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SUMMARY:

AKSEL E. CHRISTENSEN

[Mellem vikingetid og valdemarstid
Et forsøg paa en syntese]

(12, II, 54-56)

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THE FIRST decades of the present century saw a breakthrough within the study of the Nordic Viking period and Danish early medieval history. Applying thorough methodical criticism the Weibull brothers from Lund and Halvdan Koht, the Norwegian, disestablished the authority of Saxo (Grammaticus) and Snorre (Sturlason) as the oracles of a historically true tradition. At the same time Erik Arup was taking the lead in the formation of a new synthesis on an evolutional basis: influenced from the south the Danish society went through a slow development from the primitive level of a Viking peasant-and-pirate society to European standards in "the golden age of the Valdemars" (Erslev 1898). In Arup's view trade, economic expansion, and urbanization were brought to Denmark, first by the Frisians, then by Westphalians and Saxons, and later by towns like Lübeck and other ports on the Baltic. At the same time Christianity - through the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen - brought not only cultural progress but also social organization to the country, the church acting as instructor and organizer for the kings. Hanseatic historiographers, first and foremost Fr. Rörig, advanced the same theory, stressing the cultural impact made in the barbaric North by the German merchants.

Within specific fields the present author has begun a re-appraisal of this theory (see the articles mentioned in notes 38, 13, and 45). Arguments are adduced that not until the end of the age of the Valdemars, did Lübeck and the other German Baltic towns come to predominate over the earlier Scandinavian trade; it is also argued that the theory of Frisian trade predominance in the North and in the Baltic in the Viking period is an assumption, and that urban development in Denmark was unbroken until the end of the Valdemar period, when stagnation set in. In the present article this view is outlined in a general synthesis sketch.

In each case the point of departure for the re-appraisal is the excavation since the mid-1930s of the four grand Viking fortresses: Trelleborg, Aggersborg, Fyrkat, and Nonnebakken. Their size, their ingenious geometrical planning and mathematical precision, evidence the existence towards the end of the Viking period of a concentration of power and a technical level that must needs revolutionize former views on the Danish Viking society. This fact, especially when taken together with the evidence provided by the research round the theory of H. Pirenne about the interruption of Mediterranean trade by the Arab expansion (especially the numismatic studies of Sture Bolin), will lead to the conclusion that the Viking period constitutes a military, political, and economic acme in the North. The prejudiced accounts by the Western clergy of the Nordic seafarers stress pillage and plunder to the complete disregard of the peaceful activities, which come out very clearly in Arab and Byzantine sources. It was mainly the Viking Northmen who kept open, via the Russian rivers and the Baltic, the route between Eastern cultural centres and Western Europe; on the strength of the Trelleborg culture, inspired from the East, they have surpassed other Western regions as regards technical skill and organization.

The re-appraisal of the Viking period must also, of course, affect the views on the following period. The direct Nordic connection with the Orient came to an end during the first half of the 11th century, and Denmark had to turn west and take up her place in the outskirts of the Western culture group. A pioneer in this re-orientation was Svend Estridsen (1047-74), the Danish King who is characterized as a kind of Janus, at one and the same time being the last Viking king and a "learned monarch" who prepared his country to take up an independent position within the Church of Rome. If Adam of Bremen, the Hamburg-church historiographer, is interpreted with due regard to his situation and intention, clear evidence will be found that he ranked Scandinavians as superior with regard to shipping, trade, and prosperity; he considers the Danish king the initiator of the development and the independency of the Danish church. The patriarchate system planned by archbishop Adalbert, is nothing but a preventive attempt, and King Svend responded by preventing him from visiting Danish territory. A close contact with the Holy See was obtained by Svend, and at his death an independent Scandinavian ecclesiastical province had been carefully outlined, though it was not established until 1103. 

