Wolański’s Antiquities

Tadeusz Wolański (1795 – 1865) was a gatherer of antiquities, an amateur historian and a, frequently, self-published author. These days he is often dismissed by the “professionals” as crank. One of his theories was that the Suavic name Leszko was well known in Roman times indicating antiquity for the Suavs. This Lescho was, supposedly, the Suavs’ great warrior-leader who fought the Romans (which would have been consistent with Kadlubek’s chronicle). To support his claim he pointed to this Italian landmark. While some have ridiculed him, the claim about a Suavic king is completely unnecessary and confusing to the very real issue at hand which was that the name Lescho was indeed known to the Romans and whether the particular Lescho above was an emperor, a king or a mere cobbler is kinda beside the point.

In any event, Wolański also published a list of his coins which included bracteates from the territories of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. These too have been ignored by academics but should they have been so easily discarded from scholarly thought?

An impetus to revisit the Wolański coin collection is given by the following bracteate from Suchań, “Stargard District.” It was featured prominently in the glossy brochure “Migration Period Between the Odra and the Vistula” where it was identified as a “Germanic” find from the 2nd half of the 5th century.

The bracteate is interesting. It features a rider on what appears to be a horse as well as – in front of the horse – a small swastika. Is it Wodan/Odin? Or is it someone else?

Here is another version. This particular one without a swastika but much more elaborate with runes and, once again, a rider. This comes from Funen in Denmark.

Wolański published some of his coins in his “Tadeusz Wolański’s Letters About Suavic Antiquities: First Collection with 143 Pictures on XI Tables” (Tadeusza Wolańskiego listy o starożytnościach słowiańskich: zbiór pierwszy z 143 rycinami na XI tablicach) and the similar thought exactly the same German edition “Letters About Suavic Antiquities” (Briefe über slawische Alterthümer).

The following are not all the tables – just the tables that include coins similar to the above. The coins that are highlighted are the coins with the Rider and some type of a swastika. Note that some of these feature almost another “arm” at the end of each base arm – sort of like fractals. However, there are many other similar versions – just featuring a face or just a rider.

From one of Wolański’s other publications

Very generally, we have:

a Rider (“Scandinavian”-like)
various snaking, for lack of a better term, thingamajigs, that also appear “Scandinavian”-like
a Horse with a depiction of the Sun (Celtic-like) – note that a number of these are very similar to the coins found in the hoards of Zichyújfalu (discovered only in 1873) and Dunaújváros in Hungary (discover
miscellaneous other coins as well as other items

Table I

Table III