11 - Discussion: Hedeby’s Abandonment and the Foundation of Slesvig

Summary

Finally, one might ask why Hedeby, after such a successful transformation as described in the previous chapter, which enabled the town to persist well into the eleventh century, was abandoned after all and finally relocated to present-day Slesvig. Despite comparable topographical conditions – just as Hedeby was located by the Haddeby Noor, Slesvig emerged by the (today silted) Holmer Noor – it is striking that the old town of Slesvig, which was delimited by its 12-hectare pocket-shaped peninsula on the northern shore of the inner Schlei fjord, was in fact only half the size of the urban area of Hedeby. Previously, three partly interdependent main hypotheses for the shift from Viking-age Hedeby to high medieval Slesvig had been put forward: (1) two subsequent devastating attacks in 1050 and 1066 recorded in the written sources; (2) the spatial integration of economical, administrational, and ecclesiastical functions, together with the assumption that the latter two already pre-existed at Slesvig and constituted a pull factor within a ‘second wave of urbanisation’; and (3) the assumed preceding economic decline of Hedeby as an emporium, which had already commenced in the late tenth century (cf. Hilberg 2007: 189–90; 2016).