Searching for Jomsborg

Recreated "Slavs and Vikings" Settlement in Wolin, Poland

Andrew Higgins has a story in the NY Times today about Polish archaeologists searching for the lost and possibly legendary Viking outpost the sagas call Jomsborg. 

The Jomsviking Saga was written in Iceland in the 13th century, describing events supposed to have taken place in the 9th and 10th centuries. It exists in four different versions that differ in length and detail, so there is not really even an original saga, let along an original story. The saga says that a great warrior named Palnatoke, which is not really a Norse name, founded a brotherhood of warriors and built a wooden fortress on an island in the Baltic Sea off Poland. The Jomsvikings were a sworn order who had to follow a law laid down by Palnatoke. They could not withdraw from combat except in the face of overwhelming numbers, could not wage blood feuds against each other, and had to obey all orders from their commanders. They were forbidden from showing fear. No women were allowed within the walls of the fortress. (Since the Viking ethos scorned any man who played the passive part in gay sex, it's hard to see how they could have had much of that, either.) To join, a man had to have a reputation as a warrior and then pass some sort of challenge that most authorities think was ritual combat against one of the Jomsvikings.

In the saga, the Jomsvikings were mercenaries who sold their services to the highest bidder. This included Harald Bluetooth, the king who unified Denmark, and it is in histories of his reign that we have a few hints they might really have existed in some form. Those historical accounts, though, seem to portray the Vikings of the Polish coast as mainly pirates who occasionally fought in wars when it suited their interests. Putting together bits of the saga with other accounts, it seems that the Jomsvikings, if they existed, went into decline after they suffered a terrible defeat around AD 985.

The Jomsvikings were pagan through the time when many Norse were converting to Christianity. The saga, though, does not make them out as very good pagans. Of course it was written by Christians centuries later who may have wanted to play down their paganism. But as written the stories make it seem that they had given up on religion altogether, beyond an obsession with death. 

What is fascinating to me in Higgins' story is that many contemporary Poles have gotten seriously into the Jomsvikings. The Nazis, of course, loved the Jomsvikings, and the first excavations on the island off Wolin where Jomsborg is supposed to have stood were carried out by Nazi archaeologists. So after World War II the story of the Jomsvikings was buried in Poland, and in fact Norse invaders were largely written out of their history. 

Now, though, a new generation has rediscovered them. The city of Wolin is trying to extract tourist revenue from the story, and Higgins talks to young enthusiasts who spend all their spare time researching the Vikings and searching for remains of Jomsborg. People reenact their battles. The hook for the Times story is the discovery, during routine archaeological survey for a new observation tower, of what may be a wooden pallisade from the 10th century. Which would be very cool, but a lot more work will have to be done to show that any sort of Norse fortress stood there, let alone what it might have had to do with the stories of the Jomsvikings.