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60 The Viking Age in Denmark

accessibility of fishing and of bog-iron for smelting. Some villagcs have a single large farm, probably belonging to the chief, others do not; and this picture is mirrored in the clustering spreads, also within areas homogeneous in terms of land, of wealthy burials. A fine example of a village with a chiefly compound is Hodde in westjylland from centuries B.C.²⁶ A village a little earlier in datę is Gr0ntoft, also in westjylland, lacking the single, large farmstead but with a elear tripartite division of the dwelling-houses in terms of size and number of stalled animals.²⁷

The carly Iron Age did not have towns and permanently manned fortresses; the whole society was rurally-bascd, and there was no apparent social stratification within the population. The control of wealth, both in terms of cattle and land and in terms of luxury objects like the fine Roman glasses or bronze vessels from wealthy graves, differed between the social segments; but the leaders did not set themselves apart from the rest. They livcd in a village comprising commoners also. Only from the so-called Roman Iron Age do we see indications of a morę developcd system from the fact that the eastern Danish islands have a few rich graveyards predominantly for leaders.²⁸ Unfortunately, there is very little settlement data from the province; most of it comes from territories like westjylland, today marginal lands, where prehistorie villagcs are preserved better and are easier to fmd because of the light soil (as compared with the clay of the islands). To judge from the graves only, we may havc a slightly different settlement system in east-central Denmark in the centuries A.D., with chiefs living in morę isolated circumstances. A fifth-century settlement at Dankirke near the later town of Ribe in Jylland has been found to be very rich in imports and with a possible ‘hall’; it varies so much from other sites that we may have an early chiefly (or royal) compound here.²⁹ Otherwise, such a settlement is not met again until the tenth century, and at this datę both the economic structure of the magnate-farm and the quality ofits central habitation separates it from the village.

The centuries after the close of the early Iron Age in 400 A.D. are relatively poor in the archaeological record of scttlemcnts, owing to the abandonment of the marginal lands in the climatic minimum phase. It is not until shortly before 800 that we again have data of some size. This is unfortunate sińce the first townships, Ribe and Hedeby in Jylland, go back to the eighth century and we should expect the rural production to respond to this. We have mentioned above the absence of rich graves and offerings of wealthy objects from the centuries preceding the Viking Age and havc related this to the coming of a different social system. In the Roman Iron Age the markets of the so-called civiliscd world were far away, and international trade was only occasional. Furthermore, the family bonds of inhcritance were weaker and collectivc pressures on the chiefs stronger (as the rich gravcs and the bog-offerings show); in short, redistribution of the

valuables in society was functioning effidently, and we may suppose that o*her resourccs followed the same channels of intemal exchangc. In the Viking Age wealth was constantly kept circulating under the impact of the ‘rationality’ of a market system and a market mentality; valuables could be invested, not only in social status, but also in far morę entrepreneurial activities, and ultimately even in land.

In Sweden and Norway rich burials continue into the Viking period, demonstrating the survival here of archaic social structures.³⁰ The many wealthy burials at the port of Birka (near present-day Stockholm) are a strong supporting point, sińce the proximity of even a centre of trading did not alter the relationships with wealth. Moreover it shows that Birka must have been a large market for luxury products, rather than a ‘town’, meaning a centre with several functions. Indeed already in the early Iron Age, and before the start of Birka in about 800, the Stockholm area had another centre of exchange (and - like Dankirke - a chiefly, or royal, site?): Helgo, which was booming in about 500 A.D. While Birka was strongly connected with the eastern trade, resulting in the important influx of Arab silver in the Viking age, Helgo was serving as a market for a few western European products, and especially for locally madę trinkets, exchanged for iron and other items from, for instance, northern Sweden.

To return to the scarce Danish settlement data from the centuries preceding the Viking Age, the traditional ‘long-house’ farmstead of the early Iron Age, with living quarters to the west and a stable to the east, was still in existence in about 4(X). At Vorbasse in mid-west Jylland a planned village consisted of large, well-built long-houses up to 44 metres in length and divided into several rooms, including a living-room, a stall and possibly a barn (Figs 15-16).³² Each long-house lies next to one or two minor buildings, normally without a stable, and the whole group is surrounded by fences bordering the square croft. The crofts are in rows (usually two farmsteads share a fence) with village streets, or rather open spaces, in between. The village is followed through four stages, beginning with a few farmsteads (inside heavy fences and perhaps cven galleries for protection) and ending with a settlement of twenty to thirty farms before the sudden interruption in the fifth century. In the last phase, lines of pit-houses, probably workshops, accompany the rows of farmsteads (Fig. 16). For the village as a whole there is no decisive distinction in size between the farms, but a few groups of buildings are clearly morę important than the rest. Two of these have at one stage some iron-smelting ovens lying next to them, and a smithy among the minor buildings within the fenced enclosure (Fig. 15).

The pit-houses are of the usual type, occurring from this period onw^rards, about three metres in length and normaliy with only a couple of posts supporting the roof. The huts are only rarely heated, and their appearance is probably due to inereased craft specialisation. It