The Wends
Viking Age






The Wends, until 814



The WENDS - a collective name for the west Slavic people who settled the region west of the Oder river - have settled the lands to the east of the Elbe and Saale rivers, and beyond that line in the upper Main and Altmark-Luechow-Dannenberg region during the Barbaric Peoples Migration, probably in the 6th century.
At the time of Charlemagne, sources report of the OBODRITES who settled between the Baltic Sea and the lower Elbe in what is Mecklenburg today, the WILZI and HEVELLI in modern Brandenburg, the SORBS (LUSATIANS) in modern Saxony. They were pagans; Frankish attempts to conquer them resulted in the establishment of the SORBIAN MARCH (806), but not in permanent conquest of the areas beyond.
The German settled area in Holstein was separated from the Baltic Sea by a small stretch of Slavic country, WAGRIA; the Wagrians were a branch of the Obodrites.






EXTERNAL
LINKS 		The Conversion and destruction of the Wends, by E. Skip Knox
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on November 12th 2004

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