Kaupang

• 1. Introduction

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  Kaupang has been called Norway's most important monument from the Viking Age. It sat on a beach beside a fjord in southern Norway. Around the year 800, this small trading spot became one of Scandinavia's earliest urban sites. Its own name, in Old Norse, spells out exactly what the place was for. A place called Skiringssal, closely tied to Kaupang, sits at the center of a debate historians still haven't settled. This documentary follows what was traded there, who lived on that beach, why the settlement went quiet, and what excavators eventually dug up.

• 2. A Market by the Fjord

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  In Old Norse, the name Kaupang fuses two words, one meaning buy and the other meaning fjord harbor. Put together, it translates roughly as buy fjord or buy harbor. That reading lines up with the literal sense behind the name Copenhagen. The settlement itself stood near the modern village of Tjøllingvollen, in Larvik Municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. It ran along Viksfjorden, a branch off the larger Larviksfjorden. The ancient Viking hall Skiringssal stood just inland from the fjord. That hall's name would carry into a much later scholarly argument.

• 3. Kings, Merchants and a Vanishing Town

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  The 780s mark Kaupang's founding, according to the archaeological chronology reconstructed for the site. Documentary sources describe the surrounding district as an important royal seat through the 8th and 9th centuries. Kaupang itself functioned as an important merchant and craft center during the Viking Age. It stands as the first known Norwegian trading outpost. The settlement was abandoned for unknown reasons in the early 10th century. Whether this was the very hall described in a Viking Age traveller's account remained an open question.

• 4. The Skiringssal Question

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  A general perception holds that Kaupang appears under the name Skiringssal in an account of travels written by Ohthere of Hålogaland. The port Ohthere visited at the end of the 9th century, though, is recorded only as Sciringes heal in Old English. No scientific evidence confirms that this Sciringes heal actually corresponds to Kaupang's Skiringssal. The debate stayed unresolved on paper, so any answer would have to come from the ground itself.

• 5. Digging Up Kaupang

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  Archaeological evidence suggests Kaupang might have been the first Norwegian settlement of real proto-urban significance. Excavations uncovered a bustling hub of craftwork and trade that once held around 1,000 inhabitants. The community produced a wide range of crafts and carried on extensive trade with foreign countries. Commodities included iron, soapstone and perhaps fish.

  In 1867, Nicolay Nicolaysen became the first to excavate the site. He mapped one of the surrounding grave-fields and excavated 79 grave mounds, also uncovering a cremation cemetery largely dated to the 10th century. Charlotte Blindheim began her own excavations in 1947 and did not finish her final publication on the work until 1999. Dagfinn Skre and his team then began fresh fieldwork at Kaupang in 1997.

  In the summer of 2000, the Institute for Archaeology, Conservation and Historical Studies at the University of Oslo opened a fresh excavation program under Skre's direction. The work continued until 2002. A smaller excavation followed in Kaupang's harbour area in 2003. Across these campaigns, archaeologists uncovered four possible houses along with a number of hearths, pits and postholes. Once the digging wrapped up, scholars turned to analysing both the artifacts and the environmental samples they had collected. That analysis would take years to reach print.

• 6. What the Ground Revealed

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  The results of that post-excavation work appeared in a series of three books, the first published in 2007 and the last in 2011. Altogether, the excavations produced approximately 100,000 finds, many of which have gone on display at the University of Oslo. Among them are Arab silver coins, a gold coin from Dorestad, hundreds of glass beads, gold and bronze jewelry, pottery, weapons and tools. Each of those finds, from a coin struck somewhere in the Arab world to the single gold coin traced back to Dorestad, still sits in Oslo. It waits there for a future visitor to ask which trade route actually carried it north to Norway.