In all the debates about the Piast dynasty one theory has always seemed missing. We’ve had the following proposed as the (non-Polish) dynastic founders:
- Scandinavian vikings from the North
- Slav escapees from Great Moravia from the South
- Rest-Germanen either from the West or local true remnants
- possibly viking escapees from the East
But there are three interesting things about the Eastern direction. First:
- Polanie tribe – what about the Polanie tribe? The Eastern Polans are attested in Nestor and then we suddenly have a Polanie dynasty starting about 1000 A.D.? While the idea of “dwellers in the fields” may be innocent enough, the name itself as a tribal designation does not appear among Slavic tribes, except in those two instances. Moreover, while Kiev sat on the edge of the steppe-forest zones, Gniezno of the Polanie would have been sitting in the middle of vast forests. It would make no sense to label the people living there as Polanie.
And then:
- Nest – the capital of the Piast state (and before that a major burgh) was Gniezno, meaning “nest”. But there is another important “nest” location and that is Gnyozdovo (also one of the sites of the Katyn massacre) which was a site of a Slav-Varangian Rus town for quite a while.
Then, importantly:
- Timing – importantly, Kiev where the Polans are said to have dwelt fell to the Rus sometime between 882 (traditional date) and about 900. At the same time, the first “new wave” grods of the Piasts in Greater Poland appear at the turn of the 10th century.
Weaker points? Well, Gnyozdovo may have been in the land of the Krivichs and not of the Polanie and the name itself is not attested till the 1600s. Those facts, however, are not disqualifying for the theory. For one thing, the settlement at Gnyozdovo dates way back before the first time the name itself appears.
But what about Nestor? He mentions Polanie in Ukraine and in Poland but does not draw a connection. Had he known about the connection, would Nestor have mentioned it? Well, maybe that could have given his Rurikid dynasty somewhat of a claim on Poland. But it would also have given the “exiles” a far more potent claim on Kiev. In other words, if the true rulers (or even some of their servants) had been expelled by the Rus, then there was a possibility that they might come back. Mentioning such a connection would then not be very expedient. As is, Nestor’s descriptions of the Kiev Polanie are sparse and general as he appears intent to focus not on the locals but on the local rulers who he clearly considers to be foreigners to the country,
(If this were true, then Boleslaw the Great’s excursion to Kiev could be seen as a sort of an attempted reconquista. Of course, this argument could also be made about any other of his expeditions to Bohemia, Lusatia, and so forth.)
Copyright ©2018 jassa.org All Rights Reserved