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stronghold Rethra and the god Redigost. Annales Augustiani and folk tradi-tion know the form Reda. The etymology of the flrst name is only apparent-ly obvious. Rad = “nice” and gost = “guest” produce the meaning of the place of Radogost, a god that is eager to host nice visitors. Thus, Radogost would be a nickname of Svarożic. Aleksander Bruckner (1985, p. 241) re-garded this name as appropriate “rather for an inn than for a deity,” but he must have forgotten that religious rituals were accompanied by feasts given by the god to his worshipers, though prepared from their own products.

It is not the only possible etymology. G. Labuda (Gieysztor, 1982, p. 129) reconstructs the original form as Redny (wet) gozd (forest). Thietmar indeed mentions a forest and a lakę situated near the sanctuary. The most interesting etymology is connected with the existence of oracie in Radogość. In this interpretation Radogost would be “a god who gives advice to his guests” and RadogoSĆ would be the place where it happens (from rada = “advice,” also “council”). At ieast the flrst part of the expIanation should be closely examined, as it seems to be confirmed by the form Reda, which can be read as rada, not only in the sense of the place where the counselling eeting was held, although RadogoSĆ was such a place, but also as a place where the advising oracie exists (Witkowski, 1968; Dralle, 1984). A. Bruckner^ suppositions about the words rada, radzić (to give advice) being late borrowings from German are unconvincing. This word seems to belong to the common Indo-European inheritance, as similar forms appear for in-stance in Old Icelandic (as rada, cf de Vries, 1961, p. 431). Lutizian Radogość is not the only topographic name with that stem in Slavonic terri-tories. Only in Mecklemburg there were two settlements of that name, far from the territory of the Redars, and a stream called Radegast (Bilek, 1955, p. 126-129). Radogość appears in the toponomastics of Moravia (mountain Radhost), Poland (a village near Łódź) and Ruthenia (Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego, vol. 9, 1888, p. 382, 39-391). Perhaps the name Radogość should be interpreted as “the grove (gozd) where advice is given” (obviously by gods). The thesis may be supported by Tacitus’s information (Germania, ch.10, 40) about divination madę by the Germans in holy groves. In this case Radogost would be a local nickname of Svaroźic, used in his sanctuary. The form Rethra was probably coined from the name of the tribe: Redars - Rethari - Rethra. (SSS, vol. 4, p. 450-451).

Although the exact location of RadogoSĆ is unknown, we have got quite a lot of information about the tempie of Svarozic thanks to Thietmar and Adam of Bremen. According to Thietmar, the stronghold in RadogoSĆ was triangular (tricomis), which provoked many amateur historians to see Radogość in various triangular hills (Unger, 1952, p. 102-106; Schróder, Hornemann, 1973, p. 63-71; cf. Gringmuth-Dallmer 1984). C. Schuchhardt related the word tricomis not to the plan of the town, but to three gate towers, similar to homs directed towards the sky, which complied with his speculations about three gates of the stronghold near

Feldberg. Wienecke (1940, p. 222) followed Schuchhardfs way of reasoning and tried to match the word tricomis with three hills in Szczecin. This interpretation is perhaps not entirely impossible, but definitely worse. The stronghold had three gates, two major ones open to everybody, and the third one, accessible only to the chosen, leading to the east, towards “a terrifying lakę.” So, RadogoSĆ was situated at the western shore of a big lakę, which was important in the cult, just as for instance Glomać, the sacred spring of the Dalemins. According to a fragment of Lutizian myth, preserved thanks to Thietmar’s chronicie, a boar came out of the lakę whenever the country was facing a civil war. There is a close analogy with Glomać, where the fate of the tribe was forecast according to the signs showing in the water of the holy spring, but we should be cautious at this point as both tales were recorded by the same author. The stronghold was “all surrounded with great forest (...) worshiped as sacred” and intact by people i.e. subject to a taboo, so the cult complex in RadogoSĆ included a holy grove.

Supposedly in the stronghold there were no other buildings except of the tempie. If so, its main function, like in Arcona, was to defend the shrine. People gathered there for a counselling meeting (which is evident from Thietmar, Helmold and the scholia to Adam of Bremen), to hear the oracie (Thietmar and Adam of Bremen), to confirm publicly an alliance (Thietmar and Helmold), and to celebrate holidays with indispensable feasts. Within the stronghold there was only one tempie. The description of its exterior, which “is decorated with effigies of gods and goddesses, carved in an amazing manner” reminds - as in Arcona - of the omamental construction of walls in Gross Raden. The difierence would lie in the fact that here the figurę poles would be probably decorated with a bas-relief (perhaps similar to the engraving from Ralswiek), which is suggested by the words “as can be noticed from a close distance.” The tempie was based on animal homs, which unfortunately is difficult to interpret. Undoubtedly, these were not only founding offerings, but perhaps some decorative elements of similar function, which cannot be reconstructed at the current stage of our knowledge.

In the shrine there were effigies of gods with their names inscribed. It is non entirely improbable. Our knowledge about literacy among Slavonic tribes is very limited, but runie inscriptions used by the Scandinavians mainty for magie and religious purposes allow us to consider a possibility that some forms of writing were applied in cult also by the Slavs. The statues wore helmets and cuirasses, which suggests their war functions. Only the name of the superior deity, Svarożic-Radogost, is recorded, but we know that military banners of the Lutizens borę an image of some goddess. According to Thietmar (VII, 64), during the Emperor’s campaign against Boleslaus the Brave, a German soldier insulted the goddess, throwing a stone at the image, which cost the Emperor 12 talents of compensation. So

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