The exhibition entitled "Barbarian Tsunami. Migration Period between the Odra and the Vistula" has been arranged by, among others, the staff of The National Museum in Szczecin as a travelling exposition that was shown between October 2017 and March 2020 in a dozen of Polish museums.
Exciting subjects, a choice of unique exhibits and the use of a variety of multimedia techniques gave it great interest and appreciation. This prompted the organisers to attempt to provide wider access to content that has been hidden under its fascinating title. The result of these efforts is a website that presents the exhibition in a digital version: https://barbarzynskie-tsunami.muzeum.szczecin.pl/en/about.html
The story is based on events from the history of Europe that shook the civilization of late antiquity between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the sixth century, in a time called the Migration Period. Intense migration of Barbarian tribes that broke the borders of the Roman Empire and invaded its territory occurred then, giving the final blow to the existence of the Western Roman Empire and creating new kingdoms on its ruins. Some of these peoples, recorded in ancient written sources, came from the Odra and Vistula basins, where they lived in the first centuries A.D. They played a significant role in events related to tribal migrations, as well as in shaping the new order in Europe at the threshold of the Middle Ages. The relics presented at the exhibition were chosen for the sake of illustrating the presence of these peoples in our lands and their participation in cultural exchange and transformations taking place at the end of antiquity against the background of events that took place before the great migrations (third-fourth centuries) and after them (sixth-seventh centuries).
The exhibition has been arranged by The National Museum in Szczecin and Uniwersytet Warszawski in cooperation with:
Państwowe Muzeum Archeologiczne in Warsaw,
Muzeum Lubelskie, Muzeum Warmii i Mazur in Olsztyn,
Muzeum w Lęborku,
Muzeum Archeologiczne w Poznaniu,
Muzeum Zamojskie,
Muzeum Regionaln w Tomaszowie Lubelskim,
Muzeum Okręgowe w Rzeszowie,
Muzeum Archeologiczne w Krakowie,
Muzeum Miejskie Wrocławia
Muzeum Okręgowe Ziemi Kaliskiej.
It is also the fruit of "Maestro” project, financed by Narodowe Centrum Nauki, entitled "Migration Period between the Odra nd the Vistula", carried out at The Univeristy of Warsaw in recent years.
