-scabbard shapes. So this is the kind of thing that the warrior has on the scabbard of the sword. That's the end of the scabbard.

It's usually made of copper alloy. and often beautifully decorated. In Scandinavia, it had Borre or Jalinga style motifs with masks or interlaced or snakes or dragons and things like that, birds sometimes. And this is interesting because, again, this is not something you trade with. This is something that comes with certain people from certain groups. And if you track the fine spots, you can see potentially where warriors were walking and riding through the Polish lands.

And there's a lot of these types of objects in Pomerania, but also in the area slightly further to the east around Truso. This is the area we call Varmia and Missouri, but also in Greater Poland and further to the southeast, on the way to Krakow and on the way to Kiev. And these were also very important places on the eastern way. So this is as close as we can get to the Vikings in Poland. Well, that's really exciting. That's really interesting, isn't it? And brings in again that idea that you are right in the center here. You are the connection, really. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb,

and on my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, from History Hit, we talk about everything, from what Queen Consul, Camilla, could learn from the Renaissance. Really, when we begin to look at Queen Consorts, we notice that there's a lot of ways that women could have authority through their relationship with the King. To how you should never upstage Henry VIII. You'd have been a very unwise individual turning up to court,

probably with a larger codpiece than the King, I suspect. From the real Matawaka, better known as Pocahontas, she's brought and presented to the King and Queen, as this shining example of what we could achieve. To how to tell someone to get lost. You could say, turd in your teeth. In other words, not just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors,

twice a week every week. Subscribe now to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that does strike me, though, about this. So this is very much you looking, at this in the 21st century from your modern archaeological background. I mean, obviously, as we already come across, is a very tricky political situation that you've been squashed in between so many different regimes and different political situations. How has that affected

the archaeology and especially relating to Scandinavia and the Vikings? Viking studies or old north studies in Poland begin in the 18th and 19th century. So, yeah, kind of the same time when I begin in Scandinavia. And this is an interesting time because this is the time when Poland doesn't really exist. It's not on European maps. It's the time when the former country of Poland is partitioned among three European superpowers, Russia, Habsburg Empire, and Russia. So the territory of what had formerly been Poland is divided among these superpowers. And there are all kinds of social and political oppressions in these occupied areas. The area of Galicia, so the area around Krakow, is the most liberal area. And this is the area where art and literature can flourish,

where the external oppression is not that strong. And this is where Viking studies are born. And back in the 19th century, a lot of historians and artists are actually looking to Scandinavia and Scandinavian sagas and the poetic edda and so on for a source of inspiration, but also for a model of a perfect society. They often idealize the Scandinavian society as the society of free farmers and very democratic and very open. And this mirrors the Polish dream of independence and of having a state of their own. So that's how the interest is born. But it also leads to all sorts of manipulations of the past. It's very innocent. I don't think it's deliberate. But a lot of those scholars of the 19th century, they kind of want Scandinavian influences.

in Poland to a degree that is as high as possible. A number of those scholars in the 19th century, they actually published books claiming that Scandinavians were the founders of the Polish state. That's not really true. You have to view it in the context of the time. And then, of course, we have to fast forward to the 1930s and 1940s, the time of the Second World War. And this is a whole different saga, because this is the time when the Nazis invade an independent country, Poland, because Poland regained its independence after the First World War. And then the Nazis, of course, want to do everything they can to prove using their scientific methods that these lands had been Germanic since time immemorial.

So wherever they dig, they're looking for traces of Vikings. They're looking for traces of Germanic tribes. And there's a number of sites that they excavate during the Second World War where they desperately want to see Vikings and Viking presence. and they manipulate the facts. And then after the war, Poland kind of regains its independence, but is now basically a subject to Russia. Communism is another terror that spills Polish blood for the next 50 years.

But this is the time when Scandinavian studies in Poland are not really prominent. There are only a couple of researchers here and there that are looking at this. In Poznan, Professor Jan Jacques was a very prominent figure, and he was really interested in these Scandinavian-Slavic interaction. But things begin to flourish in the 1990s and 2000s, when there's no politics really involved. There are still some amateur historians who would like to see Scandinavians as the founders of the past state, but the arguments are based on 19th century romanticism and not verifiable archaeological data. But you have at least got to a stage that is much more in line, I suppose, with other countries and how we are all looking at it more objectively.

There was this period in the 90s and in the early 2000s where I would argue that there was a little bit of politics involved in writing about the presence of Scandinavians in Poland in the sense that certain scholars really desperately wanted to see marked Scandinavian presence in Poland because Poland had just released itself from the chains of communism on the one hand and then after 2003 became part of the European Union. So, you know, we want to be more Western now, so it's cool to have Scandinavian influences. In some regards, it was a bit over the top. And there was a period of time when almost every single chamber grave found in Poland would be labeled as having some Scandinavian influences. But it's a bit more complicated than that. And you cannot use the chamber grave idea as some sort of ethnic marker, because this was a form of burial popular among the elites of that 11th century period.

