On the origins of Pomerania

When asking about the origins of Pomerania, it is worth first considering what we are actually asking. The very name “Pomerania” is understood today in different ways. Most often, we use it in a geographical sense, referring to the lands stretching along the southern Baltic coast between the lower Oder and the lower Vistula. However, it is also used to describe a historical region, or in reference to specific former political entities bearing this name or adjectives derived from it. Not all of these meanings cover the same territory. To make matters more complex, there is also a significant difference in how the scope of the historical region of Pomerania is understood in Polish and in German.

In searching for the origins of Pomerania—both of the name itself and of its various meanings—we must go back to the early Middle Ages, a period in which the civilizational shape and cultural unity of Europe were being formed. The world of tribes was gradually fading into the past, giving way to networks of monarchical power, that is, the early states. This process was accompanied by the religious unification of the continent through the spread of Christianity. By the 10th century, most of Europe was already encompassed by it, with the Holy Roman Empire having played a dominant role for some time. To its east, in areas long inhabited by Slavs, Czech and Polish statehood crystallized, while in Germanic Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden emerged. Only the strip of land stretching along the southern Baltic coast still belonged to the old world of pagan tribes, remaining the last non-Christianized area in this part of Europe. At its western edge lived the Slavic Obodrite tribes, further east as far as the lower Oder the Veleti tribes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine the number and names of the Slavic tribes inhabiting the lands that most interest us here—those between the lower Oder and the lower Vistula. With a fair degree of certainty, we can name only three of them (the Wolinians, the Pyrzyczans, and—possibly—the Wierzyczans), although their number may have been two or even three times greater, as suggested by the results of archaeological settlement studies. To their east, beyond the Vistula, stretched the lands inhabited by the Prussian tribes.

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In 1046, at the court of the German king Henry III in Merseburg, and later in Meissen, two meetings were held between three Slavic rulers who were in conflict with one another. The first was the Czech duke Bretislaus, the second the Polish duke Casimir, later known as “the Restorer.” The name of the third ruler was recorded by a chronicler from a German monastery as Zemuzil. We will not attempt here to determine whether the ruler behind this distorted name was in fact called Siemysł or perhaps Siemomysł. What is far more important is that he was described as the duke of the Pomeranians, equal to the rulers of the other two states. This entry in the Annals of Altah is the earliest known record in which the ethnonym “Pomeranians” appears. Let us recall that it refers to events connected with Casimir the Restorer’s efforts to rebuild Poland’s state structures and ducal power after the great crisis of the monarchy in the 1030s.

The interpretation of other data from the period suggests that Duke Zemuzil’s domain should be located somewhere along the southern Baltic coast. The ethnonym “Pomeranians” appears in several other sources describing events of the second half of the 11th century and the following century. According to Gallus Anonymus, writing in the early 12th century, Casimir the Restorer fought against the Pomeranians, who were also allies of Miecław, the rebel against the Piasts who attempted to establish his own rule in Mazovia. From another author—Adam of Bremen—we learn that in the last decades of the 11th century the western boundary of Pomeranian settlement ran along the lower Oder. Interestingly, it was Gallus Anonymus who first used the toponym “Pomerania,” describing it in various places in his chronicle with such terms as terra (land), patria (homeland), and finally regnum. The last of these terms he always used in his work to denote a political structure (a kingdom) ruled by a single sovereign. The chronicler did not clearly define Pomerania’s borders, indicating only that to the west it bordered the mysterious Selencia, and to the east, Prussia.

The source information cited above allows us to conclude that, even before the mid-11th century, in some part of the lands inhabited by the Baltic Slavs—somewhere between the lower Oder in the west and the lower Vistula in the east—a socio-political structure had developed, referred to by contemporaries as “Pomerania.” Based on the written accounts available to us, however, we cannot answer several fundamental questions about it, such as where, when, and under what circumstances it emerged. Another particularly important question is: what socio-political meaning did the term “Pomerania” carry at that time? Did it denote a tribe, a group of tribes, or perhaps a monarchical power structure—an early state—similar to what Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, or the Scandinavian countries were becoming slightly earlier in our part of Europe? For a long time, it was around this very issue that Polish historiography, in particular, focused its debates on the origins of Pomerania.

