Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The article examines the political relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, especially Žemaitija as a constituent part, and Žemgala (Semigallia), from the beginning of the 1279 Žemgalian uprising against the Teutonic Order until the rule of Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania. The author tries to explain why Gediminas used the title of Duke of Žemgala in his letters of 1323, although in other cases, the title of the Lithuanian rulers does not include the name of Žemgala, and neither do other sources describing the territorial structure of the grand duchy mention Žemgala as part of it. Some historians have already argued that Žemgala was joined to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1279. The article re-examines this argument, and tries to validate it. The cooperation of Lithuania (especially Žemaitija) with the Žemgalians during the war of 1279–1290 shows that the integration of Žemgala into the Lithuanian state was in fact its integration into Žemaitija during the war. The author concludes that this integration was not denied by the time Gediminas took power, despite the fact that the Teutonic Order had already initiated a new phase in the invasion of Žemgala. Gediminas used the title of Duke of Žemgala because he actually controlled most of Žemgala. A substantial part of it remained permanently within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The first part of the article presents historiographical problems relating to the warrior classes in Baltic and Finnish societies. In the second and third parts, it analyses Balt and Finnish societies relating to the formation of the warrior classes, with regard to the relationship between the chief/nobleman and the warriors, the meaning of the management of property and inheritance, and the vertical formation of relationships between noblemen and warriors. The written sources presented in the article show that at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, there was a stable institution of management and inheritance of property, which enabled noblemen and the warriors subordinate to them to increase their power with regard to other members of the community. This provided conditions for the formation of a ‘military democracy’, where the most important decisions concerning the community are approved not by all free members of the community, but by the noblemen and warriors subordinate to them. The basic idea of the article is that the ‘inheritance’ of the power/status of the noblemen is related to the right to inherit property (the castle and the surrounding territory, the homeland). It should be noted that by relating the management and inheritance of property to ‘inherited’ and acquired power, a vertical relationship appears between the nobleman and the warrior, which is based on subordination, not on consensus.

In the fifth to the eighth centuries, graves of well-armed men and their riding horses –or the ritual parts of horses– were spread throughout almost the entire mainland part of Lithuania and Latvia, or in the territory between the Nemunas and Daugava / Western Dvina Rivers. This was the northernmost part of Europe in which the custom had spread in the fifth to the eighth centuries. While the horsemen’s and horses’ burial customs varied in separate regions of the defined area, still everywhere the horseman and horse were interred in one grave pit, with the horse almost always to the person’s left. In their journey to the Afterlife, however, the bond between horseman and horse began to vary in the communities that lived in the more peripheral regions. The variety of burial customs was associated with differences in the communities’ social structure; these differences affected interment traditions and formed different burial rites. The custom that existed in the Roman Period on the littorals of Lithuania and Latvia to bury ritual horse parts (the head or head and legs) and spurs with armed men disappeared; here only bridle bits symbolized the horse in armed men’s graves in the fifth to the eighth centuries. Warriors’ graves with equestrian equipment spread throughout the entire region between the Nemunas and Daugava in the fifth to eighth centuries. With the change in burial customs (with the spread of cremation), and, apparently, in worldview, riding horse burials appeared that no longer could be associated with the concrete burials of people.

A warrior from Baitai grave 23 was equipped with a spear, socketed axe, scythe, fragment of knife and a belt. Such a set of grave goods was typical but not entirely standard in west Lithuanian graves. The author discusses how, through many possible variations of male grave goods, we could recognize the personal position of the dead in a group of other armed men.