We know the Vikings mostly for their formidable sailing and discovery of new worlds, but these five fortresses show them as nation builders and Christianizers of the Danes. I choose Trelleborg for my visit and will describe getting there on public transport and the overall visitor experience as I found it in August 2023. Regarding the question of whether this is WH material, I did some desk research as well.

The Visit

Trelleborg can be easily done as a day trip from Copenhagen Airport. There are hourly direct trains to Slagelse (1h15) and additional connections when changing at Copenhagen Central Station. The train also makes a stop in Roskilde, so you could take in another WHS along the way. Instructions for getting to the site by bus from Slagelse station are complex and the rides are not too frequent (and not exist at all during school holidays). So you have to take a taxi to cover the final 6 km, or walk. The latter is doable (I walked both ways), but not very enjoyable as you mostly walk on the shoulder of a B-road with frequent traffic.

I arrived around 10.40 and found a fair number of cars already in the sizeable parking lot. It seems to be a popular destination for families on holiday, and there were foreign visitors from the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. The summer entrance fee is 100 DKR, which converts to a fairly high 13,50 EUR. The income seems to mostly go to activities geared towards children, such as bread-making workshops.

I tried to approach it as an archeological site but found little of interest and you would be hard-pressed to spend more than half an hour here. The use of a moat probably was the most surprising element. All features above ground except for the wall and moat are reconstructions or ‘educative tools’ of a later date – for example, hundreds of concrete blocks were added to recreate the outlines of the longhouses that stood within the walled area. It makes for better pictures but it is as fake as the infamous recreated Roman ruins in Xanten.

When it becomes a WHS, I find it should upgrade its facilities to also accommodate the ‘serious’ visitors. The experience could be much improved by offering something like a high observation tower, as the fort’s peculiar shape is best seen from the sky. More information panels should be provided, to explain the moat, the graves, etc. Regarding the lack of public transport access, I’d suggest offering rental bikes (those that you can unlock via an app or a coin) from Slagelse station. There has been talk of a new visitor center (it’s also mentioned in the nomination file) but I have no idea where it would be located and if they started its construction already.

The Evaluation

As with Kuldiga, I did my own ‘desk review’ before the ICOMOS evaluation was published. The full nomination dossier was not available yet, but the extensive Management Plan was and it included an extensive introduction to the property. It left me with doubts about the site’s OUV, especially whether it is different enough from the Jelling and the Danevirke WHS – same period, same region, same high-level purpose. The forts were only used for 10-15 years, their ‘pizza design’ did not influence future building concepts and the idea behind them only transcended boundaries when Harald Bluetooth’s kingdom was later split into Denmark, a tiny bit of northern Germany and southernmost Sweden.  

ICOMOS eventually went for Inscription advice without any reservations. Even the OUV was not challenged, although they had to make use of the ‘purple wooden fence covered in polka-dots’-theory (by which I mean that if you put enough elements into a comparison, in the end, everything will be unique; in this case, the others are not ring fortresses: Duh! And are we comparing the physical objects or their meaning?). However, the ICOMOS summary of the site I find more convincing than the one in the nomination and I wonder whether they twisted it so the outcome would be more favourable? The OUV statements for both inscription criteria are also totally different from the ones in the nomination dossier.