of Rostock – a temple, anchorage and merchant settlement seven miles upriver thatwas soon to outgrow the large fortifications where the Kissini took refuge nearby.
Here the Abotrites ended; here the Rugians began, and the traveller would look in vain among their marshy and forested continental domains for places larger than villages and forts. However, on their island fastness of Rügen there were two remarkable townships: Arkona, on the very north-eastern tip of the island, looking out to sea over tall white cliffs; and Karenz (modern Garz), a lake town in the southern part of the island. Arkona appears to break the normal rule of keeping away from the shore, but the appearance is deceptive: the cliffs were too steep and the shore too dangerous for a direct approach from the sea, and all shipping had to go round by the shallow inlets which flood the central part of Rügen, or risk a landing to the south, where the cliffs are lower. Much of this town-site has since been eroded, but excavation has borne out the description of it given by the twelfth-century Danish historian Saxo. It needed no castrum or citadel, thanks to the headland on which it stood, but this was cut off by an earth and timber wall rising to some 100 feet, penetrable only through an even taller fortified gate-tower. Then came a curved sector of housing; then an open space; and then – probably on ground now washed away – the temple of the god Svantovit, which served as an international centre of pilgrimage and contribution, and a treasury, as well as the focus of public worship. Here came merchants from all over the Baltic; here the Rugian warriors met in council, and took their orders from the high-priest and his miraculous horse, which no man was allowed to ride. The defences of Karenz, in the south, were lake, river and marshland, reinforced by a more conventional ring-wall. By 1168 it appears to have been developing from a refuge fort into a populous settlement; Saxo describes densely packed housing, stinking to heaven, and archaeologists have found three small spaces left clear for the temples on the higher part of the town.
The Liutizians settled along the Peene had several well-protected towns, of which the most important was the furthest upriver, Demmin (the ‘smoke-place’). That was where three rivers met, and where overland traffic from Mecklenburg and Holstein could embark on the thirty-mile downriver voyage to the sea; a key stronghold of the Pomeranian dukes and princes after they conquered it in the early twelfth century, it had been formerly the citadel and cult centre of the Redarii, the home of the god Radigost.
The mouth of the Oder was dominated by the old city now called Szczecin (pronounced ‘Schet-sin’) by the Poles, Stettin by the Germans; it may have been Szcztno to the Pomeranians, and the Danes called it Burstaborg, ‘Bristle-borough’. This was ‘the mother of the cities of the Pomeranians’, 13 with walls enclosing three temple-crowned hills in pagan days (before 1127), and a reputation for impregnability: ‘as safe as Stettin wall’ ran the proverb, according to Saxo. 14 Here the missionary, Otto of Bamberg, found a community of 900 families, and among them a great man rich in relations and retainers, Domislav, who was reckoned to have a household of 500 and laid down the law for his fellow citizens. Another magnate was able to put to sea with his own fleet of six ships, and the multitude of slaves brought in by such adventurers must have swollen the population to several thousand, among whom the temple priests formed a powerful clique. For this was a place to grow rich, where four trade-routes met and river boats met sea-going vessels and exchanged cargoes; a city that in 1127 could fight, and win, a war with the Rugians.
The daughters of this mother were Wolgast (Vologost), Usedom (Uznam), Lebbin (Liubin), Wollin (Wolin) and Cammin (Kamien), to put the German forms first. They lay on the reedy channels by
Here the Abotrites ended; here the Rugians began, and the traveller would look in vain among their marshy and forested continental domains for places larger than villages and forts. However, on their island fastness of Rügen there were two remarkable townships: Arkona, on the very north-eastern tip of the island, looking out to sea over tall white cliffs; and Karenz (modern Garz), a lake town in the southern part of the island. Arkona appears to break the normal rule of keeping away from the shore, but the appearance is deceptive: the cliffs were too steep and the shore too dangerous for a direct approach from the sea, and all shipping had to go round by the shallow inlets which flood the central part of Rügen, or risk a landing to the south, where the cliffs are lower. Much of this town-site has since been eroded, but excavation has borne out the description of it given by the twelfth-century Danish historian Saxo. It needed no castrum or citadel, thanks to the headland on which it stood, but this was cut off by an earth and timber wall rising to some 100 feet, penetrable only through an even taller fortified gate-tower. Then came a curved sector of housing; then an open space; and then – probably on ground now washed away – the temple of the god Svantovit, which served as an international centre of pilgrimage and contribution, and a treasury, as well as the focus of public worship. Here came merchants from all over the Baltic; here the Rugian warriors met in council, and took their orders from the high-priest and his miraculous horse, which no man was allowed to ride. The defences of Karenz, in the south, were lake, river and marshland, reinforced by a more conventional ring-wall. By 1168 it appears to have been developing from a refuge fort into a populous settlement; Saxo describes densely packed housing, stinking to heaven, and archaeologists have found three small spaces left clear for the temples on the higher part of the town.
The Liutizians settled along the Peene had several well-protected towns, of which the most important was the furthest upriver, Demmin (the ‘smoke-place’). That was where three rivers met, and where overland traffic from Mecklenburg and Holstein could embark on the thirty-mile downriver voyage to the sea; a key stronghold of the Pomeranian dukes and princes after they conquered it in the early twelfth century, it had been formerly the citadel and cult centre of the Redarii, the home of the god Radigost.
The mouth of the Oder was dominated by the old city now called Szczecin (pronounced ‘Schet-sin’) by the Poles, Stettin by the Germans; it may have been Szcztno to the Pomeranians, and the Danes called it Burstaborg, ‘Bristle-borough’. This was ‘the mother of the cities of the Pomeranians’, 13 with walls enclosing three temple-crowned hills in pagan days (before 1127), and a reputation for impregnability: ‘as safe as Stettin wall’ ran the proverb, according to Saxo. 14 Here the missionary, Otto of Bamberg, found a community of 900 families, and among them a great man rich in relations and retainers, Domislav, who was reckoned to have a household of 500 and laid down the law for his fellow citizens. Another magnate was able to put to sea with his own fleet of six ships, and the multitude of slaves brought in by such adventurers must have swollen the population to several thousand, among whom the temple priests formed a powerful clique. For this was a place to grow rich, where four trade-routes met and river boats met sea-going vessels and exchanged cargoes; a city that in 1127 could fight, and win, a war with the Rugians.
The daughters of this mother were Wolgast (Vologost), Usedom (Uznam), Lebbin (Liubin), Wollin (Wolin) and Cammin (Kamien), to put the German forms first. They lay on the reedy channels by
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