Viking Age Ring Fortresses

I visited two of five inscribed Viking Ring Fortresses, the unknown Borgring and the famous Trelleborg on my short trip to Denmark. On the way from Copenhagen to Stevn Klint, just outside the city of Koge, I made a brief stop to see Borgring which was just next to the highway exit. After parked my car on the empty carpark, I found out that I was the only soul, no staff, no entry restriction, so I just entered to see something equally empty! Borgring was like a big playground for kids with big circle ring sandbox. There was nothing to see, no hill, no turf, only some metal or wooden frames and columns doting the whole place. My thought at that moment was “Is this a joke?” before walked back to my car.

Few days later when I drove back from Odense, I made a detour to Trelleborg. At first, I want to skip it after seeing Borgring, but after searching some photo in internet, at least Trelleborg should be more interesting. When I reached Trelleborg, the museum was closed on that day, but thanked to one comment in google review, the fortress could be visited every day via small passage next to museum building. The first thing I saw was the long wooden house, I assumed that this building should be a reconstruction of Viking houses that once located inside and surround the fortress. The boat shaped building and roof line were really interesting. Then I walked …

There may have been a time when viking sites were underrepresented on the world heritage list but by now I think they are already overrepresented. Firstly the viking period is a rather limited era and has already 6 sites or more on the list. I haven't visited all of them but I have visited Jelling and Hedeby (and St. Kilda but there the Viking connections is not central). While I found both visits worthwhile and interesting, in both there is very little to see and they need a lot of explanation and imagination and I am not so sure at all that they really need to be on the list.

The other important viking places are Birka where seems vey little original to see but a few tumuli, and also the sites on Greenland and L'Anse aux meadows are more interesting about the early exploration of the western hemisphere than about their scant remains. 

So there seems no need to add another site that doesn't add much and is possibly even less interesting. When I travelled around Denmark I felt that visiting Jelling should be suffice for viking sites since it is the most important viking site and already very modest as a WHS. But on the way from Kopenhagen and the eastern island the Jutland I travelled through the nice city of Odense where I stayed for one night to explore the old town and the Andersen connection (I found the new museum/park about him less interesting …

We know the Vikings mostly for their formidable sailing and discovery of new worlds, but these five fortresses show them as nation builders and Christianizers of the Danes. I choose Trelleborg for my visit and will describe getting there on public transport and the overall visitor experience as I found it in August 2023. Regarding the question of whether this is WH material, I did some desk research as well.

The Visit

Trelleborg can be easily done as a day trip from Copenhagen Airport. There are hourly direct trains to Slagelse (1h15) and additional connections when changing at Copenhagen Central Station. The train also makes a stop in Roskilde, so you could take in another WHS along the way. Instructions for getting to the site by bus from Slagelse station are complex and the rides are not too frequent (and not exist at all during school holidays). So you have to take a taxi to cover the final 6 km, or walk. The latter is doable (I walked both ways), but not very enjoyable as you mostly walk on the shoulder of a B-road with frequent traffic.

I arrived around 10.40 and found a fair number of cars already in the sizeable parking lot. It seems to be a popular destination for families on holiday, and there were foreign visitors from the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. The summer entrance fee is 100 DKR, which converts to a fairly high 13,50 EUR. The income seems to mostly go …

Viking ring fortresses (ringborge) might have been the eventual factor that prompted my all-Denmark trip by rental car in August 2021 (besides massive listening to "Viking neo-folk ambient music" in the previous months as a power-background while working...). Their simple, geometric shapes emanate some mystery, and, somewhat paradoxically, they are at the same time unobtrusive landmarks and witnesses of a golden Viking age of expansion and consolidation.

Introduction

As of now, there are five registered ringborge in Denmark, and they are all part of this upcoming (2022) nomination. They are neatly laid out as a string that binds together the whole country from the islands to the continent: Borgring on the eastern coast of Sjælland, Trelleborg on the Storebælt, Nonnebakken in Odense on Fyn, Fyrkat at the end of the Mariager fjord in Northern Jutland, and Aggersborg overlooking the Limfjord from the island of Vendsyssel-Thy (the northernmost part of Jutland - yes, it's an island!). There might be some connection also to the Swedish Trelleborg, which would then be a natural continuation of this string towards the east, on the other side of the Øresund, but as far as I have understood still nothing has come out in that sense. Such an arrangement is not haphazard, of course, but, then as nowadays, considering also Jelling (which fits between Nonnebakken and Fyrkat), it follows the geographical and political backbone of Denmark: remarkably, all ring fortresses lie in the vicinities of the major motorway routes (E20/E45) traversing the country, …

I visited this tWHS in July 2016 on the way from Jelling to Roskilde. I was very lucky to visit when the largest Vikings festival of Scandinavia was taking place. Viking sites are not the most iconic sites on the list and usually it is quite hard to appreciate the few remains without any context. Usually I'm not to keen on visiting sites when there is a local feast or festival taking place but on this occasion I really enjoyed it. There were several tents next to the remains of the Trelleborg fortress. These were made out of animal hides and all those taking part during the 4 day festival lived in conditions which most probably were simalar to those of their ancestors. Children played with all sorts of traditional games with leather or wooden toys or simply played bare foot in the mud close to the mounds. Finding this atmosphere at about 8am in the morning instead of another empty viking site really helped to appreciate the site proper. There is a small museum with one of the most important remains - the Trelleborg viking shield - as well as a reconstructed longhouse. The latter was built in 1942 as a model of the longhouses inside the Trelleborg fortress. Although the reconstruction is not an accurate rendering it still serves its purpose of shedding some light on the exterior and interior elements of a longhouse. The Trelleborg longhouses were almost identical - 30 metres long featuring vaulted walls made …