Viking Trelleborg Fort

Trelleborg Fort, also known as a Viking Ring fort, is a series of similar forts built around the 10th century in Scandinavia. There has been 6 in total discovered so far in Denmark and southern Sweden, the latest actually found in 2014 outside of Copenhagen, and placename evidence also suggests that there may be more out there yet to be discovered.

As mentioned they were all built in the 10th century, actually we can be even to be more precise than that, they were built around 980 AD, to be used for less than 50 years. Previous theories suggested they were built to train an army to reconquer lost Danish territories in England but now they are thought to be centres of royal power created to control provinces in the rising Danish Kingdom by King Harald Bluetooth.

 The name Trelleborg is from where the first of these forts found in Denmark, the largest was found at Aggersborg, sort of the same but multiply the number of houses and spaces. The Trelleborg fort is a circular fort broken into four quarters each with four longhouses, with probably enough space for about 50 people per longhouse, so quite sizable. They also show signs of far exchange especially from the nearly Slavic areas, so they werent just military fortifications but also had some function of exchange.