A twelfth-century stone church now stands between the two mounds but excavations in the 1970s showed that it was built on the site of a substantial tenth-century timber church. A burial found within the church contained the partially preserved skeleton of a well-built man. In life, he was a little over five feet six inches (1.67 m) tall and was suffering from osteoarthritis of the lower back when he died, probably still in his forties. Only a very important man would have been buried inside a royal church but his identity is unknown. It has generally been assumed that the skeleton is that of Gorm, the theory being that after his conversion Harald had his parents exhumed from the north mound and reburied in consecrated ground, though if that was the case there is no sign of Thyre’s skeleton. However, burying pagans in a church would have been against Christian doctrine, which did not allow posthumous conversions. If Gorm and Thyre really were buried in the northern mound, Harald may have exhumed them simply because he did not want pagans buried so close to his new Christian centre.
South of the church stand Jelling’s two runestones. The smaller and older of the stones was erected by King Gorm as a memorial to Queen Thyre. Gorm was evidently fond of Thyre as he described her as ‘Denmark’s adornment’. The inscription has more than sentimental value because this is the earliest recorded use of the word Denmark (‘tannmarkaR’) to describe the country of the Danes. Old engravings of the monuments at Jelling suggest that this runestone may originally have stood on top of the northern mound, only being moved to its present location in relatively modern times. The second and larger of the runestones is an assertively Christian monument erected by King Harald to commemorate both his parents and his own achievements in uniting and Christianising the Danes. One face of the stone carries the runic inscription: ‘King Harald ordered this monument made in memory of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thyre, his mother; that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.’ A second face shows a vigorously carved lion fighting a serpent and the third, a figure of the crucified Christ on a cross entwined with branches and leaves. By depicting the crucifixion this way, the stone carver may have intended to draw a deliberate parallel between Christ and Odin, who hanged himself from the world-tree Yggdrasil to learn the secret of runes. Small traces of paint show that the runestone was originally brightly coloured. Jelling’s time as a pre-eminent centre of power was brief. Now in the far west of his unified kingdom, Jelling was no longer a convenient base for Harald’s rule, so in the 980s he moved to Roskilde, only a few miles from the ancient power centre at Lejre, on the more centrally situated island of Sjælland.
Harald’s authority was not confined to Denmark. Through an alliance with Håkon Sigurdsson, jarl of Lade (now a suburb of Trondheim), Harald overthrew Norway’s King Harald Greycloak c. 970, taking the south of the country for himself and giving the north to Håkon. Harald also won control of a Wendish port called Jumne or Jomsborg, which is probably the modern Polish port of Wolin near the mouth of the Oder River. In the tenth century, Wolin was a strongly fortified trading and manufacturing centre with a large and well-constructed harbour. The well-travelled Córdoban merchant, al-Tartushi, thought it a more impressive place than Hedeby. Significant numbers of typically Scandinavian artefacts, such as Thor’s hammer amulets, Norwegian soapstone bowls and runic inscriptions, point to the presence of a permanent Scandinavian community in the Slavic town. This may have given rise to the legend of the Jomsvikings, an elite band of Viking mercenaries who, according to romantic Icelandic saga traditions, used Jomsborg as their base.
Despite his achievements Harald’s reign ended badly. Harald suffered his first setback in 975 when he lost control of Hedeby to the Germans. The previous year, Danish Vikings had raided northern Germany and, rightly or wrongly, the new emperor, Otto II, held Harald responsible and invaded Denmark in response. Harald, aided by jarl Håkon, tried to hold the Germans at the Danevirke, but was eventually forced back. Harald surrendered Hedeby, and its revenues, to Otto, who built and garrisoned a fort at nearby Schleswig to guard it. Under pressure from Otto, Harald tried to introduce Christianity to Norway. Unfortunately for Harald, this alienated jarl Håkon, a devout pagan, who rebelled and seized control of the whole of Norway.
In 982, Otto II suffered a severe defeat while campaigning in Italy. This was too good an opportunity to let pass and a Danish army under Svein Forkbeard recaptured Hedeby from the Germans, while Harald’s father-in-law Mistivoj burned Hamburg. By now, however, Harald had made himself many enemies at home. Local chieftains had seen their traditional autonomy curtailed as Harald tightened royal authority and devout pagans resented the imposition of Christianity. In 987, Svein overthrew his father, who fled across the Baltic to Jomsborg, where he died soon after from wounds inflicted during the fighting. According to Adam of Bremen, Svein had never taken his baptism seriously and he was able to win power with the support of disgruntled pagans. While Svein may well have benefited from such disaffection, it is unlikely that he ever renounced Christianity. There is strong evidence that he continued his father’s Christianisation policy, founding many churches during his reign, and had he really been hostile to Christianity he would hardly have allowed his father’s retainers to bring his body back from Jomsborg and bury it in the church he had founded at Roskilde.
The real reason for Adam’s hostility was probably that Svein rejected the authority of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. In medieval Europe, the modern distinction between church and state did not exist. Kings relied heavily on bishops to help them govern their kingdoms and always sought to influence appointments to bishoprics. The Danish church and its bishops in Harald’s time were ultimately responsible to the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, who were appointed by the German emperors. No medieval king would have liked this situation as it represented a limitation on his sovereignty. And it was often the case that where the church led, secular authority followed. Harald was probably willing to put up with this situation because it kept the emperors off his back while he consolidated royal authority in Denmark. Svein may have overthrown his father because he saw all too clearly that a German claim to rule the Danish church might ultimately be used to support a German claim to sovereignty over the state. Throughout his reign, Svein avoided contacts with Hamburg-Bremen and when he needed priests he brought them over from England.
Svein seized power at a time of resurgent Viking raiding, mainly against England, now seen as a soft target thanks to the weak rule of Æthelred the Unready. Svein knew that returning Viking leaders, with their newly won wealth and status, could challenge royal authority so he kept them in the shade by leading his own tribute-gathering raids (see ch. 9). Two Viking leaders who must have caused Svein much anxiety were the exiled Norwegian sea-king Olaf Tryggvason and the Danish nobleman Thorkell the Tall. According to saga traditions, Thorkell was the son of Strút Harald, jarl of Sjælland, and the brother of Sigvaldi, the supposed leader of the Jomsvikings. In other words, he was a member of the class that had lost most from Harald’s centralisation of royal authority. In 1011, Thorkell received the enormous payment of 48,000 pounds (21,772 kg) of silver from Æthelred, whose service he later entered, fighting for him against Svein. Thanks to his lack of royal blood, Thorkell’s threat to Svein was limited. Thorkell might be an overmighty subject but it would have been hard for him to replace Svein on the throne, and he was eventually found a role in the new order (by Svein’s son Cnut). The same was not true of Olaf Tryggvason. Olaf used the proceeds of his raids on England in 991 – 4 to fund a successful attempt to win control of Norway in 995. However, Svein claimed to be Norway’s true ruler by right of inheritance from his father Harald. This made conflict inevitable.