Gotland the pearl of the Baltic Sea, home of the Varangians pages 166-267

Tore Gannholm; Tore Gannholm

To understand the history of Gotland, the home of the Varangians, one must fully realize that Gotland was an independent Merchant Farmers’ Republic, and the hub of the Baltic Sea region, which from time immemorial had its relations mainly east and south. The Gotlandic history is misleading and difficult to understand if it is bundled with the Swedish history, which so far has been done. They both have their separate history. There are some deadlocks in Swedish history which have blocked the view for a broader perspective. I here think of the Roman sources about the Baltic Sea region. In the 1600s when Sweden was a super- power they had to give it a story that matched its position in the world and when they in the Roman sources found peoples and places that started with an ‘S’ they immediately concluded that it must be ‘Svear’ and the ‘Scandinavian peninsula’. The Roman name for the Scandinavian peninsula was, however, still in the 500s THULE. This historical picture was created by Johannes Magnus, and continued by Olof Rudbeck in ‘Atlantica’. Still today many writers without thought are copying these old delusions that the Roman writers would have written about some mighty Svear at the beginning of our era. Let us look at the archaeological evidences and take such a simple example as the 7500 Roman coins from Tacitus time and there about, denarius, found in present day Sweden. 6500 of these are from Gotland. Only 80 are from the Lake Mälar area. Or take the quantity of bronze bowls from the Capuan factory outside Naples found on Gotland. How can Swedish scholars with this quantity of finds on Gotland from the Roman Imperial time pretend that Gotland did not exist? Tacitus wrote about Suionum Civitate. He accordingly tells about the people who lived in Mare Suebicum (the Baltic Sea), i.e. the Gotlanders, who already then had reached a high cultural level and had trade relations all over Europe, including the Roman Empire. He continues: “Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage. Here end the territories of the Suevians.” The Sithones lived in the Lake Mälar area and are what we later call Svear. From the archaeological findings we can accordingly establish that trade relations between Gotland and the Roman Empire were intense. No Svea kingdom as such existed yet at that time. Tacitus says that the people in the Lake Mälar area were ruled by a woman. Still in the Beowulf epos, probably written down in the 700s, the people in the Lake Mälar area are not known as Svear but as Skilfings. It is quite clear that historical observations can not only be based on name similarities, but one must first look at the map, the archaeological finds and the chronological development and only secondarily try to match the names that different peoples have had in different areas at different times, and when these names first appear in written sources. The early history is a piece of myth, oral tradition and fragmentary records. From all this can suddenly emerge a pattern, the outline of a process that may not be scientifically inviolable, which it never really can be. Yet it is nearer the truth than you could ever reach with ‘scientific accuracy’. If you take the Guta Saga, written down about 1220, and the Beowulf Epos, written down in the 700s, as serious as Snorri Sturluson’s ‘Nordiska kungasagor’, written down about 1220, has been honored - i.e. as evidence in lack of better sources, there will open up a new, breathtaking perspective regarding Gotlandic, Swedish and Scandinavian history during the Roman time of the emperors and the Migration Period. Yes also that of Europe. Already in the Bronze Age and early Iron Age there are signs of Gotlandic trading Emporiums on the east coast of the Baltic Sea and all the way to the river Volga. Trade, especially amber trade, experiences in the Bronze Age a large bloom. The Gotlanders seem to have controlled the amber trade with trading Emporiums in the Vistula area. The extensive trade relations convey influences from outside. From southern cultural centers, Egypt, Crete, Mycenae, spiritual impulses stretched their effects also to the Baltic Sea region and Gotland. The immigration of the Herul Royal family (Svear) to the Lake Mälar area in the early 500s, when they bring a new ruling dynasty and a new religion to the area (what we today know as the Ynglinga dynasty and the Æsir religion), is mentioned in several sources. Their entrance on the stage changes the situation in the Baltic Sea region. The wars between the Skilfings (Svear) and the Gotlanders are mentioned in the Beowulf epos. The Guta Saga tells that the Gotlanders always kept the victory and their right: “Many kings fought against Gutland while it was heathen; the Gotlanders, however, always held the victory and constantly protected their rights. Later the Gotlanders sent a large number of messengers to ‘suiarikis’ (Svear), but none of them could make peace before Avair Strabain of Alva parish. He made the first peace with the ‘suja kunung’ (king of the Svear).” The Trade Treaty between the Gotlanders and the Svear, probably from second half of the 500s, means that the Gotlanders could freely trade on the new kingdom in the Lake Mälar area and its conquered lands east of the Baltic Sea. There were large Gotlandic trading Emporiums, i. a. in Grobina (Latvia) ca 650-850 CE, an area at that time conquered by the Svear. Helgö and Birka would be trading places with large Gotlandic influence. E.g., writes Adam of Bremen in his story, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, that “Birka is a Gotlandic (Gothia) town located in the middle of the country of the Sveoner.” A new way of burial appears in the Lake Mälar area in the 500s, as well as the introduction of the Roman calendar. If we accept that the Heruli settle in the Lake Mälar area at this time, as mentioned by Procopius, it explains a lot. Actually this in fact explains the rise of the Vendel era, which in the Lake Mälar area starts first half of the 500s and continues until the beginning of the Middle Ages. On Gotland it starts about 50 years earlier and is explained by the Gotlanders’ close contacts with Theoderic’s Gothic kingdom. The first writer to mention some people on the Scandinavian peninsula (THULE), except Tacitus Sitonens in the Lake Mälar area, is Prokopios who wrote in the 500s. With the discovery that the Beowulf epos is about the Gotlanders in combination with the Heruls immigration to the Lake Mälar area we have been able to shed new light on the Gotlandic history. Indeed the history of the whole Baltic Sea region has come in a whole new light. We now have a link between the Beowulf epos, Guta Saga and the archaeological finds from the 400s and 500s. Roman gold coins known as solidi have been found on the three Baltic Sea islands: Bornholm, 150, Öland 298, Gotland 270 + 47 on the market place Helgö in Mälaren. The latter have been intended as raw material and are according to the researchers most likely derived from Gotland. It is obvious here to see Helgö and then Birka as Gotlandic trading venues, as implied by the