Baltic Slavs fighting at sea from the ninth to twelfth century. The phenomenon of over a hundred years of Slavic domination over the Baltic Sea

Abstract

The beginnings of the Slavic settlement on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea and the formation of their tribal communities date back to the 6th century. In the 9th century, these tribes began to actively participate in trade in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. A special role in this trade, particularly with the countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula, was played by West Slavic port cities. With time, their importance in terms of maritime war expeditions increased as well. The external expansion of Scandinavian peoples along the Baltic shores of Western Europe began at the end of the 8th century and lasted until the middle of the 11th century. This is connected with the so-called Viking era. At the end of this period, the Scandinavians began to organize sea expeditions to the most economically developed areas inhabited by Slavs, primarily Western Pomerania. Both the preserved sources and archaeological findings confirm that the Slavic peoples gradually gained more and more skills both in the art of warship building and the experiences of fighting at sea. With time, it was Slavic pirates and participants of raid expeditions organized by West Pomeranian princes and magnates who began to plague the Scandinavian shores of the Baltic Sea, sometimes reaching deep into the attacked territories. From the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 12th century, they were the nightmare of the northern coasts, playing a dominant role on the Baltic Sea. The paper is an attempt to explain this phenomenon, taking into account the political situation of this period in the countries of the North. However, what has been emphasized above all is the importance of the very probable imitation of the maritime military service system commonly known in Scandinavia as Leding (in Denmark) or Ledung (in Sweden) by the Slavs, when organizing their own expeditions.