Vawkavysk

Vawkavysk or Volkovysk (Vaŭkavýsk; Волковы́ск; Wołkowysk; Valkaviskas; וואלקאוויסק) is a town in Grodno Region, Belarus, and the administrative center of Vawkavysk District. It is located on the Wolkowyja River, roughly from Grodno and from Minsk. As of 2023, it has a population of 41,991. It is one of the oldest towns in the region. Vawkavysk was first unofficially mentioned in the Turov Annals in 1005 and this year is widely accepted as the founding year for Vawkavysk. At that time it was a city-fortress on the border of the Baltic and the Slavic ethnic groups. Since the 12th century, Vawkavysk was the center of a small princedom. The Hypatian Chronicle mentions the city in 1252. The name is thought to be derived from the local dialect for the phrases for searching for wolves (wołków isk) or the howling of wolves (wołków wisk). Old Belarusian tradition refers to the area surrounding Vawkavysk as once being occupied by vast forestry filled with wolves. The river flowing through the town was named the Wołkowyja River. This also explains the appearance of a wolf's head or body on the town's coat of arms. However, modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Vawkavysk was of more recent origin and hence succeeded the original legend. Vawkavysk was mentioned in a manuscript written by the priest D. Bułakowski at the end of the 16th or beginning of the 17th century. It was stored in the Sapieha family's library in Ruzhany Palace, where it was translated into Russian in 1881 and published in a Vilnius gazette. According to the manuscript, in the place where Vawkavysk is now situated, were large swathes of forest, through which flowed the now non-existent Nietupa River, and consisted of winding travel routes on which travelers were frequently attacked. Within this forest, two robbers, named Voloko and Visek, had their hide-out. A prince named Vladislav Zabeyko, upon hearing of these attacks, tracked down the robbers and hung them on trees for the birds to feed upon.