The previous chapters have outlined the special topographical locations and distinct characteristics of the Viking-age towns, which were sharply contrasted with the main features of the surrounding rural Viking-age society. The case was made for a deliberate separation of the towns from the surrounding local societies not only geographically by their strategic locations in no man’s land but also legally through their own things and a separate jurisdiction and finally by the exclusive, restricted and controlled alien presence at these sites. Since these few Viking-age towns, actively developed and promoted by their respective rulers, were thus clearly the exception to the rule defined by the surrounding social structures, it was certainly not the result of, as Randsborg (1989: 191) suggested, ‘the economic and social development [that] led e.g. to the growth of market towns on the coasts’, reversing cause and effect in his conclusion. On the contrary, as will be demonstrated in what follows, their establishment took place against a background of economic backwardness and tenacious social development as instruments to accelerate local economic development. In other words, the towns became political, administrative and economic tools for a controlled influx of funds and innovations from abroad.

The Viking Age – traditionally framed by the historic raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne in Northumbria in 793 and the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings in 1066, and nowadays archaeologically set to c.750–1050 – was an era of major societal changes in Scandinavia that has fascinated generations of scholars and laypeople. This sweepingly transformative period led to the integration of this formerly pagan periphery of the European North into occidental Europe, as these societies became unified Christian kingdoms. One of the most central fields to Viking-age archaeology – alongside research problems relating to the Christianisation of Scandinavia and the intertwined processes of state formation, or more specifically the development ‘From Tribe to State’ (Mortensen & Rasmussen 1991) – is the initial and unprecedented dawn of urbanisation in Scandinavia, which was distinctly different from the archetypes of ancient towns of the former Roman Empire. As novel centres of trade and crafts, these emerging Viking-age towns were inseparably linked to the spheres of economy, maritime connectivity, and patronage.

Finally, one might ask why Hedeby, after such a successful transformation as described in the previous chapter, which enabled the town to persist well into the eleventh century, was abandoned after all and finally relocated to present-day Slesvig. Despite comparable topographical conditions – just as Hedeby was located by the Haddeby Noor, Slesvig emerged by the (today silted) Holmer Noor – it is striking that the old town of Slesvig, which was delimited by its 12-hectare pocket-shaped peninsula on the northern shore of the inner Schlei fjord, was in fact only half the size of the urban area of Hedeby. Previously, three partly interdependent main hypotheses for the shift from Viking-age Hedeby to high medieval Slesvig had been put forward: (1) two subsequent devastating attacks in 1050 and 1066 recorded in the written sources; (2) the spatial integration of economical, administrational, and ecclesiastical functions, together with the assumption that the latter two already pre-existed at Slesvig and constituted a pull factor within a ‘second wave of urbanisation’; and (3) the assumed preceding economic decline of Hedeby as an emporium, which had already commenced in the late tenth century (cf. Hilberg 2007: 189–90; 2016).

One of the primary proto-urban centres of the early medieval world in Northern Europe was without a doubt Hedeby. Hedeby was situated on the border between Scandinavia and Continental Europe, connecting the North Sea with the Baltic Sea by a portage. Its success as a trading hub is inseparably connected to the destruction of the emporium Reric – situated in an area controlled by the West Slavic Obotrites – by the Danish king Godfred in 808 (Tummuscheit 2003). In order to control and tax the ongoing trade, Reric’s merchants were relocated to Hedeby. However, while in the contemporary historical sources Reric was addressed as an emporium, Hedeby was rather referred to as a portus (Kalmring 2010a: 42–7).

As shown in the previous chapters, only a juxtaposition of the local, traditional Viking-age societies with the innovative, largely detached cosmopolitan Viking-age towns may help to resolve the seemingly incompatible scholarly views of the Scandinavians as ‘brutal Vikings and gentle traders’ (Staecker 1997). This ambivalence is not so much a question of two sides of the same coin but instead represents two very different phenomena that need to be treated separately in future Viking-age research (see also Hillerdal 2009: 253). Apart from this appeal to the research community, another frequent inaccuracy also needs to be addressed when discussing early Scandinavian urbanisation: for far too long, Viking-age towns have been perceived as monolithic entities, a perception that neglected their considerable chronological depth of up to 250 years, suggesting dynamically changing conditions rather than static idleness. In fact, a few scholars reached and shared this insight several decades ago, as they tried to tackle this very problem: Hodges (1982: 50–2) introduced development phases, which discerned between type-A (seasonal beach markets), type-B (classical emporia) and type-C emporia (regional administrative centres).

By deliberately promoting certain trading sites, rulers extended their regalia rights in terms of the control and taxation of long-distance trade (Sawyer 1986: 73), a development that was initiated by providing a few selected places with a very distinct legal status that separated them from the context of ordinary society and triggered the transformation into early towns. Yet what this legal status entailed is hard to ascertain due to the dearth of contemporary sources, while in the case of later, high medieval law codes, one can only speculate about possible older origins. However, a closer look – both at written sources and archaeological evidence – reveals a whole range of clues that can help illuminate the existence and nature of this important judicial framework, which was an important part of the distinctiveness of these towns.

As discussed in previous chapters, the spatial exclusion of Viking-age towns from the surrounding rural societies can be complemented by strong arguments for a separate jurisdiction enforced by the king’s reeve, with laws distinctly different from the provincial laws, as reflected in the later high medieval landskapslagar. This can be demonstrated both archaeologically through evidence of custom boundaries and historically through suggested analogies with contemporary continental and Anglo-Saxon trade legislation as well as from the substratum of later Scandinavian law codes. During this period, not only would the royal officials of merchant towns all over Europe have been responsible for defence issues and judicial matters but their primary responsibility would have been the collection of customs duties for their royal patrons. It was the kings who, acting in the background, purposely granted space for international trade in their realms and provided the compulsory judicial and administrative framework. However, as will be demonstrated in the following, this space provided for free trade in Viking-age towns was at the same time a very strictly restricted one.