buyers will not bring silver to buy them. Not only did the town need someone to defend
it from attacks and plunder, but people also needed to know that disputes would be
fairly settled and that someone would see that buying and selling would take place
according to the law (Skre 2007 b).
In the early Viking Age political power was less institutionalised; it depended more
on the personalities of the powerful, their charisma, their skill and luck in war and
politics, and their ability to attract important and powerful friends and allies. Therefore
control over land and people was rather unstable; a dynasty rarely kept in control for
more than a few generations. In the later Viking Age the political structure had
changed; the three Scandinavian kingdoms were more or less established. Royal power
now depended more on law and institutions and less on the personality of the king. This
difference is probably one of the main reasons for the instability of the towns of the early
Viking Age and the stability of the towns established in the late Viking Age.
However, there is obviously more to it. There is another type of discontinuity in the
late Viking Age: the old rural places of power, commonly called central places (see
below), all met their end. In some cases, most pronounced in Lejre–Roskilde and
Uppåkra–Lund, a town with central royal and ecclesiastical functions was established in
the vicinity around the time when the central place was abandoned. It is the new and
strong connection between king and Church which might hold a key to understanding
the discontinuity both in towns and in central places around the turn of the millennium.
A general conversion to Christianity took place at this time. The Church and the
kingdoms entered into a mutually beneficial alliance. The alliance built on the old
pagan connection between cultic and secular power now gained a much stronger base as
the Church was an international institution with a staff skilled in law, writing and
intellectual reasoning (Skre 1998 ).
To some extent there must have been a sentiment among people, chieftains and kings
in the final decades of the Viking Age that a new era had begun. The lack of continuity
not only in town and central places might indicate that kings had wanted to put a
distance between themselves and the centres of the old society. The vast number of
churches and clerical institutions in the major towns of the late Viking Age might
indicate that this was the case. To move a town was after all not such a big undertaking;
the investment in buildings and infrastructure was very low compared to the masonry
churches, monasteries and castles which sprung up in towns in the centuries following
the Viking Age. These buildings are the visible sign that towns now filled a wider
purpose. While kings and chieftains in earlier times resided on their aristocratic manors,
they now moved their household and following into the towns, where they also installed
their new ally, the Church. This meant a profound change in the inner life of the new
towns compared to the old ones, and in the functions towns had in the overall society.
They became more like towns of our own times; they became seats of power.
THE NON-URBAN PLACES OF TRADE AND CRAFTBefore the Viking Age, the typical urban activities of the period – craft production and
exchange of goods – took place in a rural context only. From the first millennium ad
traces of such activities are found most abundantly in large complexes called central
places (e.g. Uppåkra, Tissø, Lejre, Gudme). The full nature of several of these sites is yet
unknown, as the task of excavating their deep and complex deposits and analysing their
–– Dagfinn Skre––