History Cupboard #5: The Great Wall of Denmark
As you may know, I now have a YouTube channel on which I present short (7 or 8 mins) shows about various aspects of history from my little writing shed (cupboard) in the garden. This week in History Cupboard, I’m talking about the Dane-Work, the Great Wall of Denmark, which separated the 8th-century pagan Danes from the Christian Germans. I argue that the existence of this wall was fundamental in preserving the Danes from Christianisation, thus allowed Viking culture to influence the whole world.
During the Dark Ages – or the early medieval period, as we now call it – there were several Germanic pagan tribes co-existing in one small corner of northern Europe; at the place where the Jutland Peninsula meets the mainland. In the 5th century AD, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Franks, Frisians and Angles – all these peoples were living within a few days walk of each other.
As far as we can tell, they were all quite similar in their Germanic culture, dialects and religion – the worship of Thor, Frey and Odin and so on . . . The tribes also all made war on each other raided each other’s herds of sheep and cows, traded too, and either married or carried off their women. It was a melting pot, with, I suspect, each tribe struggling to maintain a separate identity from the others.
Some of these people left the region and travelled across the sea to a new land and their descendants became the English, and their language became English. But this is not really about them.
Some, such as the Franks, embraced Christianity and after the Roman legions had left they came gradually to dominate the region. Others, the more northerly and remote ones, did not – and so they soon found themselves at odds with the Christians. This is story is about them, and about how Danes became Danes and later marauding Vikings – and avoided becoming tamer, more civilised Germans.
This is the story of a wall that divided a culture and created two new ones. This is the story of the Dane-Work, also called the Dannevirke, which has an import role in my novel The Last Berserker . . .
The Dane-Work was a massive fortification, a huge ditch and a high earth rampart, probably with a palisade of sharpened stakes at the top, too, and several fortresses along its length. It was built over the course of many hundreds of years, with some work starting as early as the 5th century. But the wall was gradually enlarged, improved and completed by the end of the 8th century.
When it was finished the Dane-Work ran for nearly 20 miles from the inlet of the Schlei River, which runs out to the Baltic, over to the marshes of the Treen River, which flows out to the North Sea.
In its heyday, the wall was as much as six metres high – three times the height of a very tall man. And the deep ditch in front of the rampart – that is facing south into the German lands – was wide enough and deep enough so that a trading ship could cross from the North Sea to the Baltic, without having to go round the top of the Jutland Peninsula. You can just make out this ship-carrying channel below the Dane-Work (marked in red) on the 16th-century map above. This could very well be very useful for moving troops from, say, Frisia to Sweden – or just from West Denmark to the Danish Baltic Islands.
The Dane-Work was most valuable though as a formidable military obstacle which prevented the powerful Christian Franks, who overran pagan Saxony to the south of the wall, from invading and conquering the Danes of Jutland. I would even say it was responsible for CREATING the Danish nation, which would otherwise have been amalgamated over the centuries into German culture and identity.
People say that the difference between a language and a dialect is that a language is a dialect with an army behind it. I think a dialect becomes a language when it has a wall to shelter behind. A physical barrier, or some other kind of boundary marker, can also create a nation. Because a physical barrier separates two groups of people and prevents (or at least slows) the free flow of folk, and the corresponding muddying of their national identities.
One such ancient boundary is the Dane-Work, which separated Danish culture from German for a millennium (although it is now in Germany). Another is Offa’s Dyke, which was also built in the late 8th century, and pretty much still marks the border between England and Wales. Or Hadrian’s Wall which, for the Romans, separated the lands of the wild, uncivilised Scots from their soft, southern neighbours.
This is what the Dane-Work looks like today.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Danes had not built their great wall. Would they have been overrun by the Franks and converted to their Christian religion? I think it is very likely. That is what the Franks did to the pagan Saxons on the south side of the Dane-Work. So why not the Danes?
If that had happened, it would mean that the Vikings, constrained by their new religion, would probably not have raided English and French monasteries with such violent enthusiasm. It may have meant that there was no Viking Age of exploration. No Normans, no Norman Conquest. England would never have been ruled by French-speakers, so there would have been no Hundred Years War. Indeed, such a world is impossible to imagine. So take away one last thought with you . . .
The world is as it its today because of a half-forgotten 8th-century earth-and-timber wall.
The Last Berserker is available as an eBook, paperback and in audio version from Amazon.
Fascinating stuff!
Cheers, Nick!