Abstrakt:
Documentary evidence is increasingly being recognized as a precious source for assessing flood records. We have
used this type of proxy data to identify the occurrence of floods in Poland from the 11th to the 15th centuries. In
addition, we estimated the intensity of each flood event using the best-known classifications for Europe (Barriendos
and Coeur, 2004; Br´azdil et al., 2006) and assessed their origin based on modified Lambor’s (1954)
criteria. The database of floods in Poland contains 166 occurrences in the study period. Most occurred in the 15th
century (61.4%). Of the studied regions, Silesia and the Baltic Coast and Pomerania regions were the two most
affected by flood events, each accounting for 33–34% of instances. Based on the Br´azdil et al. (2006) classification,
77 of the recorded floods are above-average or supra-regional. Also, the indexation of floods based on
Barriendos and Coeur (2004) demonstrated that 99 were extraordinary flood events. Rain and its subtypes were
the leading causes of floods, with 79 records (47.6%). Flood occurrence in Poland exhibited good spatial coherency
with neighboring countries. The updated and most complete inventory of floods in medieval Poland that
we present here with a detailed analysis of their frequency, intensity and origin, improves the existing knowledge
about this phenomenon in Central Europe. The results of this study, similarly to many other previous studies, also
confirm the great capacity for documentary evidence to provide valuable and reliable information about flood
records for the pre-instrumental period.