It is a really complex one, isn't it? I mean, hopefully with more signs coming in as well, we can really help narrow that down a little bit more. But I think we need to go back a little bit to those people we know something about. And you just came back now to these elites and these sort of high status graves and things. So let's go back there where we were a moment ago. Because the person I want to talk to you more about is Harold Bluetooth and his connection. So you already mentioned him, but he actually has his connection through one of his marriages, doesn't he? Yeah.

So both Harold Lutuf and his son's feign forkbeard and of course Knut the Great, they are all in one way or another connected to the Slavic world. Harald had a Slavic wife, not from the area of Poland, however, because she was a Polabian Slab. So she originated from the area of what is today northwestern Germany. Her name was Tova, and she was the daughter of a Slavic pagan called Mistyvoy. We don't really know much about this woman. we don't really know much about her love life and relationship with Harold,

but she must have been someone prominent and powerful because among the things that she left behind is actually a runstone that stands to this very day in Northern Jutland, in Denmark. And it's a runstone that she raised in memory of her mother. And on that stone, she also mentions Harold and their relationship. So he had a Slavic wife, and it is likely that Sven Fork, Beard was their son, and then Spain himself married a Slavic woman. Her names vary in different sources. I don't really want to get into that. That's quite complicated. But in this particular

case, it's highly probable, if not certain, that Spain Forkbeard's wife came from the Piaz state and was most likely Boleswav, the brave sister. So there's a direct connection here. between the Piaz and the so-called Yelling dynasty. And then this woman was the mother of Knut. So there is the Anglo-Saxon connection. And we also know from other sources that in fact Slavic warriors took part in Spain and Knut's campaigns in England.

So there is that connection there as well. I would even say that there is Western Slavic material culture and Western Slavic high-status objects in the UK. One of them is a beautiful spur, probably from the Obudrite area and from Polabia, from Germany. So these are really international connections, aren't they? And I think the fact that we have got not just Scandinavia,

but also England, having these connections with the East and with the Islamic world, it's actually quite, well, it's not actually that extraordinary because we know that people are traveling quite a lot. But it's very important, I think, to understand that these connectors go that far east because we don't read about them as much. Yeah, but then, again, it's actually not that far. No. It's maybe a little farther to England, but to Denmark, to Sweden, to Gotland,

to Bonholm, it's not far. If you look at the more recent Polish history from the communist period, people trying to escape the system here, they would just take inflatable boats and row their way to Sweden across the Baltic. And you can do that. So it's not that far.

And for maritime societies of the 10th-11 centuries, that's really no problem, to sail from anywhere in Denmark to Voline or Trousseau, and from Bolin to Birka to Gotland. And far easy, as we were saying right at the start, than getting to the north of Norway. Yeah, the Baltic was the motorway of the Viking Age. Yeah, absolutely. That was a really good point. And the other thing we need to get back to as well before we finish is something you mentioned right at the start.

So part of your inspiration for getting into this, just to go full circle. And that is the Yombs Vikings and a saga of this particular group of fierce warriors. Can you tell us that story and what archaeological evidence, if any, we have for it now. Yeah, it's a fantastic story. So the saga is known as Yom-speakinga saga. It's from the 13th century. The manuscripts were found on Iceland.

So it, of course, it's not from the Viking Age, but it claims to be telling authentic Viking Age history. It's not a very long saga, but I think it's at least one of my favorite sagas, if not the favorite saga. But of course, I'm biased because I come from where I come from. Essentially, it's a story about a group of warriors who, by permission of a certain ruler named Buryslafer, or Burislav, probably Boleslav, or Meshko, one of the two casts, they settle somewhere on the southern Baltic coast. The saga doesn't specify where it is. It can be Poland and can be what is today, Germany. We actually don't know. Because of this Burislafer connection, we can speculate that it's somewhere within. in today's political borders of Poland.

And these Scandinavians, they establish a fortress, which is massive, even by the standards of the time. The saga describes it in some detail, so it mentions this great gate that leads into the fortress. It also mentions that you can actually dock your ships within the fortress. And it also interestingly introduces us to the law of the Yomsvikings and the law of Yomsborg. and it's a very interesting read, which explains how a Yom's Viking should behave and how they should act. It tells us that there is a strict age limit, so you have to be of a certain age to join the brotherhood.

You have to be male. Women are not admitted to Yom's Bork. They cannot even spend time there. It's a strictly masculine society. That you have to divide the loot after every campaign equally, that all conflicts are resolved by the Yarl of Yomsburg, and that in battle you cannot flee, even if your enemy is stronger or faster or better than you, you must always stand your ground and you have to fight to the finish. And then the saga talks about all kinds of exploits of the Yomsvikings, and they are fierce or

reckless. They engage in all kinds of campaigns, but after a very impressive start at the time when Yomsburg was ruled by a certain Palnatoki, there comes a different Yarl called Zygvaldi, and he is not as eloquent and as tough and brave as Palatoki, and that's the time when the saga of the great Yombs Vikings is beginning to go downhill. There's this description at the end of the saga where Zygvaldi actually runs away from the battlefield. But the saga also emphasizes that, at least according to whoever wrote that saga,

the Yoms Vikings were some of the best, if not actually the best warriors of their time. When it comes to the sort of ethnic cultural mix of the group, there's nothing in the saga that says that there were slabs among them. It seems like it's a pure Scandinavian group. And of course, for many years, archaeologists and historians have been trying to find traces of Yom's body and have been trying to pin down the possible location of this fortress. And most researchers have pointed to Volin, the port of trade I mentioned earlier, because it was so big, because it was so prominent, and because it is located where it should be located.

