Yotvingians or Sudovians (also called Suduvians, Jatvians, or Jatvingians in English) (Lithuanian: Jotvingiai, Sūduviai; Latvian: Jatvingi; Polish: Jaćwingowie, Belarusian: Яцвягі, German: Sudauer) were a Baltic people with close cultural ties to the Lithuanians and Prussians. The Yotvingian language (sometimes called Sudovian) was a Western Baltic language nearest to Prussian, but with small variations.
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Yotvingians lived in the area of Sudovia and Dainava (Yotvingia); south west from the upper Neman and their land began to be conquered by various people. The territory was between later Marijampolė, Merkinė (Lithuania), Slonim, Kobryn (Belarus), Białystok, and Ełk (Poland). Vytautas the Great wrote about "terra Sudorum", in a letter to King Sigismund of March 11, 1420. Today this area corresponds mostly to the Podlaskie Voivodeship of Poland, portions of Lithuania and a part of Hrodna Province of Belarus.
The name Sūduva, according to Vytautas Mažiulis ("Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas", "Etymological Dictionary of Prussian Language"), derives from a local hydronym "*Sūd(a)vā", in turn derived from a Baltic language verbal root "*sū-": to flow, pour.[1]
According to The Histories of Herodotus (5th century B.C.), the Neuri ( Νέυροι ) were a tribe living beyond the Scythian cultivators, one of the nations along the course of the river Hypanis (Bug river), west of the Borysthenes (Dniepr river). Roughly the area of modern Belarus and Eastern Poland by the Narew river - which coincides with the Yotvingian linguistic territory of toponyms and hydronyms (Narew river).
Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD called the people Galindai kai Soudinoi (Σουδινοί). Peter von Dusburg called them Galindite and Suduwite. In the Hypatian Codex the spellings are changing: Jatviagy, Jatviezie, Jatviažin, zemlia Jatveskaja, na zemliu Jatviažs´kuju and more. Polish sources used also Russian spellings: Jazviagi, Iazvizite, Jazvizite, Yazvizite. In the treaty with the Teutonic Knights in 1260 the region is called "terre Getuizintarum". This name was taken by the papal administration: terra Jatwesouie, Gretuesia, Gzestuesie, Getuesia und Getvesia. The Knights called this tribe Sudowite, Sudowia, in qua Sudowit.
The names Yotvingians and Sudovians are never mentioned at the same time, so that both names must refer to the same tribe. In the sentence of Breslau of the emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg to the Order of Livland from 1325 it is called Suderlandt alias Jetuen. In two dotations (1253 and 1259) of Mindaugas I. a new name was published: Dainava, Deynowe, Dainowe, Denowe (land of songs). Also named were the forests Deinova Jatvež.
A census by the clergy of the Belarus Grodno area in 1860 had as many as 30,929 inhabitants identifying themselves as Yatviags. [2]
The horse
Flowers
The lover
Dancing animals
Gimbutas, Marija, The Balts, (1963) London : Thames and Hudson, pp 97–102.
Mažiulis, V, Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas,t. II, (1993) Vilnius: Mokslas, pp 7–12, ISBN 5-420-00791-6-8
ANTONIEWICZ, J., The mysterious Sudovian people, Archaeology, II, 3, 1958
ANTONIEWICZ, J., The Sudovians, Biaĺystok, 1962.
DUSBURG (PETRI DE DUSBURG), Chronicon Prussiae, ed. Chr. Hartknock, Jena, 1879
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