In attempting to answer the above questions, let us begin with the very etymology of the proper name Pomerania, that is, its meaning. Here, in fact, there is little doubt. The term is geographical in nature and refers to land lying by the sea, or extending all the way to the sea. This was aptly expressed as early as the mid-12th century by Herbord, author of one of the Vitae of Bishop Otto of Bamberg, who wrote that Pomerania is a land situated “by” the sea, or “near” the sea. The name itself therefore suggests that it was coined by communities external to those inhabiting the coastal lands. It is probably not far from the truth to assume that it was formed by neighbors from the south, perhaps in a Polish milieu.

As we know from other sources, the Piast state’s elite became interested in the Baltic lands no later than the 960s, as evidenced by Mieszko I’s wars with the Wolinians, fought somewhere in the region of the lower Oder. According to the content of the Dagome iudex document, even before Mieszko’s death in 992, some part of the Baltic lands had been conquered and brought under his control, becoming one of the provinces of the Piast state. We can only surmise that it was at this time that the name Pomerania—from the Polish perspective, describing the lands along the Baltic coast—may have acquired an administrative and political meaning as the designation of one of the Piast provinces. Its center was established in Kołobrzeg—one of the old tribal strongholds, rebuilt in the last decade of the 10th century after its capture by Piast forces. In the year 1000, Bolesław the Brave placed there the seat of a Polish bishopric.

Unfortunately, we lack fully reliable evidence to outline the extent of the first Piasts’ power along the Baltic, and thus to define the area that may at that time have been referred to as Pomerania. The discovery of several cemeteries containing elite graves dated to the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, in which members of the Piast retinue were buried, indicates control over the lands along the lower Vistula. This is confirmed by the well-known account in the Life of St. Adalbert, which describes the bishop’s visit in 997, during a missionary journey undertaken on behalf of the Polish ruler, to a place named urbs gyddanyzc. This name should be linked to Gdańsk, despite the ongoing difficulties in identifying archaeological remains of settlements from that period. On the other hand, there is no evidence to support the commonly held opinion that Piast authority in the west, on the Baltic, extended as far as the lower Oder. Today it seems somewhat more plausible to assume that the range of the Pomeranian province reached as far as the Rega basin. This appears to be indicated by the observation that the destruction of most tribal strongholds, which occurred during the second half of the 10th century and can thus be associated with the Piast conquest, is recorded precisely in the area between the Rega and the lower Vistula.

Pomerania’s belonging to the state of the first Piasts, however, proved to be short-lived and came to an end no later than the early 1030s, when the Polish monarchy entered a deep crisis. It may, however, have happened even a dozen years earlier, as suggested by the departure of Kołobrzeg’s first and only bishop, Reinbern, which occurred before 1013. We can state with considerable certainty that the several- or perhaps more than ten-year episode of the Kołobrzeg bishop’s Christianizing activity left no lasting effects. In the absence of sources, it is also difficult to answer the question of what processes were unleashed with the collapse of Piast power on the Baltic. Did the entire area revert to tribal structures of authority? There are indications that at least in part of it an attempt was made—successfully—to establish an independent dominion of monarchical character.

