Træningslejr eller tvangsborg

Resumé

Training-camp or garrison-fort

This article is an attempt to initiate a discussion on the motives behind the construction of the Danish Viking forts. The excavator of Trelleborg, Poul Nørlund, was him­self the first (in 1948) to put forward the now generally accepted interpretation, that the forts had been training-camps and barracks for the armies with which Sweyn Forkbeard forced England into submission. This theory was taken over without question (in 1962) by Olaf Olsen, who continued the excavations of Aggersborg, Fyrkat and Nonnebakken after the death of C. G. Schultz. In 1963 the theory was elevated almost to the status of gospel truth by the Nestor of Danish fortification research, Vilhelm la Cour. Previous attempts to cast doubt on this interpretation (Lauritz Weibull 1950, P. H. Sawyer 1962) have proved resultless.

It is pointed out that the association of the forts with the conquest of England is not only - as Weibull puts it - »pure supposition«; it is an interpretation which on a number of vital points either is in disharmony with or directly incompatible with the archaeological results. Particular attention is given to the question of Trelleborg's connection with the sea, and it is established that the claim of navigable access to the fort from the Great Belt rests upon irresponsible use of certain very limited trial investigations made by the botanist Knud Jessen in the meadows around Trelleborg. Moreover, a large complex of dams associated with a water-mill in the river valley west of Trelleborg has never been investigated, because -as an obstacle to a sea-approach- it was a priori assumed to be mediæval. In the case of the three other forts, too, thorough investigations of surroundings still seem to be lacking.

With the obvious reservation that only preliminary reports are yet available on the excavations at Aggersborg, Fyrkat and Nonnebakken, the author is of the opinion that the four Viking forts are best interpreted as garrison-forts, erected by the Danish throne to strengthen its control over the surrounding areas, as a move in its efforts to fuse the separate regions of the country into one kingdom.

Tage E. Christiansen