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80 The Viking Age in Denmark

meant primarily for trade, but were used rather as some kind of salary and as a piece of royal propaganda in thc new castern provinces.

A group of smali centres, or rather, major farmsteads, belonging to the Viking period is only known from the place-name ‘Husby’.³² The Husbys arc, according to mcdieval sources, royal farmsteads with some military duties. When we include thesc uncertain localities hcre, it is due to their striking geographical distribution, which may relate thcm to the tenth-century carly Jelling dynasty.

Apart from a north-eastern Blekinge specimen, hardly Danish in the narrow sense of the word, and a single Husby from north Sjaelland, the rest are western, clustering in a narrow zonę between Jelling and Hedeby, where they are frequently found on the coast. In addition, we have a Husby a few kilometres from the royal fortress of Aggersborg on the Limfjord, and a similar locality behind the main wali of Danevirke in south Jylland. The Husby in Sjaelland and one on the north-west coast of Jylland are lying in the outer, ‘defensive’ circle of the tenth-century west Danish State.

It is striking that the distribution in no way corresponds to the runestones, and we may have here yet another system of royal dcpendence. But these are only hypotheses, and the problem of dating prevents their further use. Instead we must draw on the rich ar-chaeological data from the towns and other non-agricultural centres.

C. Population

In terms of population, the towns have undoubtedly been larger and morę densely occupied that any other type of settlemcnt. For instance, the number of burials at Hedeby amounts to ten thousand or morę, which would give an average population size, throughout the towns 250 or morę years of history, of at least 1000 (adult) persons, using the following formula:³³

Population _ No. ofgravcs (10,(XX)) x ąyęragc life cwpectancy (30, or. pcrhaps 40 years) ^s*^zc    Period of occupation (250-3(X) years)

The earliest occupation of the town of Lund comprises a cemetery with over 250 graves from about 50 years, corresponding to a population of 200 persons, and most probably morę.³⁴ Other graveyards in Denmark are much smaller. At Lóddekópingc in west SkJne, a market-centre in the ninth century, about 2000 graves have been found dating from the elcventh and the beginning of thc twelfth century, and representing at least five hundred persons.³⁵ Bccause of the late datę, we are here probably dealing with the cemetery of a whole parish, whose church is nearby. Six hundred burials from Lindholm H0je near Alborg in north Jylland correspond to a group of only forty persons as an average, sińce the graveyard is occupied for

500 years from about 500 A D. to 1000.³⁰ (This site has often been thought of as a town, because of the large amount of graves, without regard to the long period of occupation.) From the fortress of Trelleborg on west Sjaelland eonie morę than 150 graves, corres-ponding to an avcragc population of about one hundred persons with a period of occupation of fifty years.³⁷ The similar, but smaller, Fyrkat fortress in north-east Jylland, which existed for only a short period, has about 30 graves.³⁸ From Ris Fattigg&rd in northjylland come morę than 100 interments, covering at least one hundred years of occupation, and representing a group of less than 40 persons.³⁹ Other Viking Age sites have less than 1 (X) burials and they all seem to represent populations of the size of a village, or less. For instance, at Stengade on the island of Langeland a well-excavated cemetery of83 graves spanning about a century, or perhaps less, implies 30 or 40 persons in the original social group.⁴⁰

For the sake of comparison, it should be mentioned that a very large, and well-documented, cemetery from the centuries before the turn of the first millennium 13.C. at Arupg^rd in south Jylland has yielded morę than 1,400 graves; and, although the site is divided into two parts, the total number of persons represented is high, about 100 to 150.⁴¹ A contemporary villagesite, with a chicfly compound, from Hodde, also in Southern Jylland in its major phase, is madę up of53 buildings and 27 farmsteads.⁴² This is thc largest early Iron Age settlement known and may have held 100-200 persons, about the same as the Arupgard group. Vorbasse of the fifth century, with 30 farms, is perhaps even slightly larger.⁴³ M0llegardsmarken on Fyn, the largest non-town cemetery in Denmark, and dating to the first four centuries A.D., has at least 2,000 gravcs, corresponding to 150or 200 persons.⁴⁴ The M0llegardsmarken society, because of its size and the many wealthy graves, had a central function on Fyn, especially in the third century, and may, with the other sources already quoted, set the upper limit for population conglomerations in the pre-urban era. It is elear from the above that the establishment of several settlements of even larger size, and with no or little immediatc agricultural support, in the Viking Age implied serious problems of supply.

From Hedeby a random sample of 100 skeletons has revealed that 62 per cent (47) of the adult dead were men, and 38 per cent (29) women.^4;) Apparently women did not live in Hedeby unless their workpower could be used; their involvcment was rarer in thc milieu of crafts and trade than in agricultural production. Moreover the Hedeby sample revcals the common lower life-expectancy for women than for men in pre-industrial societies, probably due to the dangers of child-bearing, which meant that the majority of females did not survivc their twenties. At the Trelleborg fortresses a distinction in numbers of adult men and women has also been noted.⁴⁶ The few women of the cemetery are equal to the number of men over forty, amounting to