cold Norwegian winters. Blindheim does not state clearly whether she thinks the
kaupang had its own permanent population or whether it was a seasonal marketplace
(see, for instance, Blindheim and Tollnes 1972 : 87 – 8 ). She used both Munch’s term
handelsplass (trading site) and markedsplass (marketplace) (Blindheim 1969 ; Blindheim
and Tollnes 1972 ; Blindheim et al. 1981 , 1999 ; Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen
1995 ).
As a result of excavations in other Viking towns such as Birka and Hedeby from the
1970 s onwards, radical new information was gathered about Scandinavian urban settle-
ments in the Viking Age. Interestingly, Blindheim’s results did not fit into this picture.
The Kaupang houses indicated a town, but the lack of hearths made their function
uncertain and the question of permanent population difficult to assess. The houses were
constructed in a completely different manner than in the other towns; their alignment
in relation to the shoreline was the opposite of that in the other towns. And although
some general regularity could be traced in the placing of the houses, the evidence
concerning plot division was at best ambiguous. Besides, there was little or no evidence
on the chronology in the development of the settlement through the ninth century.
The difficulty in deciding Kaupang’s character and the lack of chronological informa-
tion were the main reasons why new excavations and surveys were carried out 1998 –
2003 (Figure 8. 3. 2 ; Skre 2007 : 197 ). In the main excavation 2000 – 2 a site of 1 , 100 m^2
was opened, and within this site an area of 400 m^2 was dug to the bottom. Additional
information was collected through the digging of a water-pipe trench through the
whole settlement area, by measurements of the depth of the Viking Age deposits
(varying from 0 to 1. 1 m) and through metal-detecting and systematic collection of
artefacts (c. 4 , 300 ) in the ploughed field, which covers most of the settlement area.
The analysis of the 100 , 000 finds and enormous masses of information is ongoing,
and many questions are still unanswered. However, the structure of the settlement and
the main stages in its development seem fairly clear. From the start in the years around
ad 800 , in 803 at the latest, the area was divided into plots. In the early stage none of
the six excavated plots had a building on them, but all of them had remains of some
kind of activity, including crafts, such as blacksmithing and glass-bead production.
In the next stage, probably within a decade of the initial plot division, buildings were
erected on five of the six plots, one building on each (Figure 8. 3. 3 ). The sixth plot seems
to have been an enclosure with a small shed in one corner, possibly a pigsty. In addition
to the crafts already mentioned, there are remains of amberworking and textile produc-
tion, and on one of the plots there are substantial remains of metal casting, seemingly
mostly production of jewellery and mounts in lead, bronze, silver and gold (Pilø 2007 ;
Pedersen and Pilø 2007 ).
Judging from the deposits and the dating of the artefacts, these houses were being
utilised for quite a long period, probably several decades. Some of the plots have remains
of yet another level of houses on top of these remains, but ploughing during the past
hundreds of years has destroyed most of these more recent building remains. The young-
est preserved buildings were in use until some time in the mid-ninth century. From the
following period only some pits from the mid- or possibly late ninth century were
preserved, some of them wells, others with an unknown function.
From the settlement from the late ninth until the mid-tenth century only artefacts
from the plough layer are preserved. Therefore very little information exists about the
settlement in this period. Interestingly, artefacts recovered from the ploughed soil
–– chapter 8 ( 3 ): Kaupang – ‘Skíringssalr’––