Vineta

Vineta (sometimes Wineta) is the name of a mythical city at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. The myth evolved around the tradition about the medieval emporium called Jumne, Jomsborg (with which Vineta is sometimes identified), Julin or similar names by the chronicles. There are several Vineta myths – all of them portray the Vinetans as having an excessive, voluptuous or blasphemous way of life and then being punished in a flood that took the city to the bottom of the Baltic. In some variants of the myth, the city or parts thereof reappear on certain days or can be seen from a boat, making the warning conveyed by the myth more tangible for the audience. About 965, Ibrahim ibn Jaqub wrote in Arabic letters about this city. The transcription might be Weltaba, which corresponds to modern Polish "Wełtawa" meaning roughly a place among waves. 1075/80, Adam of Bremen wrote about an emporium on an island in the Oder estuary, east of his Diocese, where Slavs, Barbarians and Greeks were supposed to live and Saxon merchants stayed for trade. Harald Bluetooth had once found refuge there. The oldest preserved manuscript, from the 11th century, has the spelling vimne or uimne, and the second oldest manuscript, from around 1200, has uimne and iumne or jumne (there is no distinction between v and u or i and j in the written Latin of that time). More recent copies of the manuscript primarily use Jumne; in an early modern print the name is spelled Julinum and Juminem. Between 1140 and 1159, three vitae of Otto of Bamberg were written using the name Julin for the medieval place located at the site of the later town of Wolin. 1163/1168, Helmold of Bosau copied almost word for word the respective sentences written by Adam of Bremen. The oldest preserved handwriting of Helmolds chronicle (ca. 1300) has the place spelled uineta, corrected by the copyist to iuḿta (abbreviation of iumenta or iumneta). Younger copies use Jumneta in the text, yet in the header of the respective chapter all copies use Vinneta.