Danevirke
The Danevirke, which means earthwork of the Danes, stretches for about 30 km across the neck of the Cimbrian peninsula. Old Norse speakers called it Danavirki, modern Danes write Dannevirke, and Germans call it Danewerk. It lies in Schleswig-Holstein, in Germany. Its eastern end begins at Hedeby, a former Viking trade centre near Schleswig on the Baltic coast. From there the walls run west toward the broad marshlands on the far side of the peninsula.
In 2018 UNESCO placed the Danevirke and nearby Hedeby on its World Heritage List. The listing recognised the earthwork as testimony to how Viking Age trade routes were defended.
Four questions run through the story of this long bank of earth. Who first raised it, and how much older is it than the written records admit? Why does Danish tradition give a queen the credit? How did it become a symbol so strong that a whole nation expected to fight at it? And why, in the twentieth century, did soldiers plan to dig it up?
In 808, according to written sources, the Danish king Gudfred began work on the Danevirke. He feared an invasion by the Franks, who had conquered heathen Frisia over the previous 100 years. They had also taken Old Saxony between 772 and 804. Gudfred's answer was an enormous structure meant to separate the Jutland peninsula from the northern edge of the Frankish empire.
Excavations carried out between 1969 and 1975 told a different story. Tree-ring dating showed that the main structure rose in three phases between AD 737 and AD 968. That made it a contemporary of Offa's Dyke, the great defensive work on the border between Wales and England. The structures examined began not long after 737, roughly 70 years before Gudfred's reign.
New carbon-14 dating in 2013 pushed the origin back much further. It showed that the second stage started around 500 AD, and that the oldest fortifications are older still. Archaeologists now say the work began at least as early as 500 AD, and probably well before.
The Nordic Iron Age gave the Danes more than one rival. They were also in conflict with the Saxons south of Hedeby. A wall begun before 500 AD may therefore have been answering that older quarrel, long before any Frankish army came north.
Researchers divide the Danevirke into six numbered phases, and the first, Danevirke 1, was itself built in five stages. Older carbon-14 dating puts its start at about 650. The first three stages were plain soil ramparts. The fourth, built in 737, was a palisade rampart with a heavy timber front. In the last stages a thick stone wall was added around the timber.
Tradition names three builders for this first phase. Angantyr is said to have started it, Siegfried to have continued it, and Guðfrið to have finished it, as the annals record for 808.
Its main segment, the Hovedvolden, ran from the Rejde Å, now called the Rheider Au, to a small lake named Dannevirke Sø. It stood about 2 m high and 12 m wide. The Nordvolden continued north from the lake's northeastern side for about 7 km. The Østervolden, about 3.3 km long, protected the Schwansen peninsula. Out in the Slien, a 900 m submerged construction completed the barrier.
Danevirke 2 carries the nickname Kovirke, meaning cow-work, and the German name Kograben. It ran about 7 km from the Rheide Å to Selker Noor, a lake that was once a southern extension of the Schlei bay. Its palisade stood about 3 m high. Behind it lay an earth bank about 2 m high and 7 m wide. In front ran a V-shaped moat, 4 m wide and 3 m deep. Who built it is unsettled. Guðfrið or Harald Bluetooth may have done so, but if this is the work that the Frankish royal annals call new in 808, Harald did not. The date lies somewhere between 770 and 970.
Danevirke 3 made the main rampart far bigger, about 5 m high and 20 m wide. The Krumvolden was built through the Rheide Å and overlapped the Hovedvolden. The Forbindelsesvolden closed a gap between the Hovedvolden and the Halvkredsvolden, a semicircular bank that protected Hedeby. The Buevolden and the Dobbeltvolden guarded an important road junction. Most of this work is credited to Harald Bluetooth. Danevirke 4 is thought to be mainly his as well. Reinforcement of the main wall finished in 954, and a new connecting rampart rose between 964 and 968.
In 974 the Saxons of the Ottonian dynasty attacked the Forbindelsesvolden.
Legend gives the credit for the Danevirke to Queen Thyra, wife of Gorm the Old. Gorm is the first historically recognised king of Denmark, and he reigned from about 936 to about 958.
