49 (253)

92 The Viking Age in Denmark

Figurę 25 Reconstructed tcnth-century pit-houses of the town of Arhus (Jylland). (Aftcr Madsen)

in the quarter above the chamber tombs in the central town. One of the lightly built houses at Arhus contained, among other things, quern-stones, while one of the solid ones, along with habitation, had been used for weaving. Apparently we are dealing with sets of dwellings and warehouses. The light pit-house ncxt to the weaving one, for instance, contained tools for w^rood-working and textile-working and fragments ofriding equipment, bronzejewcllery, keys, a comb with a runie inscription, bowls of wood, ceramics and foodstuffs like cereals. It is elear that the relatively modest buildings housed persons of sonie social standing.

'    Towns and Fortresses    93

Othcr crafts, reflectcd in the materiał, include the casting of metal artefacts, cornb-production and, perhaps, the working of gold. The imports comprise whetstones and soap-stone vessels from Norway, pottery of Slavonian type, Rhinish lava quern-stones and a little glass, etc., but, apparently no western ceramics. In addition, there is a scalę and a single weight.

With Arhus in mind, we may conceivc of Odense, being identical with the tenth-century settlement inside the ring wali of Nonne-bakken, as a town of the same character and also with minor buildings.⁷¹ The plans, however, like most of the archaeological data on the town, are unpublished; but the rampart had about the same diameter as the smali Fyrkat fortress.

Viborg is already mentioned as being a rural settlement in the Viking Age proper lacking the characteristics, in terms of food supply, buildings and activities, otherwise connected with the towns.⁷² The long-houscs, for instance, making up the excavated settlements, are otherwise known soldy from the town of Lund, where there is only one specimen. In addition, very little evidence ofcraft production, and few, if any, imports are recorded.

Alborg, as noted, remains archaeologically enigmatic before about 1100. From Roskilde the earliest remains, of a stone church, go back to the first half of the eleventh century.⁷³ Othcr historically named sites, like 0rbxk, ‘Wendila’, Toftum, Slagelse, Ringsted, Helsingborg, Borgeby, Thumatorp, Dalby and Gori have no Viking Age archaeological data, or are unknown except for Dalby, where a stone cathedra] w^ras built in the eleventh century. In addition, some of the localities are probably not towns.

Only from Lund do we still have a substantial amount of data on an early town.⁷⁴ It is worth noting that the wickerwork fences of the first settlements seem to remain in the same place over time, indicating a lay-out, as in the case of the central site at Hedeby. A Street system is known, in addition to a number of wells. The lightly built structures, including a hall, in plan resembling the Trelleborg type, have wickerwork walls, and only later are stave walls secn, as in the churches (Figs 26-7).

Imports are surprisingly few, while craft activities comprise the production of bronze and tin jewellery, working in bonę and antler (especially combs), the making of ceramics, shoes, and also wood-working and weaving. In spite of the large areas excavated, the materiał spectrum is not much differentiated, and we are secing a kind of site functionally different from the intemational ports of Hedeby and Ribe. Lund is the only inland town we know of archaeologically; but because of its late datę, a reliable comparison with, say, Hedeby is impossible, and the lack of imports - apart, apparently, from some Slavonian and a little English pottery and a little soap-stone — might be due to a shrinking of the International trade in craft products after the

i