Vistula
Vistula catchment and tributaries
Template: Infobox River / Obsolete
The Vistula (Polish Wisła ( [v ʲ iswa ] ), Czech Visla, English Vistula ) is a 1047 km long stream and thus the longest river in Poland. However, the catchment area also includes parts of Slovakia, Belarus and Ukraine. The longest watercourse in their river system are the 1213 river kilometers from the source of the Western Bug to the Baltic Sea.
On old maps you can also find the notations W ( e) Ixel or Wissel.
Course
Headwaters
The current rises ( German: Widdersberg ) in the Silesian Beskids mountain at 1214m Barania Góra from the streams Czarna Wisełka and Biała Wisełka that flow into the reservoir Zbiornik Czerniański after nine or seven kilometers. After leaving the mountain, she turns to the east and forms a certain extent the historical border between Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland. Below Goczałkowice Dam is navigable.
Middle reaches
It flows eastwards through in a tectonic depression, which is north bounded by the Krakow -Czestochowa height and the Kielce mountains, south of the Beskidenvorland and then east of Lublin hills. About 70 km to the dam the Vistula flows through the old royal city of Krakow ( Cracow ). From Niepołomice 25 kilometers east of Krakow to a little below the mouth of the Vistula San was from 1815 to 1916, the border between the Austrian Galicia and the Russian Empire. 70 km after the village opens the Carpathian river Dunajec. Soon after Sandomierz ends of the Carpathians ago the San into the Vistula. Further north it reaches the Polish Lowland. Shortly after Warsaw ( Warszawa) it reaches the area of predominantly east-west oriented glacial valleys, through her from the east, just before united, Bug and Narew accrue. Here it turns sharply to the west and passes Płock, Dobrzyń nad Wisłą, Wloclawek and Torun ( Thorn ). In Wloclawek is since 1970 a large dam with hydroelectric plant. In Bydgoszcz ( Bromberg ), the city center is not the power, it leaves the large east-west glacial valley and breaks into a smaller Baltic country back. This includes between the Vistula and Odra and the Pomeranian Lake District, between the Vistula and Niemen the Masurian Lakes. In the last two decades of the 20th century, extensive regulatory measures have been carried out to improve the navigability of the middle reaches.
Delta
The inflow of the river to the Baltic Sea was naturally blocked by the dunes back of the Gdansk inland ceremony, the western part of the Vistula Spit ( Mierzeja Wiślana ). Intermediate ridges and dunes back to a delta has formed. Shortly after Gniew ( Mewe ) branches off to the east from the Nogat caused by a flood of self- flow (again) became the Weichselarm until 1371 and in the area of the Elbląg lowlands in the Vistula Lagoon (Polish Zalew Wiślany, so Vistula ) opens. Shortly before the dune ridges naturally branched out of the main stream of the Vistula River in the Elbląg or Konigsberg Vistula ( Szkarpawa ), which also flows into the Vistula Lagoon and until the early 19th century, the main stream, and the Gdansk Vistula, which near the city of Gdansk the dune ridges broke through and into the gulf of Gdansk (Polish Zatoka Gdańska ) resulted. In 1840, a new dunes breakthrough came in a flood midway between the crotch and Gdansk, whereupon the lower western part of the old Mündungsarms silted. In the years 1889 to 1895 was then punctured at the fork in the dunes back to reduce the risk of flooding of the Vistula Delta. Since most of the Vistula River water through this puncture Vistula, Polish Przekop Wisły flows into the Baltic Sea, Gdańsk Vistula River silted in total and has been increasingly called Dead Vistula, Polish Martwa Wisła.
The eastern Weichselarm Szkarpawa its part, has formed a delta. Its northernmost arm is still called Królewiecka Wisła ( Vistula Königsberg ).
History
There is disagreement as to whether the name " Vistula " Indo-European or pre- Indo-European origin.
Pomponius Mela mentioned 44 AD in the third of his libri tres De Chorographia the " Visula ". Pliny called 77 AD in his "Natural History " ( 4.52 4.89 ) explicitly two names: " Visculus immersive Vistla ". The Vistla River flowed accordingly in the Mare Suebicum, known as the Baltic Sea today.
Pliny called also the Vistula as the border river between the Germanic and Sarmatian influence area. The living his time in the Vistula area East Germans designated as Pliny Vandili ( Vandals ) and named as part of tribes Burgodiones ( Burgundy ), Varinnae, Charini and Gutones ( Goths ). The Goths had settled only in the last century before the Christian era to the lower and middle Vistula, but were beginning to migrate back to 200 AD and are no longer detectable from the 5th century there.