archaeological sources. Gotland’s importance for trade and culture in the Baltic Sea region during the first millennium can also be illustrated by the coin finds. From the 500s until the 1000s the Gotlanders have, according to Swedish researchers, been considered to rarely be mentioned in ancient sources. They are, however, well known in Arabic and Byzantine sources as al-Rus’ and Varangian merchants. The word Varangian was used by Arabs, Greeks and Kievan Rus’ for the merchants from the island in the Baltic Sea region (the Gotlanders). It probably came from the old Norse word ‘vár’, which means ‘union through promise’, and was used by a group of men to keep them together in an association, and under oath observe certain obligations to support each other in good faith and to share the resulting profits. It was a common word, when trading adventures were undertaken by Gotlandic tradesmen on the Russian rivers. They closed a business contract with each other and pledged to defend each other. Another meaning of the word was for the Gotlanders who acted as mercenary soldiers to the rulers of Khazaria, Miklagarðr (Constantinople) and Garðaríki (Kievan Rus’). The Gotlandic Varangian Guard was an elite unit of the Byzantine army formed under emperor Basil II in 988. .

Tore Gannholm Gotland during the time of the West European silver The situation in which Gotland found itself until about 950, was from trade political point of view, unparalleled in its history. During the time of the Oriental silver, the Gotlanders dominated the trade on the Russian rivers and the main products went to the east and the silver stream came from there. When we come to the time of the West European silver from about 950 to about 1150, the picture changes. With the downfall of Khazairia in the 960s Gotlandic trade became more concentrated on Kiev and Miklagarðr in the east and Bardowick and Schleiswig in the south and west. Belts of the oriental type become very common in Kievan Rus’ and in countries to the east and west of the Baltic Sea region. They are so common on Gotland that with good probability it can be argued that the belts are partly manufactured on Gotland. Pottery of the Slavic type is very common on Gotland, and is also manufactured here. Although the silver in the latter part of the Viking Age also came from the west, there is no evidence of a decline in importance of impulses from the eastern Byzantine culture. Gotland’s close relations with the Byzantine Empire and Kievan Rus’ seem instead to have intensiﬁed. The two glazed clay eggs from the Kiev region, found in the Gotlandic rural areas, may well indicate a serious interest in the Byzantine-Kiev Christianity, which can also be seen in Byzantine art in Gotlandic churches. The egg as a symbol for resurrection is intimately connected with the Kievan Rus’ religiosity. It seems that Gotlandic objects become more common in countries around the Baltic Sea in the time of the west European silver. ‘Internationalization’ 166 Fig 92. Among Gotland’s approximately 525 silver treasures from the Viking Age the treasure from Fölhagen in Björke takes prominence. The photo shows a portion of this treasure with arm bends, beads, and different kinds of hanging ornaments, all of ﬁne silver FILIGREE WORK. The treasure has been deposited in the soil around the year 1000 CE. Photo Ivar Anderson. of the object shapes makes it difﬁcult to specify how many objects are Gotlandic. It is assumed that primarily spearheads decorated in Scandinavian runic style, some sort of ring buckles, belt accessories, and some silver jewelry decorated with ﬁligree and granulation originate from Gotland. This suggests an intensiﬁed Gotlandic trade with these areas. Most of these supposedly Gotlandic objects have been found in the East Baltic areas and Finland. A very interesting ﬁnd was made in 1868 on the bottom of the lake Furen in Härlöv near Växjö in Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Småland. It is apparently a lost stock of small prod- of tin, 30 skeins of copper wire, seven forceps, ucts, consisting of at least eleven knives and about eleven ring buckles and about 100 strap mountings, 140 needles of iron, ﬁve small buckles and 83 beads rings to strap mountings and buckles for belts. All this is made of bronze or brass. Some strap mountings have simple oriental plant ornamentation. Others are likely to be of a Gotlandic type. It is not unlikely that these objects belonged to a traveling Gotlandic merchant. What concerns trade in addition to those small wares is difﬁcult to determine. Perhaps the man has been looking for bog ore. A spear tip and two axes, which are also found at the same time, may have belonged to the Merchant Farmer’s personal equipment. In that case this is evidence that he has not been an overly simple man. The Burge treasure Fig 93. Silver Treasure from Sälle in Fröjel parish found in 1987. It contains more Swedish and Scandinavian coins, 118 pieces, than any other Viking Age silver treasure on Gotland. Several of the Swedish coins are minted on square pieces and can probably be traced to Olof Skötkonungs coinage in Sigtuna, which began around 995. The Sälle treasure thus represents an important addition to research on the ﬁrst Swedish coins. It weighs just over three kg. It includes more than 1000 coins which can be dated to after 1016 and has been kept in an earthen clay pot. Photo Ulf Abramsson. The year was 1967 when the farmer at Burge in Lummelunda plowed an older meadow. Suddenly the plow hit a bronze vessel which was crushed and coins, as well as silver bars and silver jewelry were spread out. In a vessel of bronze the treasure was kept under the ﬂoor in a Viking Age Merchant Farmer’s farm, for centuries hidden on the Burge estate in Lummelunda. A few coins had previously appeared at plowing of the old meadow, but in August 1967 the farmer Per Anders Croon’s plow came straight into the bronze vessel that burst into pieces so that the content was spread over the immediate area. Expert assistance was called for and the ﬁnd site was excavated by archaeologists. Thus came Gotland’s then largest silver treasure into daylight. The thousands of coins, jewelry, cast and shredded silver had a total weight of 10.57 kg. It was the farm’s coffers, buried under layers of earth, charcoal and ash after a ﬁre in the 1100s. ‘Our last Viking Age treasure - and the ﬁrst medieval treasure’, it has been called. However the Gotlandic 167 Tore Gannholm soil has not given away all of its treasures. More is to come. The chronological range of this treasure span more than half a millennium and can be read in the dating of the 2959 coins from the years 5841143. Oldest is a drachma from the Persian Empire, marked for the Sassanid prince Hormizd IV in 584, the youngest a copy of the ﬁrst Gotlandic coin. The coin is larger than other Gotlandic coins of the same type and weighs more than twice as much. It was made around 1140. On one side of the coin one can see a cross with four arms based on a ring with a point. Between these start simple lilies in the form of short lines with attached points. Around the cross is a pearl ring. Outside this is a clear but unreadable legend. Another