Jelling is a station town in South Jutland with 3,522 inhabitants
(2020), located in Jelling Parish approx. 10 kilometers northwest of
Vejle. The city is located 105 meters above sea level. Jelling is
located in Vejle Municipality and belongs to the Region of Southern
Denmark. The city is first and foremost famous for the Old Danish
monuments Jellingstenene.
Jelling Church is a rubble church
from approx. year 1100. There have previously been three wooden
churches on the site. Harald Bluetooth erected the first church on
the site probably as a tombstone of his father Gorm the Old.
The small Jelling stone was erected around the year 950 by Gorm the
Old over his wife Thyra Danebod. The large Jelling stone was erected
by Gorm's son Harald Bluetooth around the year 965 as a memorial to
his deceased parents Gorm and Thyra and with a statement that
"Harald united Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian". The
latter stone has also been called Denmark's baptismal certificate.
The Jelling monuments also include the two huge burial mounds,
where it is believed that Gorm and Thyra were buried. These are
among the largest in Denmark.
Jelling is located northwest of Vejle and north of the upper part of Grejsdalen. South of Jelling is Fårup Lake, which i.a. is part of Natura 2000 area no. 81 Øvre Grejs Ådal. Just north of the lake is Jelling Forest, which rises like a sloping forest. The forest is located on the north side of Grejsdalen, which extends all the way from the west of the lake to Vejle. Above the ridge it is relatively flat, and here also begins the city of Jelling itself. To the west, the landscape is characterized by open, flat areas with fields and a small plantation. The same applies to the east, where you can also encounter some of Grejsdalen again. Jelling is located high up. The center of the city is located approx. 105 meters above sea level, and the town rises in relation to the rest of the surrounding countryside. This gives rise to the fact that you can see relatively far, and if you stand on one of the Jellinghøjene you can see all the way to Gadbjerg.
A burial mound was built in Jelling in the Bronze Age. In the middle of the 10th century, a grave from the Viking Age was embedded in what is now the north hill and the hill was raised by several meters in this context.
The pagan Viking leader Gorm the Old is considered (perhaps wrongly)
to be the first Danish king and unifier of Denmark. Older,
mythologically transmitted kings were probably regional rulers. The
accounts of Gorm written by Svend Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus in the
late 12th century are also legendary. The few contemporary sources about
Gorm are several rune stones, the most important being the Jelling
Stones. The older one, the so-called Thyrastein or small Jellingstein,
was set by Gorm for his wife Thyra Danebod. According to a description
published by Heinrich Rantzau in 1591, it was on the north hill. On this
stone Gorm is called king. In addition, the word DanmarkaR, Denmark, is
found there for the first time. With the north hill as the center, a
huge ship setting was probably created around 940. With a length of 356
m and a width of around 80 m, the Jelling ship setting is the largest
ship setting ever found.
During the first excavations in 1820, a
divided wooden chamber was found in the north hill, which is regarded as
a double grave. But it was mostly empty. All that was found was a small,
elaborately crafted silver cup, which is regarded as a key find of the
Jelling style, and the remains of a painted wooden box lined with
fabric. Dendrochronological studies dated the oak trunks from which the
burial chamber was built to 958/59, which agrees with the year of Gorm's
death given in the sources. The tomb was excavated from above and
cleared out just a few years later, as evidenced by a piece of wood used
to lift the capstone, dated 965. The bones were boiled and reburied
together with a valuable piece of clothing and a silver strap end, which
can probably be attributed to the same artist as the cup, under a newly
built wooden church south of the hill. The deceased was between 35 and
50 years old, about 175 cm tall and muscular. It is widely believed that
this was Gorm, whom his son, who had converted to Christianity, had
reburied from the burial mound in the center of his new church.[6] The
inscription on the large Jelling stone that Harald Bluetooth exhibited
for his parents Gorm and Thyra also supports this assumption. The
remains were reinterred in the church at the site in 2000. The location
near the chancel arch is marked with a silver marker.
The
question of the whereabouts of Thyra's remains has not been resolved. It
is possible that the remains of those who presumably died before her
husband were too decayed to be reburied. Perhaps reburial in a Christian
church was also forbidden, since the deceased had rejected Christianity.
At least that's what Thor's hammer on the Læborg rune stone suggests,
which the rune master Rafnunga-Tofi had erected in memory of Þorwi,
drotning sina, Thorwi/Thyra, his mistress or queen. Presumably the same
Rafnunga-Tofi recorded on two other rune stones that he built a hill for
Thyra.