The construction of a Danish national church during Svend's reign was accompanied by an incipient re-modelling of the monarchy; this was continued by his five sons, who reigned successively until 1134. The viking idea of an army king disappears, and it is possible to follow the gradual steps in the process by which the kings adopted social functions according to the pattern of Western Europe: they establish a regular monetary system based on "feudal coinage"; they install the king as the supreme judicial authority and guarantee for peace and security in the country; they organize a royal prerogative system, etc. As generous grantors and ready protectors the kings secured the support of the church, at the same time exalting royalty by adding to it a sacral element. In 1101 King Knud " the Saint" was canonized, and in 1170 King Valdemar the First had Knud Lavard, his father, canonized and Knud, his son, crowned as hereditary king at a double ceremony in Ringsted Church, which was being re-built with the purpose of serving as the burial church of the royal family.

Art and learning, however, present the best picture of the re-orientation towards the Western civilization. In the reign of Svend Estridsen the construction of monumental churches in stone is begun; Svend's sons, the bishops, and the magnates took up the lead, the 12th century becoming the great period of church building; the old wooden churches are replaced by stone edifices, and new churches appear; in the beginning the material is stone, but after 1150 the use of brick after the Lombardic fashion increases steadily. Initiative was indigenous, but inspiration came from European cultural centres: the Rhine and the Channel, France and Italy. Church architecture and ornamentation reflect the conflict between changing foreign influences and domestic tradition. The Romanesque frescos represent something new in the all-European style, whereas church sculpture (portals, fonts, etc.), and especially the so-called "golden altars" (gilt metal altars),in their imported motifs bespeak the ornamental power of the old Nordic workshop traditions.

It is evident that the old western trade routes along the Rhine and the Channel, and - later - the pilgrim roads to France, Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, have yielded the Danes their cultural loans; loans from England decrease while French loans increase; loans from the adjacent Germany are peculiarly scant.

The change in cultural orientation is most striking within the field of fortification; there is no continued tradition from the technically perfect Trelleborgs to be traced in their successors, the modest "mottes" and citadels of pure Western European type.

As early as 1926 Poul Nørlund, the distinguished expert on Danish medieval culture on European background, declared that the time about 1100 separated two periods, not only as regarded style, but also as regarded civilization. Such a distinction can now be discerned not only in cultural relations but in all social structures, and it can be dated farther back in time; even Svend Estridsen reacted to the termination of Scandinavia's favourable position as an intermediary between the Orient and the Occident.

With reference to his 1957 description in Scandinavia and the Advance of the Hanseatics the author develops and emphasizes his refutation of the dogma that the economic, cultural, and political expansion under the Valdemars was due to the activity of German merchants and the founding of Lübeck. The German pioneers did not arrive in an undeveloped area; on the contrary they found a prospering society, comprising organized trade, urban development, architecture and art with a Western European stamp, and scholarship nurtured by Western seats of learning. Evidence of this is provided by monuments and records of the time and even by German historiographers from Adam of Bremen to Arnold of Lübeck. The explanation is that Scandinavian contact with Western Europe was both faster and closer by sea than by land through Northern Germany.

The political development forms no contrast to all this. The Danish church possessed in its archbishops leaders of high mark; this holds true also of Asser, the first archbishop of Lund (bishop in 1089, archbishop 1103-37). Uncritical application of narrative sources has often thrown him in the shade of his successors; his pioneer work, however, is incontestable, and the expression "boorish as a Wend" (Herbord) is not to be taken literally, but must be interpreted in its context as wanting to contrast the simplicity of the exterior with inner qualities such as knowledge, righteousness, piety, and especially persuasiveness. Viewed from the outside Denmark may seem weak in the 12th century, but the weakness is on the surface only: i.e. the difficulties in adapting the new monarchy, and the discord in the royal family. In actual fact the Danish church kept up its independence of the supremacy of Hamburg, and the oath of fealty to the German emperor remained no more than a formality.

The final conclusion must then be that the period from Svend Estridsen to the Valdemars should not be regarded as a period of decline and weakness; on the contrary it has proved to be an age of fruitful re-adjustment, a prerequisite of the Valdemarian epoch whose grandeur must be restricted accordingly. 

Translated by Ernst Dupont