The wider settlement areas were subdivided into small territories organized round one or more earth-walled, stockaded and moated forts, usually under the control of the ruler’s governor, or voivot . The voivot exacted military service from the warriors, and taxes from the peasants, and supplied the prince with hospitality when he came on his visits, which could be either occasions of prolonged feasting and public assembly, or shows of force and punitive intimidation. The prince was called knes , and as in Scandinavia acted as the leader of his people in general, and as the chief of an extended family of princely kinsmen, all of whom had claims of some kind to land and jurisdiction; but his power was limited.
For there were territories and territories. Some were hinterland forest areas, where the knes had land of his own and his voivot was unchallenged; others lay along the great waterways and inlets, and formed the ‘town-lands’ of thriving communities with a will of their own and the power to assert it. Alongside the geography of tribe, territory and principality lay the geography of urban communities. In the tenth century the Wends had already been grouped round small circular or oval earthworks, which early texts refer to as civitates . The effects of war, trade and reclamation tended to favour a small number of these at the expense of the rest, and the result, in the eleventh century, was a line of precocioustown communities lurking crab-like a few miles up every estuary from Denmark to the Vistula. They reveal the stages of their growth in their plans. At the highest points came the gard (grod) or palatium , a barracks, citadel and residence, usually reinforced with a moat, earth-wall and wooden towers. Below it, within a ring-wall, was the urbs , or suburbium , originally a place of refuge for the district, later a space crammed with the houses of nobles, artisans and merchants, except for one or more patches of holy ground where there were small timber temples. Outside the walls there was often a further concentration of dwellings, for fishermen, peasants and small traders, and a market. The pattern varied according to local terrain (the three hills of Stettin, for example) and according to the stage of development reached, but it formed a marked contrast to the simple quadrangular town-plotting of Denmark.
None of these towns was built directly on the coast; they were on inlets, rivers and lagoons – on top of a cliff, in the case of Arkona – where the balance between accessibility and security had allowed them to grow. Following the line from west to east, we begin thirty miles from the Danish and Saxon borders, with the ‘old fort’ of the Wagrians, Stargard to them, Brandehuse to the Danes, Oldenburg to the Germans. This coast was far too exposed to raiders for settlement, and Oldenburg could only be approached from the sea by going round to the east and sailing in along a fifteen-mile series of interconnecting lakes. Nevertheless, it was a sizeable port, and the inhabitants had grown rich on trade and piracy. A Saxon bishop had lived there in the tenth century, but the people had rejected his faith, and in the twelfth century the church was a ruin outside the walls and the temple served as the cult centre of the Wagrians.
From there a track ran southwards – not by the coast, but inland, through dense forest – for thirty miles, to the Trave, where an embryo town, Liubice or Old Lübeck, was beginning its existence under the protection of the knes , it was no more than a fort, some huts and an anchorage at this date, when the chief Polabian ‘city’ was the lake settlement of Ratzeburg, connected with the Baltic by a tributary of the Trave. The ‘great city’ of the Abotrites was Mecklenburg (Veligrad), five miles upstream from Wismar Bay, dominating the outfall of a wide network of lakes and rivulets. On the next large inlet to the east, the Warnow, there were the beginnings of the future city
For there were territories and territories. Some were hinterland forest areas, where the knes had land of his own and his voivot was unchallenged; others lay along the great waterways and inlets, and formed the ‘town-lands’ of thriving communities with a will of their own and the power to assert it. Alongside the geography of tribe, territory and principality lay the geography of urban communities. In the tenth century the Wends had already been grouped round small circular or oval earthworks, which early texts refer to as civitates . The effects of war, trade and reclamation tended to favour a small number of these at the expense of the rest, and the result, in the eleventh century, was a line of precocioustown communities lurking crab-like a few miles up every estuary from Denmark to the Vistula. They reveal the stages of their growth in their plans. At the highest points came the gard (grod) or palatium , a barracks, citadel and residence, usually reinforced with a moat, earth-wall and wooden towers. Below it, within a ring-wall, was the urbs , or suburbium , originally a place of refuge for the district, later a space crammed with the houses of nobles, artisans and merchants, except for one or more patches of holy ground where there were small timber temples. Outside the walls there was often a further concentration of dwellings, for fishermen, peasants and small traders, and a market. The pattern varied according to local terrain (the three hills of Stettin, for example) and according to the stage of development reached, but it formed a marked contrast to the simple quadrangular town-plotting of Denmark.
None of these towns was built directly on the coast; they were on inlets, rivers and lagoons – on top of a cliff, in the case of Arkona – where the balance between accessibility and security had allowed them to grow. Following the line from west to east, we begin thirty miles from the Danish and Saxon borders, with the ‘old fort’ of the Wagrians, Stargard to them, Brandehuse to the Danes, Oldenburg to the Germans. This coast was far too exposed to raiders for settlement, and Oldenburg could only be approached from the sea by going round to the east and sailing in along a fifteen-mile series of interconnecting lakes. Nevertheless, it was a sizeable port, and the inhabitants had grown rich on trade and piracy. A Saxon bishop had lived there in the tenth century, but the people had rejected his faith, and in the twelfth century the church was a ruin outside the walls and the temple served as the cult centre of the Wagrians.
From there a track ran southwards – not by the coast, but inland, through dense forest – for thirty miles, to the Trave, where an embryo town, Liubice or Old Lübeck, was beginning its existence under the protection of the knes , it was no more than a fort, some huts and an anchorage at this date, when the chief Polabian ‘city’ was the lake settlement of Ratzeburg, connected with the Baltic by a tributary of the Trave. The ‘great city’ of the Abotrites was Mecklenburg (Veligrad), five miles upstream from Wismar Bay, dominating the outfall of a wide network of lakes and rivulets. On the next large inlet to the east, the Warnow, there were the beginnings of the future city
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