pearl ring encloses the entire scene. On the other side, we see part of a church with two towers and leaning squared church roof. Lots of smaller and younger coins with similar image combination have been found. The main focus of the treasure was some 50 pieces of cast silver of Kievan Rus’ origin. Among them there were 34 specimens with a standardized form and a weight that is about 200 grams, or half of a Kievan Rus’ pound (409.5 g). They came from Kiev and Novgorod. According to old Kievan Rus’ sources they are called ‘grivnor’ and were used as payment according to a value system. cial venues, type Paviken in Västergarn, Ridanäs in Fröjel and Bandelunda Bay in Burs. It should now also be clear that the many silver depots are not directly related to war and devastation. Farm wealth was deposited as a rule not in the soil as a result of ravages in the district, but simply under the building because the owner believed the earth to be the most secure storage facility. It was simply the farm safe. The knowledge of where the silver was, however, could be lost when its owner died, e.g on a business trip in a foreign country. During the Viking Age the internal economy on Gotland was probably more static. It is a pre-monetary society in which the circulation was negligible and where coined and not coined silver was normally kept together in sleeping depots. The Gotlandic graves appear to reﬂect a much more closed society than the treasure ﬁnds and settlement ﬁnds show. Gotland shows two faces, one facing outward and one inward. Somehow one thinks of ibn Fadlan’s description of the al-Rus’. He talks about the funeral of one of the al-Rus’ chiefs in the year 921. It is performed in the manner that the chief is burned in a boat on the Volga shore. From the description of the chief and the woman who voluntarily accompanied him in death and cremation, there are indications that it was a Gotlandic merchant. Both men’s and women’s costumes match pretty well with what we know about the costume fashion on Gotland at the time. The following quotation suggests that the men The circulation of coins were wearing the kind of sword that we presume It seems that the coined silver has often arrived has been ﬁtted with Gotlandic sword hilts on Gotto Gotland in larger consignments. The rich have land: “Every person has with him a hatchet, a sword added the new entry to an older set and eventual- and a knife, and these tools they never separate ly the farm fortunes come about. The farm’s silver themselves from. Their swords are wide, grooved, has generally only been used for larger payments, of Frankish manufacture. From the nail next to the or as raw material for jewelry. There has not been neck, they are tattooed in green with trees and other any daily ‘coin circulation’, except perhaps in spe- images.” 168 Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Odd means of payment Silver neck rings, coins, beads and leather, everything has thus been in use as means of payment and standard of value. Precious metal has not been used as means of payment in all situations. Pearls have been accorded a value far above the production or acquisition costs. Worn, according to ordinary concepts, worthless skins were accepted as payment, as long as they met certain speciﬁed requirements. Such complex economic systems are well known Fig 94. First Gotlandic from the Viking Age and Medieval Eastern Europe. coin. The coin is larger Similar economic systems have probably been presthan other Gotlandic ent on Gotland. Between themselves, valid only on coins of the same type Gotland, there has during the Viking Age, as in earand weighs more than lier times, as a rule been pure barter or use of beads twice as much. and other things to make payments with a tradition of established value. The silver has been mainly used in international trade and in situations where they wanted to highlight their status. At home, it has been largely lain dormant as a capital in the soil. usually two-sided imprints of silver with a church gable on one side and a star or a cross on the other. Sometimes both sides had the same stamp. The average weight was 0.167 g. The researcher Nils Ludvig Rasmusson has deﬁnitively shown that the coin Domestic coinage In the Gotlandic ﬁnds there is import of coins and must be Gotlandic. silver pieces until around 1140 when it ceases alto- The ﬁrst medieval coins in the northern and eastgether. Instead a domestic coinage is started. In the ern Baltic Sea regions were accordingly stamped on Middle Ages the right to mint coins was reserved Gotland in the early 1100s. They were used over a the king. Since Gotland was an independant Mer- wide area around the Baltic Sea region during the chant Farmers’ Republic they had their own rules. early Middle Ages. The Gotlandic coins had eviThe Gotlanders have with their own words, taken dently a good reputation as they were accepted in this right themselves. The earliest written evidence a wide area. They have been found from Bremerof a Gotlandic currency is issued in 1211 when it vorde between Hamburg and Bremen in the south was decided that the coins in Riga would be equal to Hedemark in Norway in the north and from Dalsland in the west to Estonia in the east, but to the Gotlandic as to weight and value. It was for a long time uncertainty about how these with a clear concentration to southeastern Sweden. Gotlandic coins looked like, although a strong case The Gotlandic money becomes completely domispoke for a group that frequently appeared in the nant in eastern Götaland, Småland, Östergötland East Swedish ﬁnds. The coins in question were thin, and Öland. Only around 1250 the Gotlanders may 169 Tore Gannholm Fig 95 Pax Porta Nova. foto: Gabriel Hildebrand, Kungl. Myntkabinettet. feel competition, when Birger Jarl starts minting in Östergötland. The Gotlandic coins were modelled on coins from northwestern Germany and Friesland, but with their own weight standard. They were in turn the standard for the ﬁrst east Baltic coinage. But why did this coin on the whole come about? Coining was not primarily for economic reasons, but as part of a network building, that the Gotlanders were involved in during the 1100s. Gotland was squashed between a number of strong wills and powers in the area, therefore it was necessary for them to build their own platform. Through its location in the Baltic Sea region Gotland was during the 1100s an important stop for both the Danish, Kievan Rus’ and later German merchants, and all the Crusaders who were on their way over the sea during this time when the Danes, Germans and Swedes competed to help themselves to the non-Christian areas. The Gotlanders themselves seem to have been mod- 170 erately interested in participating in the Crusades. They were too closely tied to their neighbours to the east. But they let the Crusades pass over Gotland, while they at the same time sold weapons to those who were to be converted. In the Viking Age harbour area at Vi therefore the medieval town of Visby grew rapidly during the late 1100s. There met all those who crossed the seas on a generally peaceful manner, under the patronage of the Gutna Althingi. The harbour was in the outlet