It is hard to consider as mere coincidence the temporal overlap between the collapse of Piast authority and the first written records mentioning the Pomeranians and their duke. The earliest of these, as we recall, is the reference to Zemuzil, who in 1046 was treated at the German king’s court as an equal to the rulers of Poland and Bohemia. Around the same time, we can observe the appearance along the Baltic of two spectacular elements of culture and economy that, in the early Middle Ages, typically accompanied the emergence of early state structures. The first of these are elite burials of the dead interred with weapons and/or in monumental chamber graves—evidence of the formation of elites within a new socio-political structure of monarchical character. Around the mid-11th century, such burials also appeared in the Pomeranian lake districts, in the basins of the middle and upper reaches of the Parsęta, Radew, Grabowa, Słupia, and Brda rivers. The second phenomenon is coinage. Across various parts of Central Europe, the beginnings of minting were tied to the rise of local polities in the early Middle Ages. Having one’s own coinage was an important instrument of exercising power, granting the duke both profit and control over the redistribution of goods. It is therefore no accident that, by the 1030s—or perhaps even somewhat earlier—local minting also began in Pomerania. These were imitative coins, most often referred to in scholarly literature as the Łupawa denarii. They were modeled on Scandinavian, German, and even Hungarian issues. Judging by the hoards in which they are most often found, they were minted somewhere in the area of the strongholds in Słupsk and Bytów.

Everything therefore indicates that Pomerania, as an independent political entity of monarchical character—in other words, a Pomeranian duchy—was born soon after the collapse of Piast authority on the Baltic, before the middle of the 11th century. It cannot be ruled out that its emergence was also linked to the adoption of the name of the fallen province of the Polish state. Another circumstance favorable to the formation of the new dominion was the end of Viking expeditions, which until then had intensely penetrated the southern Baltic coast, stimulating, among other things, the growth of craft and trade settlements. We will likely never know the answers to many questions concerning the first Pomeranian dukes. Among them: Was Zemuzil the first of them? Did they come from the milieu of the Baltic Slavs, or perhaps from the Piast administration arriving from the south? In the latter case, an analogy suggests itself with the Piast magnate Miecław, who around the same time attempted to establish his own dominion in Mazovia. Could Zemuzil, then, have been a Christian? Another question, to which we will return, concerns whether the Pomeranian dukes known to us by name in the 12th century were his descendants—that is, members of the same dynasty.

An important issue is also the determination of the original borders of the Pomeranian duchy—that is, reconstructing the extent of the lands controlled by Zemuzil, as well as identifying his main seat(s). Here we must rely primarily on archaeological evidence, which shows a spatial overlap between the distribution of Łupawa denarii finds from the 11th century and the presumed territory of the Piast province at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. The former stretches between the Rega and Parsęta rivers in the west and the Łeba—or perhaps even the lower Vistula—in the east. Within such borders we find both the known elite burials dated to the 11th century and the supposed minting sites of the time. Could the first center of Pomeranian ducal power, then, have been located in the Słupsk, Sławno, and Bytów region? This cannot be ruled out. However, it seems much more likely that the original seat of Pomeranian ducal authority should be placed in Kołobrzeg and Białogard. Supporting this is not only the fact that the stronghold of Kołobrzeg had earlier served as the main Piast center on the Baltic, but also the exceptional importance it shared with Białogard in the Pomeranian duchy in the early 12th century, as attested by Gallus Anonymus.

The Baltic lands once again became the target of Polish expeditions at the end of the 11th century. These were directed along the Vistula and may have reached as far as the sea. However, it was only the military activity of Bolesław the Wrymouth in the first decades of the 12th century that brought about a decisive change, one that would fundamentally influence the future of the Pomeranian duchy and its geopolitical position. Between 1102 and 1107, the main targets of the Polish duke’s campaigns were Białogard and Kołobrzeg. According to Gallus Anonymus, the very heart of Pomerania was located in the area of these strongholds. During both sieges of Kołobrzeg, the Pomeranian duke himself was present in the stronghold, although the chronicler did not record his name. Military pressure from the southern neighbor was likely one of the reasons why shortly thereafter—certainly before 1124—the main centers of ducal power were moved to the lower Oder. Pomeranian expansion in this direction seems to have begun in the last quarter of the 11th century. It was facilitated by the crisis of the Veleti tribal federation inhabiting the trans-Oder lands and by the decline of the great trading emporium of Wolin, located at the river’s mouth. Archaeological evidence of this westward expansion includes traces of destruction and/or rebuilding of several strongholds in the Oder belt (e.g., Stargard, Szczecin, Mścięcino, and Kamień), which took place around 1080–1100. At the same time, several new defensive settlements were built, such as those in Lubin on Wolin Island and in Wolin itself. In this way, by annexing and reshaping selected old tribal strongholds, the Pomeranian rulers created a new settlement infrastructure for the duchy