Gorm's son, Harald Bluetooth, only became king at the age of about 40
and was baptized in 960. After that he probably commissioned that huge
rune stone, which is called Haraldstein or the baptismal font of
Denmark. This stone bears the inscription (A:) on three sides. King
Harald ordered this stone to be erected in memory of Gorm his father and
Thyra his mother. The Harald who submitted all of Denmark (B:) and
Norway (C:) and made the Danes Christians. The stone shows the oldest
depiction of Christ in Denmark. The cross-shaped outstretched arms refer
to the crucifixion, but Christ is not nailed to a cross, but surrounded
by tendrils that may represent a tree of life. He is also dressed in a
knee-length robe. A contemporary parallel to the depiction of a clothed
crucifix is found in the Romanesque figure of Christ found in
Hermannsburg. Christ does not appear as a sufferer and victim, but as a
powerful ruler.
Harald's main residence was probably in Jelling,
which he expanded from 964 according to dendrochronological findings.
His buildings included a 1440 m long palisade, which enclosed a 12.5 ha
large, trapezoidal castle complex that was largely undeveloped inside.
In its center was the north hill, the eastern and western sides are
probably laid out parallel to the ship setting. He had a wooden church
built south of the hill - possibly on the site of an older royal hall -
in which he buried his father around 965. Around the same time, the
layering of the southern hill of turf and peat began, the center of
which lies on the main axis of the ship settlement, but this was
partially built over. At 10 m high and 70 m in diameter, this mound is
the largest man-made mound in Denmark from the Viking Age, and it
probably took years to build. It was never used as a burial mound.
However, its importance is shown by the fact that the large Jelling
stone was erected in front of the church exactly in the middle between
the hills on the main axis of the nave. According to the Danish
archaeologist Klaus Ebbesen, the south hill was a memorial to Harald's
mother Thyra, who died elsewhere and was not buried in Jelling. The
south hill may also have served as a representative thing place. In any
case, the court complex of Jelling in its second construction phase can
be considered a place of representation parallel to the Ottonian royal
palaces, with which Harald presented himself as the rightful king of
Denmark and Norway and Christian ruler by the grace of God, and
therefore on an equal footing with Otto the Great, whose kingdom Denmark
threatened from the south. The simultaneous reinforcement of the
Danewerk fits in with this.
Apparently born in 965 to Christian parents, Sven Gabelbart was the third son of Harald Bluetooth and the leader of a pagan backlash. King Harald was defeated in the power struggle between father and son. During a naval battle, apparently off Bornholm, Harald Bluetooth was wounded and managed to escape to the Pomeranian coast. According to Adam von Bremen's chronicle written in 1074, he died there either on November 1, 985 or 986 in Jomsburg. The royal body was transported to Denmark and buried there. His son Sven, as the subsequent Danish king, may have been the builder of several Viking castles in the country - if these were not already commissioned by Harald, as radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology suggest, at least for Fyrkat, Trelleborg near Slagelse and Trelleborg in Scania. Jelling burned down only about 30 years after it was built. This ends the importance of Jelling as the farm was moved to Roskilde where Harald and Sven are also buried.
Although Jelling lost political importance, it remained as a
settlement, for which the wooden church was replaced by one of Denmark's
oldest stone churches before 1100.
After it was declared a World
Heritage Site in 1994, a museum was opened to the west of the monuments,
which has been a branch of the Danish National Museum since 2015 as the
Kongernes Jelling History and Experience Center. Jelling is also known
for the Jelling Music Festival, the third largest festival in Denmark,
which has been held annually since 1989.
The 12th-century chroniclers attributed the two burial mounds in Jelling to Gorm (South Mound) and his wife (North Mound). The hills were therefore called Gorms høj and Thyra høj for centuries. Historical interest in the historical evidence first appeared in the age of humanism: the educated governor Heinrich Rantzau had a writing by P. Lindemann published in 1591 with the first depictions of the burial mounds and the rune stone, and the imperial archivist Ole Worm described the stones and mounds in his Monumenta Danica in 1643. In 1704, King Friedrich IV had excavations on the north hill without results.
On the northern hill, a hollow formed through the opening around 965,
which filled with rainwater and was used as a drinking trough for
animals. This supposed well dried up in 1820. During the repairs, the
peasants came across the burial chamber. The Oldsagskommission, the
Royal Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities, then commissioned
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen and Finnur Magnússon with the first
scientific archaeological excavation in Jelling. Although they found the
chamber almost empty, they concluded from its size and the quality of
the few finds, especially the silver cup, that it was a royal tomb. Due
to the traditional name Thyra høj, it was assumed that the dead man
removed from the hill was Thyra. Not far away, near Viborg, is Mammen,
where an ornamental ax inlaid with silver wire, stylistically similar to
the Jelling style, was found.
