Haithabu or Hedeby was an important Danish Viking Age trading settlement in the North of Europe from the 8th to the 11th century. We had seen a video documentary about it and were curious to visit the actual site of Hedeby.
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Rune stone |
Hedeby (or in German Haithabu) was located near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Around 965, chronicler Abraham ben Jacob visited Hedeby and described it as, “a very large city at the very end of the world’s ocean.”
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Rune stone found in the area mentioning Hedeby |
The settlement developed as a trading centre at the head of a narrow, navigable inlet known as the Schlei, which connects to the Baltic Sea. The location was favorable because there is a short portage of less than 15 km to the Treene River, which flows into the Eider with its North Sea estuary, making it a convenient place where goods and ships could be pulled on a log road overland for an almost uninterrupted seaway between the Baltic and the North Sea to avoid the dangerous and time-consuming circumnavigation of Jutland.