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Agord is amedievalSlavonic fortified settlement, usually built on strategic sites such as hilltops (ahillfort), riverbanks, lake islets or peninsulas between the 6th and 12th centuries inCentral andEastern Europe. A typical gord consisted of a group of wooden houses surrounded by a wall made of earth and wood, and apalisade running along the top of the bulwark.
The term ultimately descends from the reconstructedProto-Indo-European rootǵʰortós 'enclosure'. TheProto-Slavic word*gordъ later differentiated intograd (Cyrillic: град),gorod (Cyrillic: город),gród inPolish,gard inKashubian, etc.[1][2][3] It is the root of various words in modernSlavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas (Belarusianгарадзіць, Ukrainianгородити, Slovak ohradiť, Czech ohradit, Russian оградить,Serbo-Croatian ograditi, and Polish ogradzać,grodzić, to fence off). It also has evolved into words for agarden in certain languages.
Additionally, it has furnished numerous modern Slavic words for acity ortown:
The names of many Central and Eastern European cities harken back to their pasts as gords. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples.
Examples include:
The words in Polish and Slovak forsuburbium,podgrodzie andpodhradie correspondingly, literally mean a settlement beneath a gord: thegród/hrad was frequently built at the top of a hill, and thepodgrodzie/podhradie at its foot. (The Slavic prefixpod-, meaning "under/below" and descending from the Proto-Indo-European root*pṓds, meaning foot, being equivalent to Latinsub-). The word survives in the names of several villages (Podgrodzie, Subcarpathian Voivodeship) and town districts (e.g., that ofOlsztyn), as well as in the names of the German municipalitiesPuttgarden,Wagria andPutgarten,Rügen.
From this same Proto-Indo-European root come theGermanic word elements *gard and *gart (as inStuttgart), and likely also the names ofGraz,Austria andGartz,Germany. Cognate to these are English words such asgarden,yard,garth,girdle andcourt.[4][5]
A typical gord was a group of wooden houses built either in rows or in circles, surrounded by one or more rings of walls made of earth and wood, apalisade, and/ormoats. Some gords were ring-shaped, with a round, oval, or occasionally polygonal fence or wall surrounding a hollow. Others, built on a natural hill or a man-made mound, were cone-shaped. Those with a natural defense on one side, such as a river or lake, were usually horseshoe-shaped. Most gords were built in densely populated areas on sites that offered particular natural advantages.
As Slavic tribes united to form states, gords were also built for defensive purposes in less-populated border areas. Gords in which rulers resided or that lay on trade routes quickly expanded. Near the gord, or below it in elevation, there formed small communities of servants, merchants, artisans, and others who served the higher-ranked inhabitants of the gord. Each such community was known as asuburbium (literally "undercity") (Polish:podgrodzie). Its residents could shelter within the walls of the gord in the event of danger. Eventually thesuburbium acquired its own fence or wall. In theHigh Middle Ages, the gord usually evolved into acastle,citadel orkremlin, and thesuburbium into atown.
Some gords did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, gradually turning into more or less discernible mounds or rings of earth (Russiangorodishche,Polishgród orgrodzisko,Ukrainianhorodyshche,Slovakhradisko,Czechhradiště, GermanHradisch, Hungarianhradis andSerbiangradiška/градишка). Notable archeological sites includeGroß Raden in Germany andBiskupin in Poland.
wall Grad gorod.
wall Grad gorod.
Gord wall Grad gorod.