fortiﬁed with a tower ‘Turris lambitus’ or that of the water licked Tower, called ‘kastal’. Today it goes under the name ‘Kruttornet’. The inlet was fortiﬁed with the tower ‘Turris ﬂuviatilis’ which means the river tower at the southern entrance. But equally important was that they could offer a reliable trading situation in which the coins took part. The coins marked who had the right to Visby, and they were probably also used to take advantage of the visitors economically. Probably the visitors were forced to exchange their own currency in order to purchase and acquire stores in the city. Everybody was offered a berth during the late 1100s, as long as they respected the Gotlandic harbour peace - Pax Porta Nova - and used the Gotlandic coins. One of the coin types has accordingly the inscription ‘Pax Porta Nova’ referring to the harbour, or harbour of peace, which shows that just the ability to create a peaceful situation for the visitors was among the most important things that the Gotlanders could offer its visitors. Using an obvious Christian imagery on coins was also a way to get the Catholic Church to accept the Gotlandic trade, which largely seems to have been based on slaves and weapons. These coins appear some time before the time of the founding of Lübeck and the disturbances, that lead to the signing of the Artlenburg peace agreement. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea During this turbulent time the Gotlanders used both old and new networks in the East and West to create their own value in economic, cultural and intellectual sense. Their own coins and a safe haven for visitors were essential elements of the strategy. It is still unknown where on Gotland coinage took place. In a couple of places in the countryside there are Gotlandic medieval stone buildings, whose name might suggest a connection with coinage. One such house is located at Duss in Bro, just north of Visby, and was called simply the Coin (Myntet). Here the stamp to the Gotlandic Guthna Althingi’s seal with the proud ewe was found in the 1700s. It happened one day before Christmas time. It was in the 1740s, the city chaplain Klingwall in Visby came for a visit to the farm Duss in Bro, 10 km north of the city. He was well known in the house, and when he looked out into the kitchen to greet the ladies, he found that they were busy baking. He looked at how they deftly baked the buns and stamped them with a bread stamp, and on the buns he to his astonishment saw the Gotlandic seal’s image stand out. But not the then current Christian cross lamb, Agnus Dei, but a proud Gotlandic ewe, carrying a ﬂag. The learned city chaplain asked to look at the stamp and around the small bronze piece’s edge he read a Latin verse in neat majuscules: “GUTENSES SIGNO XPRISTVS SIGNATVR IN AGNO.” Which can be translated: “I signify the Gotlanders, but with the lamb Christ is signiﬁed .” He held in his hand the stamp to the seal, which in the 1200s was used by the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers, as a national and political entity. In fact, it was the state seal of one of the few republics that existed in medieval northern Europe outside of the free imperial city circuit. He had in the kitchen at Duss made one of the historically most remarkable archaeological ﬁnds on Gotland. With this seal the treaties which the Gotlanders entered into with the princes of Novgorod, with the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of England or with the powerful merchant guilds in northern Germany were sealed. Note that the Gotlanders used a feminine symbol in their seal, the ewe. The stamp is now to be seen in the Swedish State Historical Museum in Stockholm. In clerical respect Gotland was allied to Linköping see, probably since 1164, and was inspected by the Linköping bishop every three years. The Gotlanders had by contract, where they dictated the conditions, employed the Bishop of Linköping to perform the necessary consecrations and inspections. The agreement also included how much the bishop would be paid for his work. Gotland was divided into three deaneries, of which the Northern deanery seems to have possessed the grand building at St Drotten Street in Visby as chapter house. When city and country went their separate ways in 1288 the city took care of the coin minting, which until this time should have been the Gotlandic society’s property, especially since it started when Visby was just one of the harbours on the Gotlandic coast. Thus appears a new type of coins, a one-sided thin stamping, known as bracteate, with a ‘W’ in a circle (popularly known as ‘lusskinn’). The average weight is lower than the previous coins, only 0.12 g. Both types of coins belong to the large group of money, that for a long time was the only denominations that were coined in the Nordic coin system. There are two important differences between the Gotlandic coinage and the coinage on the Swedish mainland. In the Middle Ages different coin counting prevailed. One mark contained different quantity of penningar. In Svealand there were 192 penningar on a mark, in western Götaland 384, on Gotland and eastern Götaland 288. Gotland retained its own currency until 1450. 171 Tore Gannholm Bishop Albert of Riga gave in 1211 privileges to the merchants, who were active in Riga, to mint coins “as you do on Gotland, but with different look” and in 1225 also Reval (Tallinn) joined this coin standard. “In moneta quantor marcae et dimidia denariorum marcam argenti ponderabunt Guthensem. Denarii albi erunt et dativi, ex illis monetarius duas oras habebit. Ejusdem valoris erunt Rigenses denarii, cujus et Guthenses, licet alterius formae” (From Hauberg 1891:7). One wonders why the German bishop found it interesting to support a coinage that joined the Gotlandic coinage system rather than Lübeck and other German cities. The answer should be that they were coins for use in a sphere where the Gotlanders had a dominating inﬂuence. The privilege formulation may also be interpreted that it is the Gotlanders in place in Riga who shall be responsible for the coinage. Rune stones over widely travelled Gotlanders From the Viking Age there are a number of runic inscriptions, which tell about the Gotlandic contacts with the outside world. There are Gotlandic inscriptions which tell of Gotlandic trips to foreign countries, and inscriptions from Uppland, Södermanland and Skåne which tell of trips to Gotland. If one dots on maps the places, peoples and countries mentioned, you get a fairly good illustration of their connections. At Pilgårds in Boge, where one of Gotland’s largest ancient harbours is located, a stone has been found from the end of the 900s, i.e. from the time of the transition between the Islamic and Western European silvers. It tells apparently about a trip down the Dnieper rapids. These are the rapids, which are 172 Fig 96. The Pilgårds rune stone inside Bogeviken, that in the Viking Age was a bay, was found in 1871 in a cairn on Pilgårds’ land. The stone was full with runes in lines running from bottom to top. The text, interpreted by Wolfgang Krause, reads as: “glaring painted Hegbjarn and his brothers Rodvisl, Oystain and Emund raised this stone, who have raised stones in memory of Ravn south of Rufstain. They came a long way in Aifur. Vivil gave the mission”. