What was written about Wolin in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries

The oldest record linked with Wolin dates from the mid-9th century. According to the Encyclopedia of West Pomerania, the so-called Bavarian Geographer listed the tribe of the Velunzani, to which he assigned seventy strongholds, and scholars identify them with the Wolinians. The Wikipedia entry on the town's history adds a mention from around 870 in the Life of St Ansgar, which is said to have called the town one of the largest in Europe. The encyclopedia says more cautiously only that scholars relate to Wolin the report of the plundering by the Danes of a rich town on the Slavic coast.

Around 965 Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, a traveller probably from Tortosa in Spain, reached the Slavic lands. According to the translation quoted in Wikipedia, he wrote of a town by the ocean which has twelve gates and a harbour where split trunks are used. He added that the inhabitants have no king and that power is exercised by elders, and that they fight against Mieszko. The Encyclopedia of West Pomerania calls this description a suggestive picture of Wolin, but it is a traveller's account, not a report from excavations.

Thietmar of Merseburg described the stronghold in the year 1000 as civitas magna, that is a great city, according to Wikipedia. Saxo Grammaticus wrote in the Gesta Danorum that in a town which scholars identify with Wolin live Slavs and other peoples. Wikipedia also recalls that Helmold of Bosau devoted a separate chapter to one of these towns and mentioned its destruction by the Danish fleet, but this concerns the account of Vineta, whose connection with Wolin scholars have long discussed.

Adam of Bremen: the largest city in Europe

The most frequently quoted is Adam of Bremen, who wrote in the second half of the 11th century. In the Polish translation given by Wikipedia, the description reads: “It is indeed the largest of the cities that are in Europe. Slavs live in it together with other peoples, Greeks and barbarians; Saxon newcomers too receive the right to settle, provided only that they do not show the signs of their Christianity”. The chronicler also mentions a lighthouse, which the inhabitants called Greek fire.

It is worth noting that Adam himself precedes this description with a remark that much is said about the glory of the city and hardly worthy of belief. So this is not a dry report but a second-hand account, written down in Bremen. The scholars cited by Wikipedia speak more cautiously than the chronicler: Orłowska and Stanisławski (2004) call Wolin the largest city on the Baltic coast, not in the whole of Europe. This is a difference of scope that must be kept in mind when reading the sentence about the “largest city in Europe”.

What the excavations confirmed

According to the Encyclopedia of West Pomerania, archaeologists uncovered in Wolin residential and farm buildings, a quay and port, a temple of the pagan god Triglav, cemeteries, wrecks of stave-built boats and silver hoards. The oldest settlement arose at the end of the 8th century or at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries. After about a hundred years it was already a centre of crafts and trade and a hub for the exchange of goods, and scholars call the period from the second half of the 10th to the mid-11th century the golden age of the town.

Wikipedia, citing Stanisławski and Filipowiak (2013), describes the town's expansion northwards at the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century. In the area of the Ogrody district a port quay was built, and next to it workshops: leatherworking and woodworking, bread ovens and a tannery. Craft workshops and markets also operated on Srebrne Wzgórze (Silver Hill) north of the old town. The stronghold itself was surrounded by a defensive rampart, but the part adjoining the Dziwna, that is the port, was not protected. The first houses had wattle walls and measured about 5 by 6 metres. Streets were paved with split logs and brushwood.

The finds confirm distant contacts. Wikipedia lists imports: stone vessels of Norwegian steatite, glass beads from the Middle East, cowrie shells, Byzantine silks and Arabic coins, dirhams. The collections from the excavations are held by the Regional Museum in Wolin, which according to its own data holds hundreds of thousands of artefacts from the early medieval town. The end of the golden age was marked, according to the encyclopedia, by Danish raids at the end of the 12th century, and Wikipedia, following Stanisławski and Filipowiak, speaks of attacks in 1170-1184.

How many inhabitants Wolin had

The figures given in the literature are estimates, not the result of a census. Wikipedia, citing Orłowska and Stanisławski (2004), states that at the time of its greatest development Wolin had from 8 to 10 thousand inhabitants. The same Wikipedia cites an older publication, “Z dziejów Ziemi Wolińskiej” (From the history of the Wolin Land, 1973), according to which there were about 9 thousand inhabitants, while Gniezno and Poznań did not then exceed 4 thousand.

Both figures therefore fall within a similar range, but they derive from collective studies and not from a single calculation based on the number of houses. It is therefore safer to say that scholars estimate the town's population at several to a dozen or so thousand people than to cite one figure as established. One thing is certain: according to the Encyclopedia of West Pomerania, in the 10th century Wolin was the largest centre of north-western Slavdom.

What these sources have in common is that the chroniclers describe the impression the town made on visitors, while the archaeologists measure what remained in the ground. Where the two pictures meet, as in the case of the port, the ramparts and international goods, the hypotheses are strongest. Where a chronicler offers superlatives such as “the largest in Europe”, the excavations cannot verify them.