I’VE JUST BEEN TO A VIKING CASTLE…

…and I need you to see this

This morning I woke up at 4.30am with a wild hair and decided I would fly to Copenhagen and go see a Viking ring fortress.

I had heard a lot about these, but had never set eyes on one in person.

The fortress I picked was Trelleborg, an UNESCO world heritage site about an hour’s drive from Copenhagen. It was built in the tenth century by Harald Bluetooth. Old Harald was the king who brought Christianity to the Danes, briefly conquered (part of) Norway and gave his name to the technology that makes your AirPods work.

If his castle-building tracked with the rest of it, I figured Trelleborg must be a doozy.

Not for the very first time (lololol) my instincts were right. If you’re ever in the area and feel the need to see how the Vikings did castles before they went rogue and turned Normans, you could do a lot worse than Trelleborg.

The first thing to say is that this fortress is massive. Even though all that remains of the original structure is the huge circular earthworks and stones plotting the internal buildings, the scale is impressive.

This is a little modern model of the fortress with the gate leading to the thing itself in the background.

When you get through the gate, those earthworks, protected by a deep ditch, loom vast and steep before you.