CHAPTER EIGHT ( 2 )

HEDEBY: AN OUTLINE OF ITS

RESEARCH HISTORY

Volker Hilberg

T

he Viking Age emporium of Hedeby is situated at the narrowest part of the
Cimbrian peninsula near the Danevirke, which functioned as the Danish border to
the south in the Middle Ages. Accessible from both the west and the east, Hedeby
possessed a key position in connecting the trading systems of the North Sea to the Baltic
Basin. The place is known from written records since 804 and developed in the ninth
century to become the leading emporium or proto-town of the Danish kingdom until its
final destruction in 1066. Its functions and political role were transferred to Schleswig/
Slesvig on the other side of the Schlei/Slie fjord. Hedeby itself is well known for its
extensive archaeological research done by German archaeologists since 1900.

EXCAVATIONS AT HEDEBY, 1900 – 80

In 1897 Sophus Müller, from the National Museum in Copenhagen, had identified an
area of c. 27 ha inside a huge and well-preserved semicircular rampart at the western
side of the Haddebyer Noor, an inlet of the Schlei, with the place mentioned on Viking
Age runic inscriptions found nearby as Hedeby (Figure 8. 2. 1 ) (Müller 1897 : 636 – 42
figs 395 – 6 ). To strengthen his identification small-scale excavation trenches all over this
area were started in 1900 (Stark 1988 ). In the following years, until 1915 and once
again in 1921 , over 350 small trenches were opened by Wilhelm Splieth and Friedrich
Knorr from the Museum für Vaterländische Altertümer in Kiel revealing parts of the
emporium. Also c. 500 – 700 inhumation graves from a huge cemetery inside the
rampart were excavated between 1902 and 1912 ; the exact number is very difficult to
say because of several superpositions and destructions from younger, overlying settle-
ment structures (Arents 1992 vol. 1 : 22 – 31 ). Knorr described very briefly the results of
all his excavation campaigns in only one article ( 1924 ). The documentation of each
year’s campaign consisted of handwritten reports, drawings true to scale and photos of
selected features and also cards with descriptions and drawings of find materials, which
survived the decades without any serious losses in the museum’s archive. An impressive
boat-chamber grave was published in more detail in 1911 , and a full analysis was given
by M. Müller-Wille in 1976 (Knorr 1911 ; Müller-Wille 1976 ; Wamers 1994 ). But
Knorr’s excavations also turned the attention from the burials to the thick cultural layers