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea described in detail by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (905-959) in the book ‘De Administrando Imperie’, and constituted the greatest adventure of the trip between Garðaríki (Kiev) and Miklagarðr (Constantinople). The famous Dnjepr rapids were seven. They constituted a difﬁcult barrier to travel, and could only be crossed during a few weeks of the year when the water was high. The ﬁrst rapid is ‘Essupi’, perhaps from ‘ei soﬁ’, do not sleep. The second was called ‘Ulvorsi’ from ‘holmfors’, rapid at the island. The third was called ‘Galandri’ from ‘gjallandi’, loudly ringing. The fourth was called ‘Aeiphor’ from ‘eiforr’, always dangerous. The ﬁfth was called ‘Baruforos’ from ‘varufors’, rapid at the cliff. The sixth was named ‘Leanti’ from ‘hlæjandi’, laughing. Finally, the seventh rapid was named ‘Strukun’ from ‘strukn’, small rapid. The most difﬁcult of the seven rapids was the fourth, that the Varangians (al-Rus’) called ‘Aeiphor’. There the boats were dragged and carried past the rapids, and the fettered slaves, which they brought for sale in the south, were lead along the beach. All the time there was the threat of the nomads on the steppe, above the river bed, that they would go on the attack. Hegbjarn and his brothers, who raised the Pilgårds stone, ‘came a long way in Aeiphor’. Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos also writes: “After they passed this place (the seven rapids with one existing wade), they arrive to the island (in the Dnieper), known as St. Gregor, on which they also produce their sacriﬁces, because there is a giant oak. There they sacriﬁce living birds. Around these they stick down arrows in the ground, others also bread and meat, and what each one just has with him. This is the prevailing custom among them. They also cast lots for the birds, if they will kill them or devour them or let them be alive.” At excavations at Gudingsåkrarna in Vallstena similar sacriﬁce cir- cumstances have been encountered. On the island Berezan in the Dnieper mouth the only rune stone on Rus’ territory has been found which, as T.J. Arne says, is probably of Gotlandic origin. Fv 1914 p. 48: “From where Grani and Karl came, is difﬁcult to determine. However, it should be recalled that the word ‘hvalf ’ in rune litterature only meets us on Gotland. It might therefore be possible to see them as Gotlanders. No word forms, however, are determined Gotlandic, but the stone’s shape and inscription space are often found on Fig 97. One of the Sjonhem stones, erected in memory of Rodfos who was killed in treachery by Valackians 173 Tore Gannholm Gotland.” From one of the Sjonhem stones, erected in memory of Rodfos, we can read that he was killed in treachery by Valackians. The Valacks was a mountain people in current Romania, which made very little fuss in the Viking Age. How did Rodfos come into contact with these people? At the cemetery in Sjonhem there is a stone erected by the sisters to three older brothers who apparently died in the river Windau in northwest Courland. At Timans in Roma an inscription mentions even more distant countries. It’s not like the other inscriptions carved on a standing stone, but on a small stone, which has been turned into a mould for simple pewter buckles (of a type not known from Gotland). On the back of the mould two male and four geographical names have been inscribed: ‘Ormica, Ulvat, Greece, Jerusalem, Iceland, Sarkland’. We thus have here a testimony of Gotlandic extensive travelling as good as almost anything. There are apparently two partners who in their strangely incidental way wished to commemorate their joint expeditions to the then known world. Serkland was the old Scandinavian name for the Saracen empires of both the Black Sea and in North Africa. The piece has all the signs to have been made around the mid 1000s. And thus one is attracted into exciting historical speculations. Runic inscriptions also provide some information about the purpose of Gotlandic travel and with strangers visiting Gotland. The Stenkumla stones are raised after a man who ‘... farm and in the south carried on leather trade. And he died on Ulvshale, when he ...’ Ulvshale is a headland on Mön in Denmark, i.e. along the trail to Sliestorp/Schleswig and Western Europe. An interesting fact is that the man was a landowner. Otherwise, the fragmentary inscription is not understood, although we do not know what the man is said to have done with the 174 Fig 98. Timans in Roma inscription mentions two male and four geographical names that have been inscribed: ‘Ormica, Ulvat, Greece, Jerusalem, Iceland, Serkland farm. Of great interest for the Gotlandic earlier history is the Hallfreda stone. It has been raised over a father, brother or son who died in Holmgarðr, (Novgorod). In a Kievan Rus’ source, a regulation that is believed to have been issued by Prince Yaroslav, who ruled 1019-1054, is mentioned that the Gotlanders were residing at a particular street in Novgorod. An Uppland rune stone is erected in memory of a man who became ill and died when he was collecting money on Gotland. A Sörmland man died in battle on Gotland. There is evidence of a series of ravaging expeditions to Gotland. On the other hand there are no Gotlandic rune stones about men who have participated in war expeditions. All foreign travels mentioned may have had a peaceful purpose. Gotlanders also appear as a fairly peaceful people, when studying their tombs. According to Davidson, the Gotlandic key position on the route eastward, was a solid proof that it was an important trading centre. The word Varangian was used by Greeks, Arabs and Kievan Rus’ for the merchants from the Baltic Sea (Gotlanders). The Gotlandic Varangian Guard in Miklagarðr was ﬁrst formed under emperor Basil II in 988, fol- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea lowing the Christianization of the Kievan Rus’ by Vladimir I of Kiev. Vladimir, had recently usurped power in Kievan Rus’ with help of Varangian mercenaries. Basil’s distrust of the native Byzantine guardsmen, whose loyalties often shifted with fatal consequences, as well as the proven loyalty of the Varangians, many of whom served in Byzantium even before, led the emperor to employ them as his personal guardsmen. Over the years, new recruits kept a predominantly Gotlandic cast to the organization until the late 1000s. Gotland as Baltic Sea region trading center until the 1300s To the peculiarities of Gotland’s earlier history is the so-called Merchant Farmers, ordinary farmers who combined agriculture and animal husbandry with mercantile activity. In Gotland’s famous law, the Guta Lagh, their trade is almost invisible. If we, however, look to economic resources, archaeological ﬁndings, cultural relics and Arabic and Greek sources, when we know that al-Rus’ and Varangians are Gotlandic merchants, the Merchant Farmers are the easier to detect. The optimal trading location in the Baltic Sea region helped the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers to play a