character and development is so overwhelming. Apparently they are first and foremost
aristocratic manors with more or less distinct traces of cultic activities, craft, trade, and
houses for people attached to the aristocratic household. However, during the long
period in which many of them existed, in the case of Uppåkra a whole millennium, there
are bound to have been some major changes in their size and functions, about which we
as yet know rather little. Many of these central places continued to flourish until the end
of the Viking Age.
Seasonal marketplaces with archaeological remains of craft and trade were connected
to several central places. The archaeological remains of these marketplaces are distinctly
different from the four urban sites mentioned. While the objects found are much the
same, although with a lower number of items of long-distance trade, there are no
remains of permanent buildings. These contrasts to the towns proper speak clearly about
the main difference between them – the town formed a separate community organised in
a specific way, while the marketplace had only seasonal gatherings of people. Between
the gatherings the aristocratic household and its warriors, staff and slaves made up the
local community on the manor nearby. Neither in organisation nor in their permanent
activities did the central places have an urban character.
Seasonal marketplaces are also found at locations that seem more or less independent
of central places. Some are large (Sebbersund, Fröjel), while others, hitherto mostly
found in Gotland and Denmark, are very small: only a few pit-houses and scant finds
(Carlsson 1991 ; Ulriksen 1998 ). The earliest occur in the Roman period (see Thomsen
et al. 1993 ; Nielsen et al. 1994 ), but they are more numerous in the Viking Age.
Of the four towns only Ribe seems to have developed from a seasonal marketplace.
The other three seem to have been founded on virgin land. (The character of the eighth-
century Südsiedlung and its relation to Hedeby remains to be fully explored.) Due to
only small areas having been excavated, many details of the settling of each town
are unknown. Excavations have demonstrated that there has been a period of seasonal
activity before people settled permanently there, at Kaupang less than ten years. Never-
theless, the towns were from the start distinctly different from the seasonal markets. The
area that developed into a town within a few years was from the earliest period organised
in a different way from the marketplaces.
Therefore it seems evident that those who organised the towns from the start had a
clear idea that they wanted to form a specific type of settlement – a permanent com-
munity, not a seasonal marketplace. This demonstrates that from the earliest Viking
Age there existed in Scandinavia an idea of what an urban community was and how to
organise it. The roots of these ideas are to be found in the Carolingian Empire and
England, possibly also in the Slavonic communities along the Baltic coast. But the ideas
were from early on adapted to conditions and demands typical of Scandinavia.
THE SCANDINAVIAN VIKING AGE TOWNIt is evident that the towns of the Viking Age were created and not self-grown com-
munities. Who created them? From the evidence it is clear that kings and petty kings
were instrumental in the initial phase. The evidence from Ribe is meagre, although
the probable mint in the town from the early eighth century onwards points to a
royal connection. On Birka’s neighbouring island lies Alsnöhus, the royal manor. Vita
Ansgarii, which describes the German missionary Ansgar’s travels to Birka in 829 – 30
–– chapter 8 : The development of urbanism in Scandinavia––