years later ( 808 ) Hedeby was founded in the south-eastern corner on the border with the
Saxons and Slavonic tribes. Today, Hedeby is located close to Schleswig in Germany.
After this half-century of town foundations, two centuries went by without new
towns emerging. Then, in the decades around ad 1000 , a new wave of urbanisation
swept over southern and central Scandinavia. The most important towns established
during this period were Sigtuna in Sweden, Århus, Roskilde and Lund in Denmark, and
Oslo and Trondheim in Norway (Andrén 1989 ). All of these towns still exist today, as
do most towns from the following centuries. In contrast, all the four towns of the early
Viking Age were by the end of the period deserted or had suffered a major downfall.
Ribe disappears from the archaeological record around 850. Although it is mentioned as
a bishop see in written sources in the following centuries, definite traces of urban
activity do not reappear until the twelfth century. Kaupang was abandoned around 930 ;
Birka was deserted around 970 , coinciding with the establishment of Sigtuna some
miles further north. The same thing happened to Hedeby in the 1060 s, around the time
when Schleswig was established on the other side of the Schlei fjord.
The reasons for this apparent lack of continuity of the towns from the early to the late
Viking Age have been debated among scholars. For Ribe the question of continuity
throughout the Viking Age is still open, as the written sources and the continued use of
the town’s name indicate continuity in the urban community, while the archaeology
does not. For the others it has been proposed that the urban function moved elsewhere,
which seems to have been the case with Hedeby and Birka. However, this cannot be the
case with Kaupang, as there is a gap of about a century between the abandonment of
Kaupang and the rise of Oslo and Skien, the next towns to be established in the Oslo
fjord area. Only some 30 km north of Kaupang lies Tønsberg, but in spite of extensive
archaeological investigations there, no urban traces older than the late eleventh century
have been found.
When it is so common in the early Viking Age, both the abandonment and move-
ment of towns need explanations beyond the fate of the individual town. For Hedeby,
Birka and Kaupang, poor harbour and sailing conditions have been pointed out as
important reasons for abandonment. For Hedeby, the shallow harbour and the increasing
size of ships may have been a main cause for building the new town Schleswig across the
fjord.
Concerning Birka it has been suggested that the abandonment was caused by the
closing of the southern sailing route from the Baltic Sea into Lake Mälaren as a result of
land rise. However, the movement of the town to Sigtuna hardly helped in this respect,
as it made the approach from the south even longer. In the case of Kaupang, the harbour
basin did become somewhat shallower during the town’s existence, but the tenth-
century depth of 2 – 5 m was fully sufficient for the ships at that time. For Kaupang
and Birka, probably also for Ribe and Hedeby, one must seek other reasons for the
abandonment than those caused by nature.
Continuity and discontinuity in urban communities are complex phenomena which
need to be explained from a variety of approaches, some connected to the individual
town, some to the fundamental social and political structures of society. Of course
changes in trade routes and production lead to towns emerging and declining. More
importantly, though, the existence and growth of towns always depended on the power
structures of society. For trade and craft to flourish, peace and safety must be guaranteed.
If not, producers will not settle in town, traders will not bring their goods there and
–– chapter 8 : The development of urbanism in Scandinavia––