Kociewie

Kociewie is an ethnocultural region in the eastern part of Tuchola Forest, in northern Poland, Pomerania, south of Gdańsk. Its cultural capital is Starogard Gdański, the biggest town is Tczew, while other major towns include Świecie, Pelplin, and Skórcz. The region has about 250,000 inhabitants. It has well-developed industry and agriculture. The Kociewians are a Polish ethnographical group. Most of the Kociewiacy are Roman Catholics. They live next to a far more prominent ethnic group in the area, the Kashubians. In the 2011 census, 3065 individuals declared themselves as Kociewiacy (3053 combined this identification with Polish identification – they stated that they were Polish, but emphasized their Kociewie region), an increase since the census of 2002, when nobody identified as such. The Kocievian dialect, unlike Kashubian, is mostly intelligible with mainstream Polish language. Despite geographic proximity, these two dialects are very dissimilar, with Kocievian being much closer to Kuyavian, to the point of some scholars calling it a variant of that dialect. The IETF language tags have assigned the variant to the Kociewie dialect of Polish. Polish people#Ethnography World Kociewie Day (Światowy Dzień Kociewia) is an annual celebration taking place on February the 10th. The date is commemorated as the first known mention of Kociewia in the historical record. Various towns across the region also hold independent celebrations of Kociewian culture including the annual Kociewian Day (Dzień Kociewski) held in Nowe and the Festival of Kociewie (Święto Kociewia) which takes place annually in Tczew. The Kociewian Congress (Kongres Kociewski) is a periodic event held since 1995 which takes place in Tczew. At the sixth Congress in 2022 a competition to design a national flag was announced. In 2023 the first joint Kashubian-Kociewian Congress of Self-Government was instituted. The Congress took place on July the 22nd in Wejherowo and invited guests included the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki.