by Neil Oliver
Timber from the burial chamber inside the mound has been dated precisely to 958, the supposed year of Gorm’s death. The church and the little burial chamber in its floor may even have been built at the same time — so that the whole thing might have been designed to serve, in part, as a mausoleum. That first church was destroyed by fire, as were several others in the years to come — but always rebuilt.
The building on the site today was erected sometime around the year 1100. The interior has a surprisingly modern feel, the result of a renovation to mark the turn of the millennium in 2000. The floor of the central aisle and in front of the altar is dominated by a representation of a Cross, drawn in a single unbroken line of black Swedish granite. Gorm’s bones were absent from the church for a long time while scientists from the National Museum subjected them to various tests. But on 30 August 2000 they were returned amid great ceremony and then buried, for a third time, in a metal box inside a concrete chamber in front of the chancel. The precise location is marked by a zigzag of sterling silver incorporated into the design of the Cross.
The Jelling rune stones are in the churchyard, protected now by specially designed reinforced glass cases. The lesser of the pair was put up by Gorm himself, to honour his late wife. It bears runes declaring: ‘King Gorm made this monument in memory of Thyre, his wife, Denmark’s grace.’ Here, then, is the first mention of Denmark as a nation.
I was granted the peculiar privilege of stepping inside the larger case, so as to get up close to the larger stone, the one raised by Harald. (I say stepping inside, but in fact it was more a case of crawling through a tiny bronze hatch in one side-wall of the compartment before taking my place, albeit briefly, as part of the exhibit.) Centuries of exposure to the Danish elements have not been kind to the carvings. Once brightly painted — probably in red, white and blue to emphasise the designs — the surfaces seem almost worn smooth now. It is only from certain angles that the work of the sculptor can be discerned, far less appreciated, but once your eyes adjust to what they are supposed to be seeing, the effect is mesmerising.
The stone itself is an unshaped block much the same size as a small car and on one face are the runes, dedicated to Harald’s parents: ‘King Harald ordered this monument to be built in memory of Gorm, his father, and Thyre, his mother.’
On another large facet of the boulder is a second statement in runes, this one altogether more boastful and more significant: ‘The Harald who conquered for himself the whole of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.’
Above that single line of runes is what is regarded by many as the oldest depiction of Jesus Christ in northern Europe. He is in the familiar posture of crucifixion, but rather than appearing on a Cross he seems rather to be spread-eagled among looping swirls of ribbon, or rope. These bindings are usually interpreted as the tangled branches of a thorn bush — so that here Christ is emerging from the snares and entrapments of the pagan religion. He is therefore triumphant over the old faith.
It is a wonderful carving, full of life and imagination despite the erosion of a thousand and more winters. That it still has real resonance for modern Danes is demonstrated by the inclusion of the design on the first, inside page of the Danish Passport — so that their twenty-first-century nationhood is symbolised by the work of a Viking artist. The Jelling monuments — mounds, stones and the church — made clear to all who saw them that there, and in Harald’s name, religion and power came together to legitimise the rule of the king. The large stone is known today as ‘Denmark’s birth certificate’.
For a man born and raised as a pagan, Harald Bluetooth was at great pains to declare his conversion to Christianity to all and sundry. If he was proud of uniting Denmark and Norway under his rule, then his conversion of his people mattered just as much, or perhaps more. But while he clearly wanted the world to believe the ‘Christianising’ of the Danes was all his own work, the truth was quite different, and rather more interesting.
In his Res Gestae Saxonicae Sive Annalium Libri Tres — ‘The Deeds of the Saxons, or the Three Books of Annals’ — the Saxon historian and chronicler Widukind described Harald Bluetooth as ‘eager to listen but late to speak’. He was referring to a key moment in the legendary story of the advent of Christianity to Denmark, when Harald witnessed a lively debate among his subjects. ‘Once at a gathering, where the king was present, an argument broke out,’ wrote Widukind. ‘The Danes did not deny that Christ was a god. But they claimed that there were other gods which were mightier than him and showed mortals bigger signs and wonders.’
Hearing this, Harald kept his own counsel and simply watched as a priest, named Poppo, stepped forward to declare that there was ‘only one true God with His son, our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that all other gods were only trolls and not gods’. Finally moved to speak, Harald asked the priest if he was willing to risk his life to prove what he had said. As might be expected of a priest with a starring role in an important moment in European history, Poppo swiftly said yes.
There are two slightly different versions of what happened next, one from Widukind and another from the eleventh-century German scholar Adam of Bremen. According to Widukind, Harald ordered his men to heat an iron bar in a fire. Once it was glowing red, Harald told the priest to demonstrate both his faith, and the power of his god, by plucking the iron from the coals with his bare hands. In Adam’s account it was an iron gauntlet that was heated, but in both versions the outcome is the same: Poppo calmly picks up the metal and holds it until the king tells him to put it down. His hands are unmarked and he has suffered no discomfort. Harald is so impressed he accepts baptism on the spot.
The story of Harald and Poppo is told in pictorial form on a set of gilt plaques on display in the medieval church of Tamdrup, in Jutland. Lost for centuries, they were rediscovered in the 1900s, nailed around the sides of the pulpit but long since painted over and forgotten. The originals, made no earlier than 1200 and possibly older, have been restored now, and are on display in the National Museum. Today a set of carefully crafted replicas decorates the front of the church altar. On one of the plaques, Poppo peacefully endures the ordeal by fire (while wearing what must be the iron gauntlet described by Adam of Bremen but which looks, for all the world, like an oven glove). Another depicts Harald, naked to the waist and standing inside a large barrel, while Poppo performs his baptism.
Harald’s claims have clearly mattered to many Danes for centuries, and the story would have been both exciting and comforting for generations of the faithful. But there were other factors at play during Harald’s rule and one or two of those are likely to have had greater bearing on his decisions than any miraculous priest.
The fact is that while Harald Bluetooth reigned in Denmark, the land beyond his southern border, Saxony, was ruled by the Christian Otto the Great, son of Henry the Fowler who had troubled and threatened Gorm the Old. Otto I was King of Germany and Italy and, just like Charlemagne before him, was made emperor by the Pope. His coronation in Rome, in AD 962 by Pope John XII, marked the founding of the Holy Roman Empire. By any stretch of the imagination, he was a challenging opponent to have and Harald was right to suspect Denmark was high on his list of likely additions to the Empire.
While he remained pagan, in the face of a Christian emperor blessed by the Pope, the threat of invasion was very real. But by taking the simple step of accepting Otto’s religion — at least outwardly — he made it impossible for his foe to cross his borders on the pretext of bringing the Word of God to the heathen Danes.
When it came to conversion, it was pragmatism and politics all the way. The Scandinavians might have taken on the new faith to keep up appearances in the wider, ever-changing world — but that is not to say the old ways disappeared overnight. While the Vikings in Iceland chose Christianity in AD 1000, it was largely to end the conflict that had built up between the old religion and the new. Settlers had arrived from a wide variety of homelands, including Christians from Scotland and Ireland. W
hen the matter came before the Althing for a decision, the law speaker, Thorgeirr, spent a sleepless night before making his pronouncement. For the sake of unity among the people, he said there should be one law and one faith for all Iceland. But while this one faith would be Christian, he said, it would still be permissible for Icelanders to eat horsemeat, abandon unwanted infants to the elements and to continue making sacrifices to their old gods as long as such practices were carried out in secret.
Harald Bluetooth’s claims of having Christianised the Danes in about 965 are further undermined (and deeply at that) by the results of recent archaeological excavations in the town of Ribe. The cathedral that dominates the town today was built between the 1100s and the 1500s, but it stands on the footprints of earlier church buildings. Archaeologists have previously found settlement traces in Ribe dating from early in the eighth century, with houses built on long narrow plots laid out along a street running roughly parallel to the river. It is therefore one of the oldest towns in all of Scandinavia and there is evidence of the presence there of craftsmen making combs, shoes, pottery, bronze tools and amber jewellery. Large volumes of manure testify to many cattle as well, suggesting a livestock market was in operation from time to time.
More recently, archaeologists have concentrated their efforts on plots of land lying in the shadow of the cathedral itself. Fire had destroyed a number of buildings, providing an unexpected opportunity to investigate the foundation levels. What has been revealed is evidence of a large cemetery, and some of the burials it contains pre-date that venerable building by several centuries.
Dig director Troels Bo Jensen, of the Sydvestjyske Museum, explained that the graves were aligned east to west, as dictated by the Christian tradition. (At the time of the second coming, Jesus Christ is supposed to arrive out of the east — and when he does so, the faithful dead are expected to come back to life and sit up in their graves to greet their redeemer. In order to make sure they are facing in the right direction when the moment comes, Christians are traditionally buried lying on their backs, with their heads pointing west and their feet pointing east.)
Similarly revealing is the absence of grave goods. While pagan Vikings went into the ground accompanied by all the possessions they might need and want in the afterlife, Christians were instructed to face their Maker empty-handed. Since they had come into life with nothing, it was only right and proper they should leave the same way. For a while, in the early days of the new faith, there was a blurring of boundaries and a mixing of traditions, and some early Christians were buried with keepsakes of one kind or another. But as the faith took proper hold, and was formalised in all its details, the dead were simply wrapped in plain funeral shrouds before being laid inside their coffins, arms by their sides or crossed on their chests.
Pagan burials were often within settlements, with no clear demarcation of the territory of the living and that of the dead. Christian burial grounds by contrast were places set apart from everyday life, in specially consecrated ground separated from the land of the living by a wall or ditch that acted as a ritual as well as physical boundary. The discovery of just such a boundary line around the Ribe cemetery is further evidence of Christianity.
What is truly startling about some of the newly discovered graves, however, is their age. Troels explained that radiocarbon dates from timber and other organic materials recovered so far reveal some of them went into the ground as early as AD 850 — meaning there were Christians living and dying in Denmark the best part of a century before Harald Bluetooth was even born. ‘It is a privilege to be working here,’ said Troels. ‘We learnt at school that it was Harald who made Denmark Christian. What we are finding here is rewriting the history of our country.’
Some of the graves excavated by Troels and his team are quite unique. While they have some of the hallmarks of Christian burial — wooden coffins, bodies laid out flat on their backs and orientated east to west — there are also unexpected discoveries like ship’s rivets. Explanations are yet to be found for their presence in burial contexts but it seems possible that some of Ribe’s early Christians were choosing to cling on to elements of the old ways, the iron rivets suggesting coffins styled as boats, or even made from boats.
Although granted Christian burials, much else about the occupants of the graves resists discovery. Isotope analysis of teeth may help determine whether they were Danish born and bred, or immigrants from elsewhere. Ribe was established as a trading town and would have attracted foreigners from the very beginning, Christians among them. Some of the dead may have been merchants from England, or other parts of Europe, who died while overseas and were then granted the appropriate burial rites by like-minded family or friends. Such an explanation would work best if the burials were scarce, however, and excavation so far has identified at least 40 Christians. Troels believes they will shortly have over 100 such graves in the vicinity of the cathedral, and so the possibility of a Christian community established within Ribe by the middle of the ninth century is looking increasingly likely.
Given that Ansgar, the so-called ‘Apostle of the North’ (no doubt accompanied by others of his ilk), was apparently at work in Denmark from the 820s onwards, it is not unreasonable to allow for the presence of converts by 850 — even if they were subject to persecution by the likes of Gorm and his son. As well as taking steps to safeguard his kingdom, Harald was also responding to a cultural and spiritual change that was affecting all of north-western Europe. By the time those first Christians were being buried in Ribe, Denmark was already emerging as a rich, modern European nation. Danish mints were producing coins on the model of those being made elsewhere. Cargo was on the move in ships built to the very latest designs.
