3 Location, location, location
Elite Vikings went to great lengths to stake their claim to territory, as high-resolution laser imaging has proved
Political power has, for much of history, been inextricably linked to the acquisition of land – and the Viking #ge was no different. #cross Scandinavia, the land was manipulated with fortifications to keep enemies out and resources in. Meanwhile, burial mounds were used to assert landownership and proclaim links with a powerful ancestor.
In 2014, a ringfort was discovered on the Danish island of Zealand, south of Copenhagen. The fortress, named Borgring, came to light thanks to a method called Lidar: high-resolution laser imaging through aerial photography, which gives us an exceptionally detailed view of the landscape and its topography.
When archaeologists Søren Sindbaek and Nanna Holm investigated Lidar imagery of the region, they spotted a circle with a diameter of 144 metres. (On the ground, the shape could barely be made out, with only a slight difference in height. What they had found turned out to date to the 970s or 980s, and belonged to a network of fortifications built by Harald Bluetooth. The discovery at Borgring suggests that Viking Age military networks were better organised and more effective than previously thought, and that Harald exerted even stronger control over the local landscape. Another example of how political power was expressed through the possession of territory was provided by a find announced in 0orway in 2018. Geophysicists working at Gjellestad in the south-eastern part of the country discovered a completely unknown Viking ship burial that could be seen with striking clarity. The images produced by their ground-penetrating radar (GPR) showed the remains of a circular mound with the perfect outline of a ship’s hull in its centre. Other, older burial mounds were known from the area, but the one covering the ship had been removed by ploughing. The GPR survey also identified several smaller mounds nearby, as well as longhouses, including at least one large hall. #|few hundred metres away metal detector searches revealed evidence for a trading site. It’s thought the complex formed part of a so-called central place, which may have had sacred and political functions.
Previously, little was known about this part of Norway in the Viking Age, and it was thought that all the political power was focused on the western part of the Oslofjord, where the famous Oseberg and Gokstad ships were found. As the site begins to be properly investigated, this now needs to be seriously reassessed.