Arild Hvitfeldt's Danmarks Riges Krønike adds detail to the tale. Thyra summoned Danes from every region of the kingdom to meet at the border. Under her supervision they built a wall of earth and timber from the Slien over the moors to Trene.
The labour was divided by region. The Scanians took the western section, from Karlegat to Trene. Zealanders and the people of Funen took the eastern section, from the Slien to Karlegat. Jutlanders supplied provisions for the whole army. This arrangement would place Thyra's extension sometime before 940.
In the 19th century this story of a whole kingdom building together would take on political weight.
Canute IV, who reigned from 1080 to 1086, led Denmark into war with the German empire. The Danevirke was strengthened at the start of the 12th century. Moats were deepened, ramparts were raised, and a palisade wall of granite boulders was built on part of the Hovedvolden. Scholars call this Danevirke 5.
King Valdemar the Great took the work furthest. In Danevirke 6 he fortified the rest of the Hovedvolden with a wall 7 m high, made of stones set in mortar on a granite boulder base. Buttresses propped it up and tiles covered it. Danes call the reinforced stretches Valdemarsmuren, Valdemar's wall. It was the last true reinforcement of the ramparts, and it must have deterred many who might have sent an army north through Jutland. The castle of Thyraborg was built later.
The finished earthwork stands between 3.6 and 6 m high. Danish kings used it as a gathering point for military excursions, including a series of crusader raids against the Slavs of the south Baltic. Palisades and masonry walls reinforced it during the Middle Ages.
By the 14th century the Danevirke was losing its purpose. Manning it cost too much, and ballistas, trebuchets and similar siege engines had changed warfare. Then came centuries of abandonment and decay, until nationalism in the 19th century gave the old bank a second life.
National states were emerging across 19th-century Europe, and the Danevirke became a powerful symbol of a unique Danish people and culture.
The territory that Danes call Sønderjylland or Slesvig, and Germans call Schleswig, was the battleground. Denmark and Germany struggled over it, politically and militarily, throughout the century. In that hostile setting the Danevirke first served as a mental and cultural barrier against Germany.
In 1816-19 N. F. S. Grundtvig published a nationalist journal titled Dannevirke. It was the most notable of several Danish journals that took the name in the early 19th century. All of them dealt with the question of Danish autonomy against Germany.
The symbol rested on something real. In earlier times the Danevirke had marked a cultural and linguistic border between Danish and German fiefdoms. By the 19th century that frontier had gradually shifted north. Territory as far north as Flensburg was mostly German-speaking, yet it remained part of Denmark. A symbol guarding a border that had already moved was about to be tested with real guns.
On the 31st of March 1848 the First Schleswig War began, but Prussia stayed out until a naval incident on the 19th of April. On the 23rd of April General Friedrich von Wrangel marched 12,000 Prussian troops against weak Danish resistance at the Danevirke entrenchment. After a short engagement near the town of Dannewerk, the Danish army retreated and the Prussians seized the city of Schleswig.
An armistice on the 2nd of August 1848 made the Prussians evacuate Schleswig-Holstein, but the war went on. Fighting over the next two years came close to the Danevirke without involving it directly. Final peace was signed on the 8th of May 1852.
In 1850 and again in 1861 the Danes restored the old fortifications, adding cannon emplacements and entrenchments. By 1864 Danish public opinion and the Danish military both expected the coming battle of the Second Schleswig War to be fought along the Danevirke. It never happened.
General de Meza, the Danish Commander in Chief, pulled every soldier back to the trenches at Dybbøl instead. Early skirmishing had taken place south of the Danevirke, and the advancing German army had conquered the ground directly beyond it. A hard winter had also frozen the Schlei and the wetlands between the Danevirke and Husum solid. Troops could cross them easily and outflank the line.
The retreat surprised the Austro-Prussian army, and almost all of the Danish army got away. Important pieces of heavy artillery were left behind. Historians still debate why the railway to Flensburg was never properly used for the evacuation.