Christianity also brought literacy, the special magic that made words permanent. What had been merely ephemeral thoughts and speech could now be transformed into something lasting, that might be copied and circulated. A literate king — or one who at least had literate people in his service — could make his wishes and demands known far and wide. Literacy provided the basis for written contracts, laws and treaties and so enabled kings, and therefore governments, to ensure their wishes were understood and their orders obeyed. As a free gift that came alongside baptism, it was one worth having. Harald was doing no more than move with the times. Since he was surrounded by Christian kings it made sense for him to accept the new religion as well.
While the pagan religion was relatively tolerant of other gods, Christianity would brook no dissent. Accordingly, the obvious signs of the old ways had to be put out sight at best, or utterly destroyed at worst. So while the odd bit of blood-letting might have been allowed to go on behind closed doors, as well as the consumption of proscribed foods, the sacred sites dedicated to pagan gods had no place in a Christian nation. With that in mind, the obliteration of the ancient ship setting at Jelling would have been a prerequisite for Harald. And once the bones of Gorm the Old had been removed from their mound and rehoused in the body of the kirk, then the green hills could be tolerated as the cenotaphs they were — empty monuments to a buried past.
Harald also demonstrated his power and prestige by investing time and resources in large-scale building projects in his kingdom. While matters spiritual were being taken care of at Jelling, more earthly concerns were addressed by embarking upon the creation of an infrastructure.
Denmark already had what amounted to a main road. The Hœrvejen or ‘Army Road’ was an ancient feature, some of it dating back thousands of years. Like a spine, it ran north to south along the length of the Jutland peninsula, following the high ground and fording rivers near their sources where they were still shallow. For the most part it was just a trackway, defined only by the footsteps and hoofprints of people and animals, but where the ground was naturally soft or waterlogged a surface of timber and brushwood was laid down to provide firm, dry footing.
Viborg and Jelling, two of Denmark’s oldest towns, lay on the Hœrvejen, and Harald would have been accustomed to travelli
ng along it on the approach to his capital. It is therefore highly likely that he was the king (and it must have been a king) who commissioned the Ravning Edge bridge, a grandiose crossing on the Vejle River about six miles south of Jelling. Built sometime around AD 980, it was over 460 feet long and nearly 20 feet wide. More than 1,000 oak posts supported a wooden superstructure capable of taking a weight of almost six tons. By any standards it was an impressive construction but the fact that it was built in Viking Age Scandinavia is breathtaking. Perhaps Harald wanted to arrive at Jelling in style and he had the power to make that happen, even if it meant harvesting whole forests and monopolising the labour of hundreds of skilled tradesmen for weeks and months on end.
At the same time as he was having his bridge built, Harald also ordered the construction of a series of huge fortresses, known collectively as the royal fortresses or the Trelleborgs. There are at least four of them in Denmark: Trelleborg in western Sjælland (the first to be investigated and the site that gives its name to the group); Aggersborg in northern Jutland; Fyrkat in north-east Jutland and Nonnebakken on the Island of Fyn. A site identified at Borgeby, in Skåne, also known as Trelleborg, may well belong to the collection as well.
Like the Ravning Edge bridge, the royal fortresses were symbols of power as well as constructions with a practical purpose. All of them conform to the same plan and are so similar, one to another, they might have been built from a blueprint. Each has a perfectly circular interior enclosed by a massive upstanding bank and external ditch. Four entrances pierce the defences, at the cardinal points of the compass, and are connected to each other by two perfectly straight streets that cross at right-angles at the geometric centre of the circle. Each equal quarter of the interior contained a square of longhouses, their long sides gently curved and suggesting the outlines of ships’ hulls.
