Viking World Heritage

2011 witnessed a serial application from a number of Northern European Countries in order to place a series of Viking Monuments and Sites on the World heritage List. Hope is that it will be nominated 2013 and be the basis for the creation of a Cultural Viking Route  in Scandinavia.

The Viking serial nomination comprises land-, sea- and townscapes stretching from the North Atlantic to the Baltic Sea. Among the thousands of Viking sites from the eighth to the twelfth centuries AD, these nine nominated properties from six nations are outstanding examples representing the wide diversity of this early maritime culture.

In the Viking Age the Norse peoples – the Vikings – developed a maritime culture which had an enormous impact on Northern Europe and beyond. Within Scandinavia the Viking Period witnessed the transformation from tribal to state societies and a change of religions. The three Christian kingdoms that developed from this transformation, and out of which the present Nordic States evolved, were by the end of the Viking Age an integral part of Europe. Thus, in modem times, Viking culture has contributed significantly to the creation of cultural coherence, symbolic values and cultural identity in the Nordic region, and it continues to hold immense public appeal world-wide. This culture and its heritage developed in close interaction within a unique natural environment. It is composed of distinctive urban as well as rural landscapes and monuments. The culture also produced one of the world’s great literatures: the Sagas, the Eddic poetry and runic inscriptions.

Harnessing the technology of the ship, Vikings used the sea for expansion, exploration, long-distance trade and overseas settlement. The travels of the Vikings brought them across the Baltic Sea and own the Russian rivers as far as the Black and Caspian Seas to Byzantium and the Caliphate of Baghdad, as well as west out into the Atlantic. They were the first to settle in Iceland and the first Europeans to reach Greenland and North America about 1000 AD. In so doing, the Vikings were the first people to succeed in opening routes across the northern hemisphere from North America to Asia, thus connecting different cultural regions of the earth. Adapted to very diverse types of natural environments, success was on the one hand in the use of regional resources and on the other hand in the development of social and political systems. This combination formed the basis for a rich cultural region. Internally, Scandinavia witnessed an economic, religious and social transformation aided by a boom in internal and cross-cultural communication during the Viking period. New institutions were developed, smaller regions were merged into larger units and the Scandinavians took part in European development on a larger scale.

Scandinavia at the time of King Canute, in the early 11th century, was vastly different from the Scandinavia that was visited by the missionary Ansgar in the early 9th century.

The component parts of the application cover a wide temporal and spatial range. They are of exceptional quality and diversity. They include trading towns, harbours, defensive structures, production-sites, burial monuments, and assembly sites.

Viewed as a whole these sites witness to the extent of Viking social and cultural development. The properties, which figure on the tentative list are:

• Vestfold Ship Burials, Norway
• Hyllestad Quernstone Quarries, Norway
• Danevirke and Hedeby, Germany
• Birka and Hovgården, Sweden
• Grobiņa archaeological complex, Latvia
• Þingvellir National Park , Norway
• The Trelleborg fortresses, Denmark
• Jelling mounds, runic stones, palisade area and church, Denmark

Destination Viking

Paralel to the formal application for World Heritage Status, several initiatives work to establish Cultural Routes and Viking trails throughout the Viking World. One of these is “Destination Viking” which is a revival of a project originally pis for by EU-Money. One of the objectives in this project is obviously to counter the “Disneyfication” of the Vikings characterising other projects, like for instance the huge experiential “Viking Center” which for years have tried to get funding and a location in Stockholm. (The project is presumably being reconstructed as of now nothing is accordingly known at present). Other projects are more local or regional just trying to use the Vikings as part of a less comprehensive Cultural Tourism Projects (Da Danmark blev til).