First kings of Poland may have had roots in Scotland

The Herald Scotland

21-06-2025

The origins of the Piasts is unclear, however, and has been debated by scientists for decades.
A scarcity of sources means there are significant gaps in the historical record, with theories of their beginnings including them having been local Slavic chieftains, exiles from Moravia in the modern day Czech Republic, or Viking warriors.
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Now though, advanced DNA testing carried out by Professor Marek Figlerowicz from Poznań University of Technology has suggested the Piasts could, in fact, be related to the Picts of ancient Scotland.
Working alongside the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, scientists analysed the skeletal remains found in more than a dozen crypts from the Piast era, including from Płock Cathedral, where remains dated from 1100 to 1495.
Analysis was carried out on 30 males and 33 females, with the former all sharing a rare halogroup on the Y-chromosome which today is found primarily in Britain.
One of the closest comparisons genetically was a Pictish man buried in eastern Scotland in the Fifth or Sixth Century.
Professor Figlerowicz said at a conference in Poznań: "There is no doubt we are dealing with genuine Piasts."
Mieszko I's warriors (Image: SebbeKG/Wikimedia) The results clearly show that the first Polish kings did not have local origins, though it's unclear when their ancestors arrived in the land.
Professor Figlerowicz believes strategic alliances through marriage could be the answer, pointing to Świętosława, sister of Bolesław the Brave, who married kings of Denmark and Sweden and became the mother of rulers of England, Denmark, and Norway.
Bolesław I was the first king of Poland, the son of Mieszko I, the founder of the unified nation.
However, some scientists have urged caution in the Pictish interpretation.
Dr Dariusz Błaszczyk of the University of Warsaw's Institute of Archaeology has questioned the Poznań team's identification of the haplogroup (R1b-S747) which he suggested may in fact be the result of a contamination or sequencing error.
The possible link between the Picts and the Piasts is far from the only historical tie between the two countries, however.
Bonnie Prince Charlie, leader of the Jacobite uprising, was half-Polish as his mother, Maria Clementina Sobieska, was born in Silesia.
She was the granddaughter of Jan Sobieski III, who was king of Poland from 1674 until 1696.
From the 16th to 18th Century, thousands of Scots merchants travelled to Poland to trade and, in many cases, settle.
Thomas A Fischer described Poland as "the America of those days", while writing in 1632 William Lithgow called it "a Mother and Nurse, for the youth and younglings of Scotland, who are yearly sent hither in great numbers".
The latter stated that there were 30,000 Scottish families in Poland at the time, with most coming from the east coast, in particular Aberdeen and Dundee.
With a strong demand for foreign goods, Scots travelled the countryside on foot selling things like needles, knives, brooches, and woollen goods.
They were not universally welcomed, accused of undercutting local merchants and failing to obey the laws of the land, with King Sigismund III declaring: "that among others there is here a large number of the Scottish nation, most of whom we are informed live licentiously, recognising neither judges nor jurisdiction nor any laws nor any superior, whence it comes that impunity being so complete, that they not only offend seriously against the laws of the Realm, but also cause great loss to our customs and revenue".
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A 1564 decree taxed Scots on the same level of Jews and Gypsies, who were second class subjects, and two years later another law made it illegal for Scots to roam the country when carrying out their business.
The effects of this mass immigration can be seen today: in the Kashubian dialect of north-central Poland the traditional word for a commercial traveller is 'szot' (Scot), and there is a village in the Kuyavia-Pomerania region called Szkocja (Scotland).
Gdansk has districts called Nowe Szkoty (New Scotland) and Stare Szkoty (Old Scotland) and many Polish second names are transliterations of Scots surnames: Czochran (Cochrane), Machlejd (MacLeod), Szynkler (Sinclair).
One of the survivors of the 1944 Warsaw rising was Wanda Machlejd, who served as a runner for the resistance.
She was the was the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great granddaughter of a mercenary soldier from Skye who travelled to fight in the Thirty Years War.
The Rising ultimately collapsed and Wanda was sent to a prison camp, which was liberated by a Scottish division of the British army.
She was moved to a camp for displaced persons and tracked down by intelligence officer Stuart Macleod, who organised for her to be brought to Dunvegan Castle on Skye to recover before returning to Poland.
Most Polish soldiers based in the UK during the Second World War were based in Scotland, with a flight training unit for Polish pilots operating from Grangemouth and a military staff college established near Peebles.
As of June 2021 there were approximately 62,000 Polish nationals living in Scotland, the most common non-British nationality.
Other than English and Scots, Polish is the language most spoken at home in Scotland.
Many cities have Polish societies and Polish shops, with the town of Duns in Berwickshire twinned with Zagan in the west of Poland.