Were There Vandals in Poland? – Part I

Poles as Vandals

An interesting aspect of the debates about the “pre-historic” past of Poland has been the insistence on a Vandal connection.  That insistence has a long tradition.  An early reference is Gerhard from Augsburg’s statement that in year 992 there died “Misica dux Vandalorum“ referring to Mieszko I of Poland.  Of course, “Wandal” was then prominently featured in various Polish sources:

• Kadlubek mentions, Wanda the princess who was the daughter of Krak;

• Dzierzwa (Mierzwa) Chronicle puts a Vandalus in the family tree of the first Poles;

• Greater Poland Chronicles name Vistula the River Vandalus after the same Wanda and hence the Poles become known as Vandals, etc.

Elsewhere, in Fredegar, there is a Croccus (Krak?) who is presented as a Vandal (as opposed to Gregory of Tours’ Alemanic prince).  All of this contributed to the thinking that the Poles were the descendants of Vandals – simplistically, not that some were but that all were – or at least the important ones.  (An exhaustive literature deals with this topic and we will not repeat all of that here).

Later, the Bishop of Warmia/Ermland, the Polonized German, Marcin Kromer claimed that the Slavs were not Illyrians, nor Dacian nor Germans (in the then “modern” sense) nor Vandals (“Polonos & Slauos, Vandalos non esse“).  Rather, he said, the Slavs were related to the old Veneti who were Sarmatians.  That is, for Kromer, Sarmatian was not an ethnic concept as much as geographic and he noted that the Veneti came out of Sarmatia and out of the Veneti there came Slavs.  In this discussion he based his reasoning primarily on the work of Jordanes.  And he too, like the earlier Polish authors, presented his views in the “all or nothing” package.

The 1589 edition of Kromer’s “Siue de origine et rebus gestis Polonorum”

In the centuries that followed, the Poles dropped the “Vandal” attire and began to view themselves as Sarmatians.  In fact, Polish nobility developed an entire “Sarmatian” style.  However, in doing so, they basically ignored the Veneti and focused, instead on re-creating the old Sarmatian, as they imagined him, which, in practical terms, for them, came to mean someone with an appearance of an Eastern-flavored Scythian/Cossack type with a heavy dose of the then relevant Tatar and Turkish styles.

Germans as Vandals

The Polish move away from the Vandals left the field open for the Germans to claim the Vandals as their own.  The Vandals, at least of the sixth century, spoke Germanic, i.e., Gothic, as per Procopius (History of the Wars, Book III, Vandalic War, chapter II):

“There were many Gothic nations in earlier times, just as also at the present, but the greatest and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaedes. In ancient times, however, they were named Sauromatae and Melanchlaeni; and there were some too who called these nations Getic.  All these, while they are distinguished from one another by their names, as has been said, do not differ in anything else at all. For they all have white bodies and fair hair, and are tall and handsome to look upon, and they use the same laws and practise a common religion. For they are all of the Arian faith, and have one language called Gothic; and, as it seems to me, they all came originally from one tribe, and were distinguished later by the names of those who led each group. This people used to dwell above the Ister River from of old.”

Furthermore, the then names of Vandal leaders certainly did sound Gothic.  Thus, it was possible to identify the Vandals as Germanic speaking – again, at least as of the sixth century.

That, in turn, translated into politics and the the expansionist aims of the German Reichs (both the second of the 19th century and the third of the 20th).   It was claimed that the Vandals (and Goths and other Germanic tribes) inhabited all of Central Europe and so the Germans were now simply reclaiming their property which, previously had been stolen (when the Germans were out fighting Romans) by the Slavs (who came from the Pripet Marshes or Urals or space) when no one was looking.

Of course, this too was an “all or nothing” type of thinking.  Had the Vandals been in, e.g., Poland, they would have left some of their offspring there presumably who would then (presumably) be Poles.  At the same time, the “Germans” of the time may well have been Germanized Slavs.  To have the latter claim more ownership of Vandal heritage would seem bizarre* but there you have it.  (The Nazis, of course, took a more “nuanced” view and went out looking for “Aryan” children amongst the Slavs as part of their Lebensborn program – Poland lost about 200,000 children this way – most of whom live as Germans to this day and do not know who they are).

Although today no sane German claims any part of Poland (or any other European country) on the basis of some mythical Vandal past, the rapprochement in historical science has resulted in the wide acceptance that Vandals, in fact, had been in Poland and many historians and archeologists – German, Polish and Scandinavian – claim as much.  In particular, the Vandals have been associated with the so-called Przeworsk “culture” of pots and pans.

But What of the “Real” Vandals?

We will not deal with the archeologists as their pots and pans are not known to have been stamped “Made in Vandalia”.  We will ask, however, what the historians say of the Vandals.

Next time.

* Not to mention that the references to the Sarmatians and the Melanchlaeni above could serve to build an entirely new theory of the “Scandinavians” coming into Europe last, in an (appropriately styled) pincer maneuver, whereby the first wave would have been the northern one that pushed past Finns into Scandinavia and then south through future Denmark and the second wave were the other Goths, Vandals and others who would have come from the Volga region a century ahead of the Huns.  Alas, we leave that for others to construct – though note such a theory might have the advantage of explaining the Tocharian language being centum!

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