Apart from migration also changed the names: Tacitus described in his Germania east of the Vistula estuary living Aesti or Aisti (probably equivalent to the present name Balts ) than Germans, but pointed out that they are more a language like British ( Celtic ) speak and they differed from the Suebi from him other than used by Caesar for all Germans in the strict sense.
As of 5/6 Century AD Slavic settlements on the Vistula are detected. Between Germanic and Slavic settlement period, we have to expect a significant exodus loss in these areas. In the Germanic tradition of written Vistula Forests ( Widsith, verse 121 ) - " the people who live on the Vistula " ( in the field of Przeworsk culture) - are home to the Saxons and other Germanic tribes:
Wulfhere sohte ic ond Wyrmhere; ful often Thaer wig ne alæg,
þonne Hræda here heardum sweordum
Ymb Wistlawudu wergan sceoldon
Ealdne eþelstol ætlan leodum.
As Jordanes in the 6th century, a chronicle of the Goths, " Getica " created, he named the river " Vistula ". He also described two other rivers, both with " Viscla ". This name refers to the tributary Wisłoka and the tributary of the San, Wisłok.
Around the year 850 AD by the Bavarian Geographer mentioned as " Bruz " mostly east of the mouth of the Vistula living Prussians.
Vistula and Warta found as a result of the third partition of Poland as freedom input symbols in the Polish national anthem " Mazurek Dąbrowskiego ".
Even the first Polish legend writer Wincenty Kadłubek has the Vistula described as the home of the Vandals, from which he derives the Polish legend Wanda.
Vistula flood
In May 2010, there was in Poland to large floods, see floods in Central Europe in the spring of 2010. In September 2012, there was a historically low water levels on the Vistula River, in consequence of centuries-old artifacts in the dry river bed were found.
Cities on the Vistula
Sequence downstream, major cities in bold type
- Wisła ( Vistula ), 11,450 inhabitants
- Ustroń, 15,415 inhabitants
- Skoczów ( Skoczów ), 25 648 inhabitants
- Oświęcim (Auschwitz ) 41 287 inhabitants
- Kraków (Polish: Kraków), 757 430 inhabitants
- Tarnobrzeg, 50.008 inh
- Sandomierz ( Sandomir also dt ), 25,300 inhabitants
- Zawichost, 1,888 inhabitants
- Kazimierz Dolny, 3,618 inhabitants
- Pulawy, 50 116 inhabitants
- Dęblin, 17,976 inhabitants
- Góra Kalwaria, 11,132 inhabitants District ( pop. 590 ) and Castle Czersk
- District ( former city) Fordon, 76,800 inhabitants
Tributaries
Sequence downstream with specified length ( 300 km and bold type ), drain and size of the catchment area; indented estuary near tributaries of the tributaries
- Biała (right), 28.6 km, 139 km ²
- Soła (right ), 80 km, 1400 km ²
- Przemsza (left ), 28 km, 2121 km ², German also: Perzemsa
- Skawa (right), 78 km, 1160 km ², German also: Watch
- Raba (right), 132 km, 1537 km ²
- Szreniawa (left), 80 km, 706 km ²
- Nidzica (left), 66 km, 708 km ²
- Dunajec (right), 247 km, 6804 km ², German and (rarely ): Dohnst
- Nida (left), 151 km, 3865 km ²
- Czarna Staszowska (left), 61 km, 1358 km ², with inflow Wschodnia left
- Wisłoka (right), 164 km, 4110 km ²
- Koprzywianka (left), 66 km, 707 km ²
- Łęg (right), 81 km, 960 km ²
- San (right), 433 km, of which 120 are navigable, 210 m³ / s, 16,861 km ²
- Opatówka (left), 51 km, 282 km ²
- Sanna (right), 51 km, 606 km ²
- Kamienna (left), 138 km, 2008 km ²
- Iłżanka (left ), 77 km, 1127 km ²
- Wieprz (right), 303 km, 10,400 km ²
- Radomka (left), about 100 km, 2000 km ²
- Pilicą (left), 319 km, 48.6 m³ / s, 9245 km ², dt also Pilitza
- Wilga (right), 67 km, 569 km ²
- Świder (right), 85 km
- Narew (right) 484 km, of which 312 navigable, 328 m³ / s, 75.2 thousand km ² Western Bug, 772 km, navigable, 157 m³ / s, 39,420 km ²
- Wkra, 249 km, 5300 km ²
- Radunia, German: Radaune, 103 km, 837 km ²