leading part: a) in Roman Imperial time controlling the Amber trade with the Romans, b) in the Viking Age controlling the Russian rivers all the way to Volga and the Khazar Khaganate with the Silk Road, c) in Medieval times controlling the merchant shipping between the Baltic Sea region countries with Kievan Rus’ in the east and Sweden, Denmark and Germany in the West. They had a key base in Holmgarðr (Novgorod), Gutagård, and were well established in Miklagarðr (Constantinople), England and the Flanders, all the way down to Spain. The Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ trade, which spread out so much in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, goes as mentioned earlier, back to the Bronze Age. The Gotlanders had since early times trading Emporiums in various places to support their trade. When forming those trading Emporiums the Gotlanders must as Jordanes puts it: “For the race whose origin you ask to know burst forth like a swarm of bees from the midst of this island and came into the land of Europe.” Gotland is located centrally in the Baltic Sea and founded its trading power on the island’s favorable location between major markets with different production, and with strong demand for each other’s goods. Furs, wax, honey, amber from eastern Europe as well as silver, silk and spices from the Orient were in great demand in the West. In exchange they could from the West offer weapons, Flemish cloth, wine, salt, pottery and glassware. Initially the Gotlanders seem to have had no competition. Later on, after the Artlenburg Treaty in 1161, the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers were role models for the German merchants from Lübeck and Hamburg, but it took a long time, until the late 1200s, before the Germans became a threat to the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers. Still in the 1300s the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers maintained themselves at times well in the international commerce, particularly when the German cities had problems with commercial negotiations and war. Only after the late medieval disasters and the forming of the Hanseatic League in 1358 did the curtain ﬁnally fall down for the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers. So what has the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers left behind? First of all the magniﬁcent parish churches, which stand in a class by themselves in present-day Sweden. Not only the quantity but also the details, 175 Tore Gannholm the capitals, the sculptured portals, wall and glass paintings, and more is impressive. In addition, there are remnants left of their old farms. Closest to the reality of the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers will probably be the Kattlunds farm, now a Heritage Farm, located south of Grötlingbo church. Although the farm is rebuilt several times, most recently in the 1800s, the main house has still extensive remains of the local Gotlandic Merchant Farmers from the Middle Ages. By all accounts, we can also identify some of the owners. In the late 1200s appears that the house was inhabited by Johannes Kattlund, in the early 1400s by Botulf Kattlund. Long after the political upheavals in Russia prevented a direct contact with the Orient, and long after the silver mines of Asia lost its importance, did the trade routes they followed during the 800s and 900s remain. In other words, Gotland continued to be an important step on the road between Europe and the Orient, where Novgorod became the main staple town and intermediary of Eastern goods. From this one we can detect a wide-ranging trade, stretching to the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Serkland (the Caliphate) and Greece (Byzantium). Thus, one can from the large number of treasure ﬁnds presume old Gotlandic trade relations with markets in both the Arabic and Byzantine Empires, as well as Western Europe. The Gotlanders are at this time probably the richest, and also the most powerful in this part of the world. In the trade treaties that we meet with Gotland as the one party during the 1100s and ﬁrst half of the 1200s it is neither Visby nor Gotland that is mentioned. It always refers to ‘Gutniska kusten’ (the Gotlandic coast), which includes the long line of Gotlandic harbours including the harbour in Visby. From these harbours the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers in the spring equipped their ships for voyages to the foreign market places. 176 When did this Merchant Farmers’ society ﬂourish? The preserved monuments in the form of churches and farms tend to suggest the 1200s. The fact is that the real boom was earlier, in the 1100s, as a culmination of the Viking Age development. Already in the 900s the Gotlanders owned their famous trading Emporium in Novgorod, Gutagård, later with its German name called Gotenhof, and there was later a St Olaf Church that burned in 1152 but was soon rebuilt. A subsidiary St Olaf Church is mentioned in Miklagarðr. The Gotlanders power position in the Baltic Sea trade reached its peak before the Germans entered the scene through the Artlenburg Treaty with Henry the Lion in 1161, which replaced an older treaty. There the Gotlanders were guaranteed the same rights as the duke’s own subjects in Saxony with equivalent return that the duke’s subjects received the same rights on Gotland. Compare the old Trade agreement with the Svear. The 1200s was characterized more by the unfortunate power struggle between the rural country and Visby. However, one must still be careful not to overdo this rivalry and its impact on the Gotlandic cultural image. On the cultural level, and particularly in ecclesiastical art, there is too obvious intimate interaction between city and country. The heaviest hitting blow against the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic was, however, the Black Death and the Danish king Valdemar’s campaign 1361, when the rural part must have been absolutely devastated. It did not end with the extermination battle in front of Visby gates, but was followed by looting and devastation of the Gotlandic country side. It is no coincidence that the central part in the tales about Valdemar is not found in Visby, but on Storsudret, which in medieval times was a very rich area with a concentration of large, stone-built Merchant Farmers’ farms. Valdemar’s rampage to Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 99. Model of Skuldelev III 1:50 scale. Photo and model building Henry Hallroth. The ship is consistent with the description of the Gotlandic ‘knarr’ according to the Guta Lagh southern Gotland is not mentioned in the historical sources, but we still have adequate proof that the tales have their roots in the bloody reality. In the Church in Fide, who lifts her heavy sandstone tower over the narrow isthmus and rocky shore ﬁelds is southern Gotland’s Valdemar cross. In its triumphal arch there is a half obliterated painting: the suffering Savior standing in front of the cross with rod and scourge in his hands, a man of sorrows. In such reproductions the late Middle Ages often expressed their pietistic coloured passion of mysticism, in which human and divine suffering were united. Here now this Christ stands, bent over in his own pain and human evil, and above him a Latin verse is painted, which cleverly combines his- torical dating to medieval ﬁgure magic: “Edes succense gens cesa dolens ruit ense.” This can be translated as: “The temple (or the farms) are on ﬁre, the people slain, they drop in complaints to the sword.” Or this: “The temple on ﬁre, people killed, the grief He dread of the sword.” In the later version the Danish researcher Marstrand says that the spirit of this is: “When people resort to the sword its tip is pierced into the heart of Christ”. The war disaster that is commemorated in the scarce, fateful words is the Valdemar campaign. The inscription is a chronogram, which in itself is hiding the number 1361. Rarely has the Pain man’s image been ﬁlled by a more profound human content. 