After it was believed to have found
Thrya's tomb, the historically interested King Frederick VII had a
tunnel dug into the south hill under the direction of the archaeologist
Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae in 1861 in order to find Gorm's tomb.
However, only isolated stones and wooden objects were found, but no sign
of a burial chamber. The investigations then concentrated on the north
hill, but without bringing up much that was new. In 1941, when Denmark
was occupied by Nazi Germany, Ejnar Dyggve and Johannes Brøndsted from
the Danish National Museum undertook an excavation at the South Hill. On
the one hand, this was done out of archaeological interest, but also out
of concern that the Germans would dig there and steal the expected
treasures. With a wide-ranging cut, much of the mound was cleared away,
with the result that the mound was never used as a burial site. Wooden
constructions were found inside, the wood of which was felled according
to later investigations in 964 and which probably served as a point of
reference and building template when piling up the mound of turf and
turf, as well as some tools. Two rows of large stones were also
discovered which, along with other stones located on the site, were
identified as parts of a cairn. The archaeologists then assumed that
Gorm was buried next to Thyra in the north mound.
1978/79 excavations in the church took place under the direction of
Karl Krogh, during which traces of three wooden buildings were found,
which had been located one after the other on the site of the later
fieldstone church. A wooden burial chamber measuring a little over 3 m
long, around 2 m wide and around 1 m high was discovered near the
chancel arch and thus in the middle of the former wooden church. The
remains of an approximately 35 to 50-year-old man, around 175 cm tall,
were found inside. The valuable grave goods included hundreds of thin
gold threads, probably the remains of a piece of clothing decorated with
gold, and a very high-quality belt fitting with animal heads, which,
like the silver cup in the burial mound, is assigned to the Jelling
style and may have come from the same artist. DNA could not be obtained
from the bones because they had been boiled, which suggests a reburial
not long after the actual burial. The deceased is commonly identified as
Gorm.
Of the three wooden buildings, the oldest and largest is
interpreted differently. Klaus Ebbesen considers it to be the burial
church for Gorm built by Harald, whose appearance he compares to
Norwegian stave churches. Like these, there was a bell tower in the
middle. As evidence for this assumption, he cites traces of a bronze
church bell that melted in a church fire, which were found on the floor
of the oldest building. According to another theory, which was developed
in connection with the discovery of the palisade from 2010, this
building was a huge half-timbered hall, a noble residence or assembly
hall comparable to the several centuries older halls of the Viking Age
noble court of Lejre. However, there is agreement on the interpretation
of the two later, much smaller buildings as churches.
Gorm's
burial church and its successor(s) burned down. When the fieldstone
church was built before 1100, the location of the grave was obviously no
longer known, because it was now west of the very small church, whose
nave, as excavations in 2012/12 revealed, was later converted into a
choir when the church was replaced by the construction of a new nave was
extended to the west around 1100. The small square chancel of the first
stone church was demolished in the process.
After preliminary investigations from 2006, the Danish National Museum, in cooperation with Aarhus University, started a new investigation of the monuments of Jelling and its surroundings in 2010, called the Jelling Project. First, post holes in a palisade and several large Trelleborg-style houses in the north-west corner were discovered. It could also be proven that the stone setting was a ship setting, which, as one assumes from the lichens on the stones under the south hill, was probably 20 to 30 years before the south hill was built up. No fireplaces or finds were found in the houses. Further excavations until 2013 revealed that the palisade, each side of which was 350 m long, consisted of solid wooden walls and the entire complex only lasted about 30 years before it burned down. A house, also from the Viking Age, which was built over the remains of the palisade, shows how short-lived the farm complex was. After the field investigations, the scientists involved in the Jelling project devoted themselves to evaluating and classifying the finds.
At the end of 2020, a hobby archaeologist using a metal detector found a gold hoard weighing almost a kilogram in a field about 8 kilometers from Jelling. It consists of 22 parts, mostly medallions, which were worn on chains. Some of these medallions are reworked Roman coins, other bracteates, some of which are exceptionally large, are decorated with patterns and depictions of animals and people. There are runic inscriptions on individual specimens. The treasure is dated to around 500 AD. Excavations at the site by archaeologists from Vejlemuseum in August 2021 revealed that the treasure was buried inside a nave, which was part of a smaller group of houses. The archaeologist Mads Kähler Holst assumes that there was a seat of rulers near Jelling even before Gorm's time.