In Denmark the news came as a great shock, because the public had considered the Danevirke impregnable. De Meza was promptly relieved of his command. The two wars ended in a Danish defeat and a German annexation of the territory. The next soldiers to eye the wall as a military asset would be German, in a later war.
After the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II, the German Wehrmacht feared a second landing, this time through Denmark. Planners considered converting the earthen wall into an anti-tank trench. Had they done so, the structure would have been destroyed.
Søren Telling, a Danish archaeologist, heard of the plans. He knew that all archaeological investigation fell under the ultimate jurisdiction of the SS chief Heinrich Himmler. So he telephoned two people at once: the head of the SS archaeological department, the Amt für Ahnenerbe, meaning Office for ancestral heritage, and Himmler himself. Telling argued strongly against destroying an important remnant of "Aryan civilization". Himmler authorized him to stop the construction.
Himmler told Telling that a written order would follow, but that it would take several days to arrive. Telling did not wait. He drove to the site and ordered the commanding Wehrmacht officers to halt the work immediately. The local commander refused. Telling threatened him with reprisals from the SS. Construction was called off, and Himmler's written order arrived two days later, countering the Wehrmacht's original instructions.
Telling afterwards settled near the site and regarded himself as its custodian until his death in 1968.
Updated
Common questions
What is the Danevirke?
It is a system of Danish fortifications in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. About 30 km of walls, trenches and the Schlei Barrier run from the Viking trade centre of Hedeby on the Baltic coast to the marshlands in the west of the peninsula.
When was the Danevirke built?
Written sources say King Gudfred began it in 808. Tree-ring dating shows the main structure rose in three phases between AD 737 and AD 968, and carbon-14 dating in 2013 showed the second stage started around 500 AD, with the oldest fortifications older still.
Who built the Danevirke?
Many hands worked on it. Tradition names Angantyr, Siegfried and Guðfrið for the first phase, most later work is credited to Harald Bluetooth, and legend gives Queen Thyra, wife of Gorm the Old, a leading role. King Valdemar the Great added the brick and stone wall known as Valdemarsmuren.
Why did the Danevirke lose its military purpose?
From the 14th century it was expensive to man, and ballistas, trebuchets and similar siege engines had changed warfare.
Why was there no battle at the Danevirke in 1864?
General de Meza withdrew all Danish soldiers to the trenches at Dybbøl. The Schlei and the wetlands near Husum had frozen solid in a hard winter, which made it easy to outflank the line, and German forces had already conquered the ground south of it.
How was the Danevirke saved from destruction in World War II?
The Wehrmacht considered turning it into an anti-tank trench. The Danish archaeologist Søren Telling telephoned Heinrich Himmler and the SS archaeological department, won permission to stop the work, and ordered it halted on site. Himmler's written order arrived two days later.
Why is the Danevirke a World Heritage Site?
UNESCO inscribed the Danevirke and nearby Hedeby in 2018 because of their historical importance and their testimony to the defence of trade routes in the Viking Age.
All sources
14 references cited across the entry
- 1Broer, Ringborge og Dannevirke Bridges, Ringcastles and DanevirkeElse Roesdahl — Aarhus University
- 2BookThe Archaeology of Medieval Germany: An IntroductionGünter P. Fehring — Routledge — 24 October 2014
- 6Danevirke er noget ældre end antagetUffe Christensen — 27 August 2013
- 7'Sensational' Discovery: Archeologists Find Gateway to the Viking EmpireMatthias Schulz — Spiegel Online International — 27 August 2010
- 8DannevirkeGyldendal Business
- 9Valdemarstiden 1157–1241Anders Bøgh — Aarhus University
- 10Heinrich Sybel, The Founding of the German Empire by William I. 1890. Volume 1, page 253
- 11DannevirkeLotte Flugt Kold — Aarhus University — 3 November 2014
- 12Da 40.000 danske soldater opgav Dannevirke og forsvandt i ly af natten When 40,000 Danish soldiers gave up Danevirke and disappeared under cover of darknessHenrik Dannemand Jensen — 4 February 2014
- 14BookTil hele rigets værnH. Hellmuth Andersen — Moesgård & Wormianum — 2004