Polabian

The Polabians are the Lechitic West Slavs, also called Elbe Slavs or Wends, who settled from the sixth century along the Elbe, its tributaries and the Baltic coast. The Bavarian Geographer of 830 counted their confederacies, including the Obotrites and the Rani.

Ottonian kings sought to subdue and convert them; the pagan rising of 983 restored Slavic rule east of the Elbe. The Wendish Crusade of 1147 and the campaigns of Henry the Lion and Valdemar the Great broke the last pagan principalities: the Rani temple fortress of Arkona fell to the Danes in 1168.

During the Ostsiedlung colonists gradually Germanized the towns and countryside. By the fourteenth century only the Drevani kept their Slavic speech, Polabian. Recorded in the Vocabularium Venedicum, it lasted until the last native speaker died in 1756; only the Sorbs of Lusatia kept an Elbe-Slavic identity.