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At the time when Polans (Polani) originally formed Poland it was a landlocked

country. Nevertheless, the early Polish state during the process of expanding its
boundaries did not forget to include some seashore within its limits. The first part of
Pomerania to be incorporated into Poland was Eastern Pomerania with its city and port
of Gdansk. Then, the central sector of Pomerania followed, with its chief city and port
of Kolobrzeg. Circa 965 AD, the westernmost segment of Pomerania followed with its
capital at Szczecin. Some two years later Poles occupied the last remaining Slavic
tribe of the Polabia-Pomerania, therefore Poland's (the tribal unity under Polans(the
tribe)) conquest of Pomerania was completed. It was the most important step of
forming the Polish nation under the tribe of Polans which gradually assimilated the
other tribes.

Eventually, as Poland consolidated its hold on the newly acquired littoral, the country
established and maintained diplomatic relations with both Denmark and Sweden. One
of the results of these diplomatic links was the marriage of Swietoslawa, a Polish
princess of the Piast Dynasty and daughter of the Polish Duke Mieszko I, with the
Swedish King Eric the Victorious.
The marriage took place circa 990 AD, ( the precise date of this event has not been
established) (see G. Labuda, "Polska w Zlewisku Baltyku", Jantar, Year VI, pg. 34,
Booklet 1; L. Koczy, Zwiazki Malzenskie Piastow ze Skandynawami, Poznan 1933, pg.
12; Jadwiga Zylinska, Piastowny i Zony Piastow, Warszawa 1967, pgs. 23-36).

It must be added that this marriage was not a merely trivial historical event,
considering the fact that Swietoslawa was the daughter and sister of the rulers of
Poland, and also the wife and mother of the rulers of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and
even England. Swietoslawa is also considered to be the very first more notable Polish
national to have made a trans-sea voyage. She must have definitively not been the only
Pole on board her ship, as there must have been some other Poles who were chosen to
accompany the princess on her journey.

In Scandinavia Swietoslawa became known as Sigrid (or sometimes also as Storrad),


and under that name she figures in the Norse sagas. Following Eric's death
Swietoslawa married another Scandinavian monarch: King Sven the Forkbearded of
Denmark. After a few years he expelled Swietoslawa from Denmark to Poland, but
after his death her sons made it possible for her to return to Denmark.

One of them, Canute, would become a ruler of three countries as King Canute II the
Great of Denmark (1018-1035), of England as Canute I (1016-1035), and also the
King of Norway (1028-1035). He was probably the most outstanding ruler in
Denmark's history, especially notable for his conquest of England (started by his
father), after which he also crowned himself as the king of England, and it is sad to say
that very few people are aware of the fact that he was half-Slavic(Polish).
According to a legend, there were two Polish knights that went along with
Swietoslawa to Scandinavia, and later joined the Norsemen on their journeys to
Iceland, and possibly Greenland and the continental North America, and there are
some sources, both Scandinavian and Polish, which seem to indicate that it is more of
a historical fact than only a legend.

These two Polish knights were named Wyzdarwoda (sometimes also known
as Wyzdraw) and Tyrker (sometimes also known as Tyrkir); the latter is very
frequently identified in Western sources as a "German", but the very possibility of him
being Polish, or at least Slavic, will shortly be discussed here.

Both eventually ended up at the royal Danish court of King Sven the Forkbearded,
where they came into contact with, according to some claims, Eric the Red, or at least
with some other Norse sailor who convinced the two Poles to join him on a journey to
a distant island in the far north. In his companionship they sailed to Iceland, and then
possibly on to Greenland, where they might have permanently settled.

The notable Polish author and maritime researcher and historian, Jerzy Pertek,
has confirmed the existence of these two semi-legendary figures as being
mentioned in the old Norse sagas, and he believes that it is possible that
Wyzdarwoda, along with Tyrker, might have settled on Greenland.

What is interesting about this whole account is that it was neither invented nor
propagated by Poles, but rather by Americans. Apparently the very first Polish-
language mention of this story was made by a Polish Roman Catholic priest residing in
the U.S. named Waclaw Kruszka on pg. 16 in his Historya Polska w Ameryce, Vol. 1,
Milwaukee, 1905 (a second edition of this 13 volume work was published in the
United States in 1937).

Kruszka might not have been the very first to publish that claim, either in English or
Polish or in any other language, and the work that he cited as a source for this
information is actually the English-language American-written Scribner's History of
the U.S.A., Vol. 1, pg. 42.

This book was not the work of any sensation-seeking ethno-centric Poles, but rather
of unbiased and objective American scholars and researchers who somehow
managed (probably using the same old Norse sources that were used by Jerzy Pertek)
to establish that a journey of at least two Poles, or at least other Western Slavs, took
place alongside the Norsemen all the way to the New World. In fact there is some
evidence to support that claim, and this evidence will be examined in our next article.

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