Danish Coastal Landing Places and Their Relation to Navigation and Trade

This chapter outlines the relevant navigational considerations and discusses Viking-period trade in relation to a number of coastal landing places in Denmark that have been investigated in the course, in an attempt to understand their role in Viking-period society. An absolutely fundamental issue of relevance to the coastal sites is that of the sea-level. The coastal sites served principally as cross-over points between the agrarian and maritime spheres of Viking-period society. The Viking-period coastal sites can in the great majority of cases be categorized as specialized coastal landing places: in other words sites with a special link to the maritime world and where the agrarian element was secondary. The chapter aims to give a very concise account of some of the problems that one must note in discussing the extent of trade in Viking-period Denmark. It is first and foremost necessary to define what one means by the term ‘trade’.