Coat of arms of Lithuania
The coat of arms of Lithuania features an armoured knight on horseback, wielding a sword and carrying a shield with a Jagiellonian cross. This emblem is known as Vytis.
Since the early 15th century, it has served as the official coat of arms of Lithuania and stands among the oldest heraldic symbols in Europe. It is also referred to by different names across languages—for instance, Waykimas or Pagaunė in Lithuanian, and Pogonia, Pogoń, or Пагоня in Polish and Belarusian, all roughly translating to "the Chase." The term Vytis itself can be interpreted as "Chaser," "Pursuer," "Knight," or "Horseman," bearing similarities to the Slavic vityaz, meaning a brave or valiant warrior. Historically, it has also been described as raitas senovės karžygys or in heraldic terms, raitas valdovas.
The Lithuanian state was established by the pagan Lithuanians in response to the growing pressure from the Teutonic Order and the Swordbrothers, who had conquered present-day Estonia and Latvia and imposed Christianity by force. The Lithuanians stand out as the only Baltic people to have founded a state prior to the modern era. This external pressure propelled them to expand eastward, conquering vast areas that are now parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. This period of territorial expansion is symbolically captured by the image of the galloping knight in the Lithuanian coat of arms. Its use became even more widespread following the adoption of the Third Statute of Lithuania in 1588, which mandated that each county include the emblem on its official seal..
The horseback knight first appeared as a dynastic symbol of the Gediminid dynasty, representing the ruling family. In the early 15th century, Grand Duke Vytautas the Great formalized the image—a mounted knight against a red field—as the official coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was embraced also by noble families affiliated with the ruling lineage. The knight's shield was often adorned with the Columns of Gediminas or the Jagiellonian Double Cross, both symbols of dynastic heritage.
Today, Article 15 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, approved by national referendum in 1992, states: The Coat of Arms of the State shall be a white Vytis on a red field.
Blazoning
The heraldic shield features the field gules with an armoured knight on a horse salient argent. The knight is holding in his dexter hand a sword argent above his head. A shield azure hangs on the sinister shoulder of the knight with a double cross/two-barred cross or on it. The horse saddle, straps, and belts are azure. The hilt of the sword and the fastening of the sheath, the stirrups, the curb bits of the bridle, the horseshoes, as well as the decoration of the harness, are or.Names of the coat of arms
In early heraldry, a knight on horseback is usually depicted as ready to defend himself and is not yet called Vytis. It is unknown for certain what Lithuania's coat of arms was initially called.Lithuanian language
The origins of the Lithuanian proper noun Vytis remain unclear. At the dawn of the Lithuanian National Revival, Simonas Daukantas was the first to use the term vytis—not in reference to the Lithuanian coat of arms, but specifically to the knight—in his historical work Budą Senowęs Lietuwiû kalneniu ir Żemaitiû, published in 1846. It is believed either to be a direct translation of the Polish Pogoń, a noun formed from the Lithuanian verb vyti, or, less likely, a borrowing from the East Slavic vityaz. In the western South Slavic languages as well as Hungarian, vitez refers to the lowest rank of the feudal nobility. Vitez ultimately derives from the Old High German word Witing.The first theory, proposed by linguist Pranas Skardžius in 1937, was challenged by Leszek Bednarczuk, as pogoń does not have a recorded meaning of a "chasing knight." Lithuanian language features personal names with the root -vyt-, such as Vytenis, and the noun vytis follows a morphological pattern typical for verbs-derived nouns According to Bednarczuk, Old Lithuanian had a word vỹtis, meaning "run, chase, pursuit, or general levy," which, at the time the coat of arms was adopted by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was translated into Polish and Ruthenian. Daukantas accurately reconstructed the word's form from the verb výti, but misinterpreted its meaning, an error followed by later authors.
In the 17th century, in his Polish–Latin–Lithuanian dictionary, Konstantinas Sirvydas translated the Polish word Pogonia—in the sense of a person doing the chasing—into Lithuanian as Waykitoias, and in the sense of the act of chasing as Waykimas. In modern Lithuanian orthography, Waykimas is rendered as Vaikymas, and today it is considered the earliest known Lithuanian-language name for the coat of arms of Lithuania. In the multilingual poetry collection Universitas lingvarum magno Palaemonii orbis et urbis hospiti, published by Vilnius University in 1729, the Lithuanian coat of arms is referred to in Lithuanian as the "Horse of Palemon". Waykimas was also used into the 19th century, together with another Lithuanian name – Pagaunia.
