Hedeby: Viking Trading Town and the Danevirke (804)

Hedeby was the largest and most important trading town of Viking Age Scandinavia. It grew up around 800 at the inner end of the Schlei inlet, near the modern town of Schleswig in northern Germany, and is first mentioned in Frankish sources in 804. Protected by the great Danevirke rampart, it linked the Baltic and the North Sea for some 250 years, until it was destroyed in the mid-11th century. Today its remains and the Danevirke form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Location and origins

Hedeby (Old Norse Heiðabýr, German Haithabu) lay at the narrowest point of the Jutland peninsula. From the Schlei, an arm of the Baltic, goods could be carried overland for about 15 kilometres to the rivers Treene and Eider, which flowed west to the North Sea. This short crossing spared traders the dangerous voyage around the tip of Jutland.

Settlement on the site began in the 8th century. The Royal Frankish Annals record that in 804 the Danish king Godfred came with his fleet and cavalry to Sliesthorp, on the border with Saxony, while Charlemagne was campaigning nearby. Sliesthorp is generally identified with the Hedeby area.

In 808 Godfred destroyed the Slavic trading place of Reric, on the Baltic coast to the east, and moved its merchants to his own port. He also ordered a rampart to be built across the frontier from the Baltic to the North Sea. This brought rich trading traffic under Danish royal control.

The Danevirke

The Danevirke (Danish Dannevirke, German Danewerk) is a system of earth, timber and later stone ramparts across the base of Jutland, about 30 kilometres long in total. It was built and rebuilt in several phases. Tree-ring dating shows that timber used in an early phase was felled around 737, well before Godfred, so his work probably strengthened and extended an older defence.

In the 10th century Hedeby received its own semicircular rampart, which enclosed an area of about 24 hectares and was later connected to the Danevirke. The Danevirke remained in use for many centuries, and Danish troops even held it at the start of the war with Prussia and Austria in 1864.

A cosmopolitan market

At its height in the 10th century Hedeby may have had around 1,000 to 1,500 inhabitants, a large number for northern Europe at the time. Excavations have revealed plots divided by fences, timber houses, workshops, wells, a stream lined with timber and jetties extending into the harbour.

Goods found on the site show trade networks in every direction. They include wine and pottery from the Rhineland, soapstone vessels and whetstones from Norway, glass, amber, furs, walrus ivory and textiles. Thousands of silver coins include Arabic dirhams that reached the Baltic through Russia. Slaves were also traded, though they leave little trace in the ground. Craftsmen worked in iron, bronze, glass, bone and antler.

Hedeby was also where some of the earliest Scandinavian coins were struck, from the first half of the 9th century, many of them imitating Frankish coins from Dorestad. Similar trading towns grew up at Birka in Sweden and Kaupang in Norway.

Missionaries and visitors

Around 850 the missionary Ansgar received permission from the Danish king Horik I to build a church at Hedeby, according to his biographer Rimbert. Christian merchants from the Frankish world were already living or trading there.

In the 960s the town was visited by Ibrahim ibn Yaqub al-Turtushi, a traveller from al-Andalus. His account, preserved in later Arabic works, describes a large town at the edge of the ocean that was poor in goods and wealth. He wrote that most inhabitants were pagans who worshipped Sirius, ate mainly fish, and that both men and women wore eye make-up. He also described the people’s singing as an unpleasant growl. His description is one of very few outside views of a Viking Age town.

Rulers and wars

Hedeby lay on a contested border. Runestones found nearby name rulers of a dynasty that seems to have come from Sweden in the early 10th century. In 934 the German king Henry the Fowler campaigned against the Danes and made their king, Gnupa, pay tribute. Emperor Otto II captured the Danevirke and Hedeby in 974, but the Danes retook them in 983.

Larger Danish kings such as Harald Bluetooth, remembered for the Jelling stones, strengthened their hold over the region in the later 10th century. Around the end of the 10th century a large warship built around 985, now known as Hedeby 1, was burned and sank in the harbour, probably during an attack on the town; its remains were raised in 1979-1980.

Destruction and rediscovery

Around 1050 Harald Hardrada of Norway, at war with Sweyn Estridsen of Denmark, burned Hedeby. In 1066 it was attacked and sacked again by West Slavic forces. Its role passed to Schleswig on the north shore of the Schlei, and the site of Hedeby was gradually abandoned and covered by fields.

Excavations began in 1900 and have continued at intervals ever since, making Hedeby one of the most thoroughly studied Viking Age sites. The waterlogged soil of the harbour preserved wood, leather and textiles. A museum, the Wikinger Museum Haithabu, stands beside the site, and seven reconstructed houses, based on excavated buildings, were completed there in 2008. In 2018 the Archaeological Border complex of Hedeby and the Danevirke was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Daily life in the town

The waterlogged layers of Hedeby have preserved an unusually rich picture of everyday life. Houses were mostly rectangular buildings of wattle and daub or timber planks, often with a central hearth, set in fenced plots along streets and paths of planks. Wells provided water, and refuse was dumped in pits and in the harbour.

Finds of shoes, combs, clothing fragments, tools, toys and gaming pieces show the activities of ordinary people as well as merchants. Large cemeteries around the town, including a rich boat-chamber grave thought to belong to a man of high rank, reveal a mix of pagan and Christian customs. Studies of the burials suggest that people from different regions lived and died in Hedeby, reflecting its role as a meeting place.

Timeline

• c. 737: Timber used in an early phase of the Danevirke is felled.
• 804: King Godfred comes with his fleet to Sliesthorp, near Hedeby.
• 808: Godfred destroys Reric, moves its merchants to his port and orders a border rampart.
• c. 850: Ansgar builds a church at Hedeby.
• 934: Henry the Fowler forces King Gnupa to pay tribute.
• c. 965: Ibrahim ibn Yaqub al-Turtushi visits and describes the town.
• 974-983: Otto II holds the Danevirke and Hedeby until the Danes retake them.
• c. 1050: Harald Hardrada burns Hedeby.
• 1066: West Slavs sack the town; it is soon abandoned.
• 2018: Hedeby and the Danevirke are inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Hedeby shows that the Viking Age was a period of trade and town-building as well as raiding, of which the attack on Lindisfarne is the most famous example. As a meeting point of Scandinavians, Franks, Saxons, Slavs and visitors from the Islamic world, it connected northern Europe to wider networks of exchange. Its rich archaeology has made it a key source for understanding daily life, crafts and commerce in the Viking world.