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O    10 cm

Fig. 84. A carved plank from Ralswiek. After J. Hernnann, 1985, p.306

(Beltz, 1910, p. 381-382, fig.70). E. Schuldt (1965, p. 9) supposes that the site where the sculpture was discovered was a stronghold and dates it to the llth-12thc. It resembles the planks from the shrine in Gross Raden, so it might have been an element of the interior of a tempie (cf. Hensel, 1969, p. 366; Kostrzewski, 1962, p. 351). Behren-Lubchin is one of the best explored strongholds of Polabia. It was a stronghold of the Zirzipans situated on an island. It is dated between the end of the lOthc. and 1171, when it was destroyed by the Danes. After the reconstruction it was besieged again in 1184, and therefore it appeared in the text of Saxo Grammaticus’s chronicie (XIV, p. 884, XVI, p. 982) under the name of Lubekinca. Another find analogical to the poles from Gross Raden is the plank from Ralswiek, mentioned above.

In 1857, during the regulation of the river Rhin, a sculpture of tough oak wood, 1.62 metre high, representing a man, was found in Alt-friesack. Radiocarbon dating of a sample of the wood allows to conclude that it was sculptured in the 6th-7th century AD. The nearby stronghold, from which it might have come, is dated to the 7th-8thc. (Herrmann, 1980a, p. 24; Corpus DDR, vol. 3, p. 114).

Two heads of wooden statues were found in Poiand. In Jankowo near Mogilno, during the cleaning of a canal separating an island on Pakoskie Lakę from the mainland, an oak-wood małe head with a beard and moustache, sized 22.5 cm, was found (Sztuka polska przedromańska i romańska, 1971, vol. 1, p. 316, vol. 2, p. 397). The neck of the sculpture contained a hollow, which served to fix the head on a corpse sculpture or a post. Near the place of the find on the island there is an early medieval devastated stronghold (Hensel, 1953, p. 187-193). A similar head with a fragment of bust, preserved in a worse condi-tion, was found near the village Dąbrówka near Radomsko in 1950. The sculpture, thrown ashore by the Warta river, represents a małe face with moustache, eyes and a tracę of a broken-off nose.

The head is 29 cm high, while the whole fragment ręaches 45.5 cm. The figurę was carved in alder wood (Gozdowski, 1951). Both Polish finds of presumed heads of idols might be in-terpreted as results of destroying sanctuaries - Ruthenian sources bring relations about pulled down sculptures being drowned in rivers - but it is only a supposition. There are no finds of monumental wooden sculptures from Ruthenian territories; only recently was the information about a statuę from Kiev published (Vindukur, Zabashta, 1989, p. 68). The circumstances of this discovery are not known.

We could also mention two sculptures with-out dating, found in Braak near the town Eutin in former Vagria, ascribed to the Slavs (Jankuhn, 1957, p. 130-133). Another wooden sculpture was probably the statuę found at the border of the villages Maliszewo and Trzebiegoszcz near Lipno in the area of Dobrzyń, now known only from a description. K. Jażdżewski (1936) collected several fragments of the sculpture de-stroyed by peasants in 1936. They “contained (...) pieces of charred wood in tar mass.” This concludes the list of monumental wooden sculptures that can be ascribed to the Slavs.

There are many examples of stone sculpture in Slavonic territories. We have already men-tioned the statues from Śłęża, which are of un-certain origin. H. Łowmiański (1979, p. 158) ex-pressed the view that “it is possible to eliminate from Slavonic mythology al non-wooden flgures (..) diligently collected by archaeologists,” basing this conviction on the description of Slavonic statues expressed by a Christian Varangian in Primary Chronicie (year 983): “these are not gods, but wood.” This thesis should be rejected, as it is based on a Biblical catchword. Morę significance should be ascribed to other texts, even to the semi-fantastic Life of St Avraamiy Rostovsky, compiled in the 14th-15thc., which mentions a stone statuę of Veles, destroyed by the saint by a stroke of his magie stick (Mansikka, 1922, p. 290-293).

Fig. 85. Altfriesack. A delty figurę. After Kunst und Kultur der Slawen in Deutschland, 1965, fig. 33.

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