Vineta

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Vineta or Wineta (sometimes held to be identical with Jomsborg) is an ancient and possibly legendary town believed to have been on the German or Polish coast of the Baltic Sea. It was commonly said to be on the present site of Wolin in Poland or of Zinnowitz on Usedom island in Germany. Today it is said to have been near Barth in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. At all these places, Vineta museums and Vineta festivals try to attract tourists.

Around 970 Ibrāhīm ibn Ya`qūb, envoy of the Caliph of Córdoba, reported that in Pomerania was a large port "with twelve gates", whose armed force is superior to "all peoples of the north".

A Danish fleet destroyed Vineta in 1159 during the Christianizing of the Wends.

Traders in the 11th and 12th century reported about a town that was the most powerful port of the Baltic Sea. Bishop Adam of Bremen wrote that Vineta was the largest of all towns in Europe.

There is a legend that Vineta sank in a storm tide because of the sinfulness of its inhabitants, and that before the sinking there were warning portents. It is thought likely that Vineta sank because of shifting of distributary channels in the delta of the river Oder.

In fiction, Vineta is visited by Nils Holgersson in Selma Lagerlöf's "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils".

Many archaeologists search for remains of Vineta along the Baltic Sea. In the 1840s, Timofey Granovsky dismissed the town as a medieval legend. Scientific evidence for the existence of Vineta is still missing.