Galindas - Balts on the Oka
Spherical Balts in a vacuum. However, the Galindians, apparently, looked something like this
Since the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism, contemptuous words have been regularly used towards Russians - "Moksha", "Finno-Ugric", etc. I do not understand what is wrong with the Finno-Ugric peoples, but it is worth saying: if you look for non-Slavic roots among the Great Russians, it is the Balts.
More precisely, the "Golyad" of Russian chronicles is the Galindian tribe. It is funny that the self-name of this people is derived from the Baltic words (I take Lithuanian, but both Prussian and Latvian are very similar) "gal" - "end", "edge" and "liaudis" - "people". In fact, they are "Ukrainians", that is, living at the edge. In this case, the edge of the habitat of the Baltic tribes. It is understandable - the Galindians were carried away from the Baltic just terribly far!
The habitat of the "golyad" on the map is the heart of Russia!
The fact is that the Galindians lived right on the territory of Moscow and neighboring regions and a little further south. However, not only that: having set out on their travels together with the Goths, the Galindians reached Spain, where, by the way, the root galind- is found among toponyms and surnames much more often than in the Baltics. For example, the Spanish bishop of the 9th century Prudentius of Troyes was named Galindo at baptism...
In fact, the Galindians appeared in the heart of Russia about three hundred years earlier than the Slavs: they came from the Baltic coast in the fourth century, and the first Slavic settlements date back to the 1058th-1147th centuries. The first mention in Russian chronicles dates back to XNUMX, when the Kiev prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich went on a campaign against them. It is known that Yuri Dolgoruky made a campaign against Novgorod in XNUMX, and ordered his ally, the Chernigov prince Svyatoslav Olgovich, to conquer the Smolensk region, and then "...and Svyatoslav went and took the people of Golyad, the upper Porotva..." Moscow is also mentioned for the first time in the same year. It was here on the Protva that the Moscow prince Mikhail Khorobrit died in battle with the "Lithuania" in 1248:
“And Mikhail Yaroslavich of Moscow was killed by Lithuania on the Porotva.”
“Lithuania” on the Protva is most likely those same Galindians (however, there is a version that these were real Lithuanians who came to raise a related “Golyad” against their Moscow competitors).
In Poland, they make money on “our” Galindians: an ethnographic village called “Refuge Galindia” has been opened on the Masurian Lakes, although the Polish Galindians look very primitive!
But these are quite recent developments! Because the Galindians were first mentioned by Ptolemy in his "Guide to Geography" back in 150 AD! According to Ptolemy, the Galindians lived in the territory of "European Sarmatia", which:
“It is limited in the north by the Sarmatian Ocean along the Venetian Gulf (the Baltic Sea – G. f. C.) and part of an unknown land... From the west, Sarmatia is limited by the Vistula River (the Vistula – G. f. C.), part of Germany, lying between its sources and the Sarmatian Mountains... The southern border is made up of the Iazyges Metanasts (settlers) from the southern limit of the Sarmatian Mountains to the beginning of the Carpathian Mountains...”
Ptolemy settles the Galindians on the shores of the "Venedian Gulf", but already in the 11th-12th centuries they are found in the upper reaches of the Protva, the right tributary of the Moscow River. How did they get there? V. N. Tatishchev directly indicates that they arrived there from Prussia (one of historical regions of this region were called Galindia), but refers to some of his own sources that have not reached us. Why did they go from the Baltic shores to the forests of Central Russia?
Arrival of Glando Kambila in Novgorod. Miniature from the "Chronicle and Illustrated Collection of the House of Romanov" of 1913
Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Kulakov believes that the landing of the Goths and Gepids on the lands of the Aestii most likely caused migration to the east between the first half of the 2nd and the second third of the 4th century AD. Why at this time? Ptolemy did not yet know about the Galindians on the Oka, but they were already mentioned in the Gothic saga about the conquests of King Hermanarich. In his opinion, the Galindians on the Oka formed (or merged?) the "Moshchinskaya culture" (most likely together with the Vyatichi). Incidentally, the name "Kuchko", which was borne by a boyar who owned villages along the Moscow River, is Baltic or Balto-Slavic. And the legendary (meaning not the famous one, but it is unclear whether he actually existed?) ancestor of the Romanovs, Glanda Divonovich Kambila, who came from Prussia, judging by his name, was related to the Galindians (especially since Glanda’s father, Divon, was from the Barts, a tribe of Prussians neighboring the Galindians).
