Short answers, pulled from the story.
Reric was a Viking Age multi-ethnic Slavic-Scandinavian emporium on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, founded probably in 735 near present-day Wismar in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It served as a deep water port with a planned layout and was home to merchants and craftspeople from across northern Europe.
Danish king Gudfred destroyed Reric in 808 as part of his ongoing war against Charlemagne's Frankish Empire, which had allied with the Obodrites. Gudfred relocated Reric's merchant community to Hedeby, closer to Denmark, redirecting the trade flows Charlemagne had been using the port to control.
Since the 1990s, Reric has been identified with an archaeological site near Groß Strömkendorf on the eastern shore of the Bay of Wismar. The University of Kiel and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's State Department for Archaeology excavated about 20 hectares of the site between 1995 and 1999.
Archaeologists found evidence of textile, iron, and bronze working; hoards of Norwegian schist whetstones; unfinished products and waste pieces from the production of glass, metals, amber, and horn items; and pottery dominated by the West Slavic Sukow type. The most recent dateable wood from the site comes from 811, matching historical records of Reric's destruction.
At the turn of the 9th century, the citizens of Reric allied with Charlemagne, who used the port as part of a strategic trade route designed to bypass areas under Saxon and Danish control. Gudfred's destruction of Reric in 808 was a direct blow to this Frankish trade network.
Reric was established shortly after the Slavic Obodrite tribe began settling the region, probably in 735. The medieval chroniclers Adam of Bremen and Helmold of Bosau used the name "Reregi" as an alternative name for the Obodrites, which scholars now read as probably a rendering of "Reric," suggesting the port was central to Obodrite identity.