Wolin is one of those places where the past is told above all by objects taken from the ground. According to the Regional Museum in Wolin, the collection from the excavations of the early medieval town numbers hundreds of thousands of finds. Among them are three that visitors ask about most often: the four-faced figurine of Svetovid, a wooden idol and a mysterious wooden disc, called a solar compass. With each of them it is worth separating what is known from what is the researchers' interpretation.

A figurine from a dwelling layer

The most famous find from Wolin is only 9.3 cm tall. According to the study in “Archeologia Żywa”, the figurine is carved from yew wood, has four faces and was found in 1974. It lay in a layer that researchers link to a dwelling from the second half of the 9th century. The discovery was therefore made not in a temple but in a house, among shavings, tar and household waste.

This small carving is identified as Svetovid, but that is a name given by researchers, not an inscription from the period. According to the same study, most researchers regard the figurine as an object of cultic character, connected with the Slavic cultural sphere. Władysław Filipowiak, who directed the excavations in Wolin, assumed the carving was of Slavic origin. Władysław Duczko saw in it rather an analogy to Scandinavian whetstones. Similar four-faced figurines have been found in Riga, Svendborg and Tunby, and its modest size is explained by the supposition that they served domestic or personal worship. This is a hypothesis, not an established fact.

According to Wikipedia, the figurine is shown in the museum's permanent exhibition, in a room named “Świętowit”, devoted to pre-Christian beliefs in Pomerania. According to “Archeologia Żywa”, in 2022 the find was also presented at a temporary exhibition at the Museum of the Origins of the Polish State in Gniezno, so it is sometimes lent out.

The idol, the little horse and the pin

The museum's website presents several other finds from the research in the town centre. A wooden idol from the first half of the 11th century, made of yew or maple, was discovered in 1975 next to a hut and an oven. A gilded bronze horse from the 11th century, found in 1954, was, according to the museum, probably an amulet connected with a pagan cult. A horn pin from the 11th and 12th centuries has a head shape and ornament that point to Scandinavian influences, but it was most likely made locally.

These three objects show well what archaeologists are dealing with: a town in which pagan beliefs survived for a long time and models flowed in from several directions. Adam of Bremen wrote that the inhabitants of Wolin “are still subject to the errors of paganism”, and that visitors from other countries could live there, provided they did not make a display of their Christianity.

The compass disc: an interpretation, not a certainty

The most disputed exhibit is a wooden disc. Błażej Stanisławski interpreted it as a solar compass, that is, an instrument for finding directions by the position of the Sun. The description of the exhibition at the museum, published on the cycling portal of the voivodeship authority, calls it the only complete surviving compass of this type in Europe. It must be remembered, however, that the purpose of the disc is a researcher's conclusion, not a fact confirmed by a record from the period. Anyone looking at the find therefore sees a reconstructed way of using it, not proven Viking navigation.

Crafts and trade

According to the description of the exhibition, the second room shows the economy of the townspeople. The finds confirm that Wolin's wealth rested on trade and well-developed crafts, both everyday goods and luxury items for export. The museum lists blacksmithing and the working of non-ferrous metals, glassmaking, highly developed amber working and shoemaking. An assessment from the regional encyclopaedia fits this story: according to the Encyclopedia of West Pomerania, in the 10th century Wolin was one of the most impressive centres of crafts and trade on the Baltic.

The oldest exhibit in the museum, however, is not anything from the Viking Age but a harpoon head from the Late Palaeolithic. The exhibition also reaches back to the Bronze Age: it shows a hoard found in 1988 in the town cemetery.

A museum that grew out of the excavations

The Andrzej Kaube Regional Museum in Wolin stands by the market square, next to the town hall, and the institution itself has a long tradition. It was opened on 22 July 1966, and the first exhibition on the history of Wolin in the 9th-12th centuries was prepared by scholars from the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences together with staff of the Museum of West Pomerania in Szczecin, today's National Museum in Szczecin. Since 1993 the institution has borne the name of the archaeologist Andrzej Kaube, who directed it from 1968 to 1992.

Descriptions of the exhibitions differ depending on the source. Wikipedia states that since July 2024 a permanent exhibition, “Wolin - more than a legend”, has been open, in four rooms: “The Island”, “Emporium”, “Świętowit” and “Wolin”. An older description on the cycling portal speaks of the main exhibition “In the footsteps of early medieval Wolin - Vineta - Jomsborg”. The arrangement of the rooms may therefore have changed, and before a visit it is worth checking the current exhibition on the museum's website. Another room shows the history of the town from the late Middle Ages to the present, with a large-format model of the town centre from the 1930s. A touring exhibition about Wolin, co-created by Władysław Filipowiak, visited several European museums in the early 1990s.

The museum also administers the neighbouring manor house of the von Below family, standing on the site of the medieval castle of the Pomeranian dukes.

What to see in the town after the museum

The finds from the exhibition are easy to compare with what remains in the field. South of the town lies the archaeological reserve of Gallows Hill, with a barrow cemetery from the 9th and 10th centuries which, according to Wikipedia, is among the oldest early medieval necropolises of West Pomerania. The largest excavations there in the 19th century were carried out by Rudolf Virchow. The Gothic, brick Collegiate Church of St Nicholas was first mentioned in 1288, and on the Dziwna strait operates Wolin Port, recalling the town's role as a centre of trade by water. A reconstruction of a settlement, where one can see what the huts of those centuries might have looked like, is offered by the open-air museum on Wolińska Kępa.