But toponyms have survived: today in the Dmitrovsky and Klinsky districts of the Moscow region there are villages called Golyadi, and within the city of Moscow itself there is the Golyadanka River, a left tributary of the Moscow River. In the vicinity of Bryansk there was the village of Golyazhye (now renamed Otradnoye) founded in the 1000th century, and in the Komarichsky district of the Bryansk region there was the village of Golyadino, also with a XNUMX-year history. In the Borovsky district of the Kaluga region there is the village of Goltyayevo. Soviet geographer Yevgeny Pospelov believed that in a situation where a people lives in a foreign-language environment, geographical names are most often formed on the basis of an ethnonym. This theory is confirmed by the fact that the rivers Lama, Yauza, Nudol flow near the above-mentioned settlements, the names of which are undoubtedly Baltic!
Settlements of the Moshchinskaya culture in the Tula region
The Galindians lived in fortified settlements with an area of 0,4-0,5 hectares. The distances between settlements were about 30 km. Most often, they built their fortresses on the capes of rivers with high banks: thus, on three sides, the fortifications were surrounded by a river with high steep banks, and on the fourth - by a ditch and rampart. There are only two excavated settlements (Porechye and Ogubskoye) on remnants among the swamps. The ramparts were built from clay-sand soil, which was sprinkled on wooden structures, the palisade running along the top of the rampart was reinforced with stones.
Baltic ceramics from the Porechye settlement in the Tula region
Later, in the middle of the first millennium AD, unfortified villages began to appear near the hillforts. The main dwellings of the Galindians (if the Moshchinskaya culture really belongs to them, as Academician Vladimir Toporov believed) were "pillar houses": thin logs were laid horizontally between pillars spaced at intervals of 1-3 meters (according to another version, the distance between the pillars was sealed with wattle and plastered with clay). Sometimes the houses had two rooms, the floors in all were earthen, with hearths in the center of the room. All the houses were built around the central square of the hillfort, along its perimeter and along the rampart. The basis of the Galindian economy was slash-and-burn agriculture and cattle breeding. However, since the places where the Galindians lived were quite remote, hunting and fishing provided a tangible supplement to their diet.
The Galindians were the only Baltic tribes to take an active part in the Great Migration of Peoples. From the Baltic coast they reached Italy and the Pyrenees, and some of them apparently returned back. At least, after 430, the Galindians began to use very distinctive "Turov-type knives" that have a clear resemblance to Spanish daggers and probably originate from Spanish falcatas and Roman swords. These knives have awl-shaped tips that can penetrate plate armor, unlike the scramasaxes, which had a mostly cutting function.
In principle, there is little information left about the Galindian military. However, according to the findings in the excavated settlements of the Moshchin culture, it was significantly different from that of other Baltic peoples, including the Lithuanians. It is known that the Lithuanians preferred darts to bows, while in the settlements of the Galindians the most common weapons were tanged arrowheads, and fragments of axes and spears were also found. Tales have survived about the robber Golyad, who threw an axe 30 miles away. Is this a memory of the real practice of throwing battle axes? It is unknown: there is too little data - the Galindians did not have their own written language.
Many Galindian settlements have traces of assault and fire. However, judging by the set of weapons and how quickly life was restored on the ashes, the settlements were stormed by... the same Galindians - "one clan rose up against another". Subsequently, Slavic settlements appeared on almost all sites of Galindian fortresses - the Slavs loved to live along river banks no less than their predecessors, but there are no traces of assaults. Scientists still cannot come to a consensus: either the Galindians left their settlements before the arrival of the Slavs, or they were simply absorbed by Slavic culture.
It is not typical for a normal person to run around with a skull measurer and calculate the percentage of "Slavicness", "Finno-Ugricness" or "Aryanness" in the ancestors of their contemporaries. It is difficult for me to understand why the Ukrainian nationalists did not like the Finno-Ugrics. But the Baltic peoples were worthy opponents on the battlefield of both the Germans and the Slavs. And the Galindians near Moscow, who mixed with the Vyatichi and became the ancestors of the Great Russians (one of many!) are a worthy people, whose genes one can be quite proud of...
P.S. And most likely, Muscovites owe their characteristic "akanye" to the Galindas: the Lithuanians still call Moscow "Maskavas". Among the surrounding "okanye" regions, this is a very characteristic feature!
Information