The problem is that even though both Polish archaeologists and then German archaeologists were looking for Yomsburg, including the Nazis, they never really found anything that in any way matches the descriptions in the sagas. There is no great stronghold where you can have ships docking inside, and there is no stone gate and so on. And also, there's not much martial-related material culture in volume that would also support this interpretation. So today, most researchers are rather skeptical about the actual existence of Yomsburg, or think that maybe Yomsburg did exist, but somewhere else, or maybe the coastline changed so much that Yomsburg is somewhere underwater and we will

never find it. I don't know. I'd like to believe that there is a grain of truth in every story. And certainly Yomsburg is also, because we kind of started with, that is also linked to Harold Bluetooth. Now, there are conflicting stories about Harold's connections to Yomsbold. For instance, in Yom's Wikinga saga, he is kind of portrayed as an enemy of the Yom's Vikings and of Yombsborg, whereas other sources say that he must have had some kind of stronger connection to the point that maybe he was even the founder of Yomsbord. And then, I think it's Adam of Bremen who says that Harald, after

his fierce conflict with his son, Svein Forkbeard escapes wounded to Yumene, which is another name for Volein, and then dies in Yumna or Volein. Whether there is any truth in that, we don't know. Some of you may have heard about these claims that allegedly the grave of Herald Blutuf was found and identified close to Vowlin. I don't really believe this. I also don't believe that he could be buried in a stone crypt in the 10th century and that they would bury him under a church. You have to remember that back in the 10th century, Pomerania was a full-on pagan territory. There's no way you can build a Christian church and bury a Viking king in a Christian way. It's just impossible.

But yeah, I mean, who knows? This all requires more research, geophysics, proper excavations, excellent, critical analysis of all the sources that we have. But of course, yeah, who knows? So just to sort of finish off then, what are the things that you're sort of excited about and what do you think are the big opportunities for understanding more about the Scandinavian presence in Poland?

Somebody gave you unlimited funds. What would you do with it and what would you try to find out? I think I would invest in dialogue between Polish or Central European researchers, also including researchers from Czech Republic and Slovakia, Ukraine, other countries around Poland that were in one way or another affected by these Scandinavian interactions. I would definitely invest in that in collaborations between the academic community here and the academic community in Scandinavia and to kind of raise mutual interest and exchange

stories about our shared history. That's definitely what I would do. I have actually now completed a book called The Vikings in Poland, which will sum up everything we can talking about today and in great detail, including all these historiographic aspects. But the next step is to look at Slavic presence in the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon world. And I have a project in mind, which is about Slavic presence in Scandinavia, but from a different angle than the angle that researchers had before, because it's a fact that the Slavs also traveled and interacted in various ways. but for many years, people have been looking at Slavic presence through these kind of mundane objects like pottery and combs and spindle worlds and so on.

But what I think is really interesting is to look at the elite presence and elite interactions. And we talked about this before, Harold Bluetooth and the Piaz and Spain and Knut, interactions on elite level. And I know for a fact that there is very high status Western Slavic archaeology in Scandinavia, in southern Sweden, in Denmark, and in the British Isles. Yeah, that's a cool thing to research. And the material culture is just beautiful. The objects are just objectively speaking, really pretty. And I also, as you know, I have passed as a historical reenactor,

and I collaborate with professional reenactors today. and together we have replicated some of these objects and they just look absolutely fantastic. On the feet of riders and warriors, spurs and starrups and bridles and all that, it's just fantastic. Brilliant, great answers. Well, that sounds very exciting and so much potential there. So, yeah, I can't wait.

I'm sure you'll get to it very soon. Lechechak, thank you so much for all of that. That's been absolutely brilliant. And I've learned lots of new things to you, which is always a good thing. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And people can look at academia.edu. I think you've got lots of your papers. So if you search for your name there, people can certainly download for free lots of your articles and lots of your work.

Yeah. And actually those papers about Scandinavian Slavic interactions, many of them are there and they are for free. Fantastic. So do check them out. So thank you all so much for listening. That brings us to the end of this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have already. We'd be delighted if you'd leave us a review because it helps. other people find us. And don't forget you can subscribe to our medieval Monday's newsletter as well. Just look in the episode notes wherever you found this podcast or instructions on how to do that. And we hope you will join us again soon. My co-host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Saturday and I will be back again next Tuesday. Have a great week.