177 Tore Gannholm Valdemar’s conquest was certainly short-lived but it had hit the Merchant Farmers’ land hard and it was difﬁcult to assert itself in the coming troubled times. It was like an old fashioned company in liquidation that realizes its real estate. It included Gutagård, the oldest, ﬁnest trading Emporium in Novgorod. It is really a tragic scene that takes place in Visby in 1402, when Dean Jacob in Vall on the behalf of the Gotlandic commons from bourgher Hinze Stolte from Tallinn, the German Hanseatic cities Agent, received the accrued rent for Gotenhof and extended the contract for another ten years. This Merchant Farmers’ Republic’s institution survived well retained during the 1400s and 1500s dark times. However after the appearance of Erik of Pomerania and the high-handed Axelssönerna on Gotland we can no longer speak of a free Merchant Farmers’ state. The old Merchant Farmers’ democracy, which never felt the estates and the county barons, ﬁnally fell victim to a politically and economically stiﬂing exploiting feudal system. Visborg castle was ostentatiously raised on both the Merchant Farmers’ Republic and the free City’s ruins. The Gotlandic ‘knarr’ The merchant ship which the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers were using, was that so called Gotlandic ‘knarr’. It is described in the Guta Lagh, where it is characterized as a ship with thirteen ribs, and three cross beams. Today we know what this ship looked like in reality. In the 1950s in connection with very successful excavations in Roskilde Fjord in Denmark no fewer than ﬁve vessels, all sunken in the fjord in early 1000s were discovered. These vessels have successfully been rescued and are now preserved in a hall in Roskilde. One of these ships is considered to be a Gotlandic 178 ‘knarr’. It has thirteen ribs, and three cross bars in accordance with the Guta Lagh’s description. The vessel is 13 metres long and 3.2 metres wide and has deck fore and aft. It is a stable sailing vessel with large capacity, but it is also shallow and qualiﬁed to be pulled up on the shore. The discovery sheds new light on the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ ship. Gotland between East and West Gotland’s central role, later concentrated to Visby, was originally self-evident, as the trade routes from east to west, as we have already seen, a long time seem to have gone over the island. Gotland’s politico-commercial position as intermediary for trade between East and West remained intact even after the silver stream from Asia stopped and Novgorod, the Nordic Holmgarðr, became the main export center for Eastern European goods. Novgorod is part of the Gotlandic Varangian colonization from the 800s. Around the year 1000 began its heyday, and it became a Kievan Rus’ trading Emporium. The 900s treasure ﬁnds show that the trade had large extent. As seen above the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers were early located in Novgorod. Probably they had as early as the Viking Age the trading Emporium, Gutagård, later with a church dedicated to St. Olaf. About its longevity its location testiﬁes that it is closest to the river bank with its own quay. At the Viking Age the Gotlanders seem in the north to have traded on ﬁrst the skin and slave market in Birka and thereafter Sigtuna, that after Birka’s downfall became a centre for the Lake Mälar area. When Stockholm was founded around 1252, it was Gotlandic merchants who formed the nucleus. The Gotlanders have covered the Kievan Rus’ market Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea mainly with Novgorod as their central trading place. They also maintained their old trading links with the pre-Christian peoples on both sides of the Gulf of Finland. With the East Baltic areas they have had intimate relations since the dawn of time. In 988 Kievan Rus’ ofﬁcially converted to Christianity. The religious art that arises in Kiev, Novgorod, Staraya Ladoga and later in Vladimir and Suzdal has many similarities with church art in some early wooden churches on Gotland. It seems to be artists trained in the same schools in Miklagarðr (Constantinople) who worked in these churches. This is further proof that the Gotlandic contacts in these areas were intimate. That the early crusaders used the road across Gotland and the Russian rivers to Miklagarðr, strengthens of course the cultural impulses. E.g., there is a story by Saxo Grammaticus about the Danish King Erik Ejegod who in 1103 passed Gotland on his way to Jerusalem and consecrated the S:t Olof church in Visby. From inscriptions we can see that Gotlandic Merchant Farmers died in Holmgarðr (Novgorod) or on their way to Schleswig and Oldenburg. In the ﬁrst half of the 1100s Kievan Rus’ sources speak about Kievan Rus’ Lodjas on their way to and from Gotland, and in 1156 a Kievan Rus’ merchant ﬂeet is mentioned that it was sacked in the harbour of Schleswig. Merchants from Novgorod sailed in the ﬁrst half of the 1100s on the Gotlandic coast, and Kievan Rus’ goods were apparently traded in the Gotlandic harbours. An important part of this exchange of goods was conveyed at a good proﬁt by the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers. The Kievan Rus’ goods were primarily furs, there after hides, hemp, wax, honey, tallow, tar, pitch, and more. This was added to Gotland’s own products such as horses, food and weapons, and later on limestone and sandstone in various degrees of processing. Gotlandic baptismal fonts can be found all around the Baltic Sea region. However, it was the transit trade that gave the great income. The non-Christian peoples, who since the Migration Period mastered the coasts of Holstein to Poland took no signiﬁcant part in international trade. The Germans were still totally cut off from the Baltic Sea region. First in the 1100s did they manage to break through to the Baltic Sea region. In the trading town of Birka which perished before the year 1000 the Gotlanders were very active on the skin and slave market. According to Davidson, Birka became very dependent on the Volga river trail and in the context of the Islamic silver drying up, there was no basis for Birka’s existence. Denmark was at the same time involved to the west in England. The Gotlandic Merchant Farmers remained the leading merchant people in the Baltic Sea region. They