Aggersborg

The ring-fortress at Aggersborg, built c.970, was one of the most impressive monuments in Viking-Age Scandinavia. An earth and timber circular rampart, itself some nine metres across, and broken by four gateways at the cardinal points of the compass, enclosed an area 242 metres in diameter. An eight-metre wide berm and a ditch, four to five metres across and over a metre deep, surrounded the whole site. Inside, things were, if anything, more striking. From the gateways, axial timber-paved roads divided the fortress into quadrants, each one of which contained twelve identical timber houses, each thirty-two metres long, gathered in groups of four around small interior courtyards. Situated at a natural crossroads on the Limfjord in northern Jutland, Denmark, the main sailing route between the Baltic and the North Sea, Aggersborg would have dominated the landscape. And yet perhaps only ten to fifteen years after its construction it was abandoned, along with the other fortresses of its type scattered across southern Scandinavia at Trelleborg, Fyrkat, Nonnebakken and, possibly, Borgeby

Ancient history · Archaeology · Berm · Ditch · Fortress (chess · Geography · Moss · Settlement (finance · Viking Age · Geology · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History

• Borgring. Uncovering the strategy for a Viking Age ring fortress in Denmark

  Open Access•Jonas Christensen, Aoife Daly et al.•Danish Journal of Archaeology•2021

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