The strategically located stronghold at Kamień (today Kamień Pomorski) was chosen as the main seat of the Pomeranian dukes. It was there that Warcisław, the next Pomeranian duke known to us by name after Zemuzil, resided. Unfortunately, we cannot determine whether he was the same duke besieged by Bolesław the Wrymouth in Kołobrzeg some years earlier, or whether he was his successor. The earliest sources mentioning his activity date to 1124 and the first mission of Bishop Otto of Bamberg. Earlier, however, in 1121/1122, Bolesław the Wrymouth had captured Szczecin, completing the Polish conquest of the lands lying between the lower Vistula and the lower Oder. While the eastern part of these lands was relatively quickly and, by the first half of the 12th century, permanently subordinated to and gradually integrated with the Polish state, Warcisław’s duchy became, at the latest after the death of Bolesław the Wrymouth, an independent political entity. Crucial to its functioning on the political map of the Christian world would be the Christianizing missions and, as their consequence, the building of church infrastructure.

Based on the route of Bishop Otto of Bamberg’s first mission, we can, with a high degree of probability, outline the extent of the lands under Warcisław’s authority in 1124—that is, the borders of the Pomeranian duchy at that time. To the west, they reached the lower Oder and the strongholds controlled by the duke in Lubin, Szczecin, and possibly Gardziec on the Oder. To the east, Warcisław’s authority encompassed the duchy’s original core with the strongholds of Kołobrzeg and Białogard; to the north, it rested on the Baltic Sea; and to the south, in places, it extended to the line of the lower Warta. The next stage of expansion to the west, into the lands of the Veleti, would begin shortly thereafter. This did not change the fact, however, that the consolidation and development of the settlement and administrative structure of the Pomeranian duchy took place in the shadow of three much more powerful neighbors: the German Empire, the Kingdom of Denmark, and Poland.

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Returning to the questions posed at the outset, in light of the data presented above we can distinguish several stages in the earliest formation of the concept of “Pomerania.” The first would be the emergence of the name itself, describing a portion of the lands lying along the Baltic. Its meaning suggests that it was coined by neighbors from the south—most likely, though not exclusively, within the community of the Gniezno state. The second stage, more hypothetical, was the acquisition of an administrative-political meaning, when the term was applied to one of the provinces of the Piast state at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. Finally, the third stage came when Pomerania became the name of a separate political structure of monarchical character—a duchy. Its origins can, with all probability, be placed in the second quarter of the 11th century.

More:

Europa sięga nad Bałtyk. Polska i Pomorze w kształtowaniu się cywilizacji europejskiej (X-XII wiek), red. S. Rosik, Wrocław 2020.

W. Łosiński, Struktura terytorialno–polityczna Pomorza w XI stuleciu w świetle archeologii, „Slavia Antiqua” 28 (1981/1982), s. 113–125.

J.M. Piskorski, Pomorze plemienne. Historia – Archeologia – Językoznawstwo, Poznań 2002.

M. Rębkowski, Jak powstało Pomorze? Studium tworzenia państwowości we wczesnym średniowieczu, Warszawa 2020.

E. Rymar, Rodowód książąt pomorskich, Szczecin 2005 (wyd. 2).

B. Śliwiński, Śliwiński 2000: Błażej Śliwiński, Pomorze w polityce i strukturze państwa wczesnopiastowskiego (X–XII w.), „Kwartalnik Historyczny” 107/2, 2000, s. 3–38.

Marian Rębkowski