Chapter 6 The Olsztyn Group and the

One of the important problems raised by research on the Olsztyn Group is its participation in shaping the structures of the Prussian tribes in the early Middle Ages. The Olsztyn Group occupied the area, which most probably be- came the land of the Galindians, the least known of all Prussian tribes. For many years it has been the subject of archaeological and historical research, and it still appeals to the imagination of the people currently living in Masuria. According to a legend written down in the early 16th century by a Saxon chron- icler, Erasmus Stella (Johannes Stüler),1 the name of the Galindians derived from that of Galyndo, the eighth son of Wejdewut, the legendary king of the Prussians. Galyndo is said to have received from his father the lands between the upper Łyna River and the Great Masurian Lakes.2 This is therefore the area tentatively attributed to the Galindians. There are very few written sources concerning this tribe. The lack of infor- mation is probably linked to the early extermination of those people by neigh- bouring , Yotvingians, and Scandinavians, long before the arrival of the Teutonic Knights. According to Peter of Duisburg, who wrote his Chronicle of the Land of in 1326, in the 13th century, the territories that had once be- longed to the Galindina were a terra desolata (deserted or depopulated land).3 The name of the Galindians appears for the first time in the 2nd century in Ptolemy’s Geography. According to Ptolemy, the Galindian people (Γαλίνδοι) lived to the east from the Gytones (Goths) at the mouth of the Vistula river, and to the west from the Soudinoi. Archaeologists have therefore identified the Galindians with the so-called Bogaczewo culture that flourished in what is now north-eastern during the Roman period, between the 1st and the 4th centuries.4 That archaeological culture is linked with the West Balt cul- tural circle, which stretched at that time between the Pasłęka and the Daugava

1 Grzegorz Białuński, Studia z dziejów plemion pruskich i Jaćwieskich, Rozprawy i Materiały Ośrodka Badań Naukowych im. Wojciech Kętrzyńskiego w Olsztynie, 179 (Olsztyn, 1999), pp. 136–138. 2 Marcin Murinius, Kronika, VIII. 3 Peter of Duisburg, Chronicle of the Land of Prussia, edited by Klaus Scholz (Darmstadt, 1984); Wróblewski, Nowakiewicz, and Bogucki, “Terra desolata,” pp. 157–158. 4 Nowakowski, Od Galindai do Galinditae, pp. 18–19; Nowakowski, “Retrospekcja w archeologii: Galindai/Galinditae oraz Soudinoi/Sudavitae w świetle źródeł historycznych i znalezisk ar- cheologicznych,” Studia Galindzkie 1 (2003), 7–10.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004381728_007 212 Chapter 6 rivers. Ancient (Tacitus, Cassiodorus, Jordanes) and medieval (Einhard, Wulfstan) authors called the West Aesti. As for Galindians, they are men- tioned again in the 13th century. The first mention is in a papal financial record known as Liber censuum and referring Prussia in the aftermath of the crusade led in 1210 by the Danish king Valdemar II (1202–1241). Later, Pope Innocent IV mentioned the lands “que Galens dicitur” in his bull of May 19, 1253 for Duke Kazimierz of Kujawia (the son of Duke Konrad of ). A third source is a document of 1254 concerning the dispute between Duke Kazimierz and the Teutonic Knights, which mentions the Golens/Golenz Land. A king of the Galindians named Ysegups appears in the mid-14th century, with a power seat on Lake Niegocin.5 Peter of Duisburg, a member of the Order of St. Mary (Teutonic Knights), refers to those people as Galinditae. The accounts of the Teutonic Knights show the Galindians as particularly cruel among all Prussians. Peter of Duisburg and, following him, Martin Murinius, mention the mutilation of women and mass killing of little girls of their own tribe, as well as prominent war captives being burned alive on pyres together with their armor and horses. They are also said to have attacked the lands to the south, which were under the rule of the Piasts. According to the legend, one of such expeditions ended in the annihilation of the entire tribe. The legend is worth mentioning in this context, as it is one of the few sources that deal with the entire tribe.

The Galindians gained so much importance and multiplied in such great numbers that their could not feed them all. Thus, like the Pharaoh, who, wishing to humiliate the people of Israel, told the midwives, “if you see that the baby is a boy is born, kill him, but if it is a girl, let her live,” [they] also deemed it a good idea to kill every new-born girl and to keep the boys alive for war. And when the women did not obey this regulation, because seeing the beauty of their new-born children, they had secretly hidden them, the men agreed to cut off all their wives’ breasts so that they could not feed any children. The women, angry about their contempt and the appalling decision, went to a woman who was considered in their country a saint and a seer, and who decreed rules for various issues in their coun- try. They asked her to look at their case and protect them. The woman, commiserating with them, summoned the powerful from the whole land and told them: “Our gods want everyone to set off without weapons and

5 Białuński, Studia, pp. 136–143; Paul Milliman, “The Slippery Memory of Men”. The Place of Pomerania in the Medieval Kingdom of Poland, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 450–1450, 21 (Leiden/Boston, 2013), pp. 47–52.