War and peace
The naval base at Fribrødre Å under excavation in the 1980s. Photo: Jan Skamby Madsen Copyright: Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
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The naval base at Fribrødre Å under excavation in the 1980s. Photo: Jan Skamby Madsen Copyright: Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
At Fribrødre Å in northern Falster, more than 900 years ago there was a naval gathering place. Archaeologists have found shipbuilding tools and remains of ships made in the Slavic tradition, where instead of iron nails, the shipbuilders held the ships' planks together with wooden nails.
Approximately two kilometers south of Stubbekøbing on Falster, well-preserved ship parts were found in 1981. The ship's timber was found during cleaning of a tributary to Fribrødre Å immediately south of the brook's mouth in the now dammed fjord, which from Stubbekøbing has stretched a few kilometers inland from Grønsund.
Grønsund between Zealand and Falster forms the main natural waterway from the Baltic Sea to the Småland Sea southwest of Zealand.
The majority of the found ship parts are worn out and come from several different ships. Almost all the ships are built on Lolland-Falster or Møn in a local hybrid shipbuilding technique similar to the Scandinavian one, but with joining of the planks with wooden nails. Characteristically, they have been held together with small close-fitting wooden nails, a feature usually associated with the Slavic shipbuilding tradition. This suggests that the ships were handled by Slavic shipbuilders.
The find is now interpreted as a naval collection, repair and scrapping site for ships and a ruler's naval base. It can perhaps be linked to Henrik Gottskalksøn, son of the Danish king Svend Estridsen's daughter Sigrid and the Slavic prince Gottskalk. He probably established his naval base in the Fribrødre ådalen when he re-established the rule of the Nakonides family south of the Baltic Sea after a three-year naval campaign in 1090-1093.
The story of Henrik Gottskalksøn shows how complicated the power relations and the struggle for power were between Danes and slaves along the western Baltic coast. He was the son of a Danish king's daughter and Gottskalk, prince of the Slavic tribe Abodrites. Henrik was the Abrodrite heir to the throne, but grew up at the Danish court from the year 1066. With military help from his maternal uncle, the Danish king Oluf Hunger, he fell to his knees – which is the Wendish word for prince – over the Abodrites in 1093.
At the beginning of the 1100th century, Henrik Gottskalksøn threatened the Danish southern border because his maternal uncle, King Niels the Old, did not want to pay the inheritance from his mother. In return, Niels set off with part of the Danish fleet on a march towards Vagrien (Femern and the area just south of Fehmarn), which was part of Henry's kingdom.
Henrik's cousin, Knud Lavard, became earl in Schleswig a few years later and for a number of years fought several times with Henrik Gottskalksøn, until the Danes and the Abodrites made peace. After Henrik Gottskalksøn's death in 1127, a power struggle unfolded between his heirs, all of whom perished. His cousin, the Danish border earl Knud Lavard, was therefore able in 1129 to take the lens oath to his old mentor, the Saxon king Lothar, and thus became the new knees over the Abodrites in Mecklenburg and the eastern part of present-day Holstein.
As the islands on the border, Lolland and Falster were often in the precarious situation of standing with one leg in each camp. One moved in the gray zone of loyalty. Saxo writes that the falsings were not to be trusted. According to Saxo, they warned the Vends before the Danish kings' campaigns against them. That is why the falsings are always inaugurated as the last in the king's war plans. In a disputed border area, where both Danes and Slavs lived, you had to bet on both horses and in the end do your part to stand on the side of the victor.
Tv Model of Valdemar den Store's (1131-1182) castle in Vordingborg, built around 1150. Model: Leif Plith Lauritsen. Photo: Museum Lolland-Falster.
Th The barrage at Hominde in Rødby Fjord from the 1000th century. It protected the locals from hostile attacks from, among others, Wenders. The barrage consisted of over a few hundred closely spaced rammed-down poles at the mouth of the fjord. A narrow opening allowed those in the know to pass. Illustration: Orla Svendsen.
As a border area, Lolland and Falster had a different status than the rest of the country. The area was without royal castles in the early Middle Ages. The nearest royal castle was Vordingborg, which was built by Valdemar the Great around 1160. It was from here that Valdemar the Great and Bishop Absalon set out in 1167 to conquer and subjugate the Wends by taking Arkona on Rügen and destroying their temple for the god Svantevit.
The fact that there were no royal castles on Lolland and Falster does not mean that the islands were without defence. In Rødby Fjord and Guldborgsund there are underwater barriers from that time, which were supposed to delay enemy fleets and prevent them from making landfall. Solid defenses were also found on land. One of them was Trygge Slot. It was located in the middle of Falster and obviously played a central role in the local defense against, among other things, the Venders.
In the middle of Falster lay a mighty castle. It was built of earthen ramparts and palisades, and it utilized the natural defenses of the landscape. Today, only low ramparts can be seen in the landscape by Virket Sø, where Trygge Castle was a safe fortress for Falster's population. There was more than 500 meters from the significant embankment in the north to the strong embankment in the south. To the east, the castle was protected by a high and steep slope down towards Virket Sø and to the west by a swampy marsh and fortifications, which today are not visible in the landscape. In the middle of the nearly 80.000 square meter, hourglass-shaped castle, a rampart cut across and divided the castle into two equal parts.
Archaeological excavations show that Trygge Slot, whose origins are still lost in history, was a significant castle in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages from 800 – 1200. Trygge Slot is very centrally located on the border between two lordships, where most people had the shortest route in security, and it was large enough for all, and with room for their animals and possessions, if the enemy were in the country.
That enemy was several times the Vends, who ravaged the Danish islands in the 1100th century. At least once they attacked Falster. Saxo Grammaticus writes about it:
"In the same year (probably 1158) it is said that Aarhus was subjected to violent pirate attacks. And at the same time the Falrings – the few that were of them – had to seek shelter behind their joint defense against an immense Wendish fleet.”
Saxo says nothing about the Falrings being beaten, only that they sought shelter behind their joint defence, so something suggests that they resisted the attack and that Trygge Slot was the defense that Saxo mentions. Archaeologists from Museum Lolland-Falster have found layers of fire which suggest a battle at the south rampart, and these may be traces of the attack of the Venders.
Note: Danish only