In 1884, Mikalojus Akelaitis referred to the coat of arms of Lithuania itself as Vytis in the Aušra newspaper. The name quickly gained popularity and was eventually adopted as the official term in the independent Republic of Lithuania. Originally used in the first person singular dative case as Vytimi, by the 1930s the form Vyčiu had become standard in the same grammatical case.
Slavic languages
The words pogoń and pogonia have been attested in Polish since the 14th century, originally meaning "pursuit" or the legal obligation to chase a fleeing opponent. It was not until the 16th century that the term began to be used to describe an armed horseman.The word entered heraldic usage in 1434, when King Władysław II granted a coat of arms bearing the name Pogonya to Mikołaj, the mayor of Lelów. The design depicted a hand wielding a sword emerging from a cloud. Given its resemblance to the Lithuanian royal coat of arms, it is possible that this was an abatement—a simplified or modified version—of the ruler's own arms.
The term pogonia to refer specifically to the Lithuanian coat of arms first appeared in Marcin Bielski's chronicle, published in 1551. However, Bielski made an error: while describing the Lithuanian arms, he actually referred to a Polish noble coat of arms, writing, "From this custom the Lithuanian principality uses Pogonia as its coat of arms, that is, an armed hand bearing a bare sword." The term gradually became established with the spread of the Polish language and culture. Pogonia is also found in Prince Roman Sanguszko's documents from 1558 and 1564.
The emblem was described a century earlier. In a document issued by Supreme Duke Władysław III, confirming the rights of the Czartoryski family, descendants of Karijotas, to use their ducal seal. Similar descriptions are found in Jan Długosz's or the early 16th-century Bychowiec Chronicle. Another popular Polish term was pogończyk.
The name Pogonia was first recorded legally in the Third Statute of Lithuania in 1588.
Possible early beginnings
The leader of neo-pagan movement Romuva, Lithuanian ethnologist and folklorist Jonas Trinkūnas suggested that the Lithuanian horseman depicts Perkūnas, considered as the god of the Lithuanian soldiers, thunder, lightning, storms, and rain in Lithuanian mythology. It is believed that the Vytis may represent Perkūnas as supreme god or Kovas who was also a war god and has been depicted as a horseman since ancient times. Very early on, Perkūnas was imagined as a horseman and archeological findings testify that Lithuanians had amulets with horsemen already in the 10th–11th centuries, moreover, Lithuanians were previously buried with their horses who were sacrificed during pagan rituals, and prior to that it is likely that these horses carried the deceased to the burial sites. One of the pendants made from brass and symbolizing a horseman was found in tumulus in the Plungė District Municipality, dating to the 11th–12th centuries.Lithuanian mythologists believe that the bright rider on the white horse symbolizes the ghost of the ancestral warrior, reminiscent of core values and goals, giving strength and courage. Gintaras Beresnevičius also points out that a white horse had a sacral meaning to Balts. These interpretations coincide with one of the interpretations of the German coat of arms, that suggests an adler being the bird of Odin, a god of war, which is commonly depicted as a horserider.
Emblems of Lithuania's rulers (before 1400)
The old Lithuanian heraldry of the Lithuanian nobles was characterized by various lines, arrows, framed in shields, colored and passed down from generation to generation. They were mostly used until the Union of Horodło when 47 Lithuanian families were granted various Polish coat of arms, yet some Samogitian nobles retained old Lithuanian heraldry up to the mid-16th century.The second redaction of the Lithuanian Chronicles, compiled in the 1520s at the court of Albertas Goštautas mentions that semi-legendary Grand Duke Narimantas was the first Grand Duke to adopt knight on horseback as his and the Grand Duchy's coat of arms. It describes it as an armed man on a white horse, on the red field, with a naked sword over his head as if he was chasing someone, as the author explains that is why it is called "погоня". A slightly later edition of the chronicle, so-called Bychowiec Chronicle, tells a similar story, without mentioning coat of arms name: "when Narimantas took the throne of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, he handed his Centaur coat of arms to his brothers and made a coat of arms of a rider with a sword for himself. This coat of arms indicates a mature ruler capable of defending his homeland with a sword".
The legend of the adoption of the Lithuanian coat of arms at the time of Narimantas in the version of Bychowiec Chronicle is repeated by later authors: Augustinus Rotundus, Maciej Stryjkowski, Bartosz Paprocki and later historians and heraldists of the 17th and 18th centuries.