dominated trade on the Russian rivers and later with Kievan Rus’ and had even trade westward around the North Sea, all the way to Iceland according to a rune inscripition, and Spain according to the Canterbury Tales. Already in early 1100s there had probably been a Kievan Rus’ commercial Emporium in Visby. In the so-called Jaroslav treaty from the 1190s there is mention about the Kievan Rus’ living quarters on the Gotlandic coast, apparently referring to Visby. We have from the Middle Ages information of no less than two Kievan Rus’ churches in connection with the Kievan Rus’ commercial Emporium in Visby. Natural conditions were on Gotland largely poor, where the limestone was only covered with a thin layer of soil, and large areas with moss and swamps. Commerce, not agriculture, was therefore the source of the Merchant Farmers’ prosperity. In the south and southwest, the Gotlanders reached the German market via Oldenburg and Bardowick, from where highways led to northern Saxony and 179 Tore Gannholm Fig 100. The map shows the trade routes in Europe during the Viking Age according to Bolin. Snorri Sturluson says that as early as the 1020s the way from Norway to Novgorod went along the coast up to Öland and then over to Gotland. Olav the Saint’s story tells of Gudleik Gårdske who by King Olav was asked to buy costly treasures that were difﬁcult to get in the country. Gudleik replied that the King would get what he wanted, and then let the king give him the money as much as he wanted. In the summer Gudleik sailed to the East, and they were some time on Gotland. the Flanders through Sliesthorp later moved to Schleswig. Bardowick had its importance mainly because it was a frontier town in the north between Saxony and the north of it living non-Christian peoples. On the way there the goods must pass the customs station in Artlenburg. Bardowick is ﬁrst mentioned in 795 and its market is older than 970, since the emperor Otto II in 975 conﬁrms the trade protection there for Magdeburg issued by his father. 180 In Bardowick the merchants from the German Empire could shop the most sought-after commodities from the Baltic Sea region. The Baltic Sea region merchants, in turn, could here trade for such German goods, which were sought after in the Nordic countries and Kievan Rus’, including salt from Lyneburg and metal products from the Rhineland smitheries. It is possible that the Frankish wide serrated swords that ibn Fadlan tells about were im- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 101. 18 ‘snäckor’ sailing out of Bogeviken. Strelow writes in his chronicle: “Gjerre in Sjonhem on Gerite farm, his brother Bogke and Hangvar brother sailed from Bogeviken with 18 ‘snäckor’ in the Viking Age.” They sailed to the east and on the painting goes in a track grey geese to the north in the spring time. The Gotlanders, the free men, who rarely saw the meadow ﬂower, were then on their way to Miklagarðr (Constantinople) and England. They sailed out of Bogeviken, where now seven streams are located. The Gotlandic ships were according to the picture stones and the Guta Lagh not as large as those of the Norwegians, which sailed to Iceland and Greenland. They could be drawn at rivers and in shallow water. The Gotlandic coast has always needed a special kind of shallow draft boats. Painting by Erik Olsson ported from there to Gotland as sword blades. The Gotlanders have equipped them with sword hilts in the Nordic style, after which they sold those in countries such as Finland and Karelia. Sword production in Gotland, however, is not a new phenomenon as already as in the 600s it has been possible to establish such production. Most of the Bohemian coins found in Scandinavia come from Gotland. They have been brought here during the 900s - and 1000s - and appear always together with German and sometimes Bavarian, Hungarian and Arabic coins plus hack silver. These coins were probably acquired by Gotlandic Merchant Farmers during their trading voyages to the markets, where coins from Bavaria, Hungary, Co- logne and Bohemia may have been in circulation. In particular, this should have been the case in Bardowick and possibly also in Wollin. The Gotlanders’ relations with the German Empire during the 900s is substantiated by archaeological ﬁnds. On the south coast, Wollin at the mouth of the Oder, and Ralswiek on Rügen were important venues. At the trading place Sliestorp the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers met Frisian merchants but also Saxon merchants. Towards the end of the 1000s the Sliesthorp trading place was moved to the north side of Slien and we know it as Schleswig after that time. The Silver Treasure from Burge in Lummelunda, found in 1967 conﬁrms the importance of the Bar- 181 Tore Gannholm dowick market for the Gotlanders. The Burge ﬁnd explains why the emperor Lothair in the early 1100s was so keen on the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ favor. It should have been the importance they had for the Bardowick market and the German trade with the northern Baltic Sea region market, that motivated the emperor’s conduct. This remarkable discovery complements in an important way the above ﬁndings, how the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ trade acted as transit trade between the northern Baltic Sea region markets and the Saxons during the late Viking Age and early Medieval times. In the above mentioned Burge treasure out of the 3290 coins about 2700 were German coins. In addition, part of the ﬁnd were 24 pieces of Kievan Rus’ silver bars plus a number of bits of such. In ten of them Kievan Rus’ characters were inscribed, apparently being the name of the original Kievan Rus’ owners. Such silver bars were used in Kievan Rus’ as payment until the 1400s. Among the German coins there were also for the ﬁrst time found coins minted by Lothar of Supplinburg, Duke of Saxony in 1108, German emperor from 1125 to 1138. Even a small number of oriental coins, 30 Arabic and a Byzantine were included. The ﬁnal coin in the treasure belonged to the 1140s. When Henry the Lion in 1189 as revenge conquered and ravaged the rich City of Bardowick as punishment for her disloyalty it was a completely new situation for the Gotlandic merchant farmers. They were now for their German trade in the ﬁrst place forced to visit Lübeck, and alternative trading venues such as Oldenburg. When a Lübeckian tariff was introduced in the 1220s, the Gotlanders are mentioned among the people trading in the Baltic Sea region, which were free from duty. The Gotlanders had by the Artlenburg peace treaty in 1161 secured their possibilities to participate in the Flanders trade through Germany and by this 182 way the England trade. Later, we also have witnesses that they also ran the England trade over Norway. Schleswig’s town rights from the beginning of the 1200s refer to customs on merchants who left the harbour of Schleswig to go to “Gotland and elsewhere in the Baltic Sea region”. At that time, Gotland apparently was the most common target for vessels, which left the harbour of Schleswig. Rimbert depicts Sliestorp as a harbour where merchants from different countries met. The oldest Schleswig law conﬁrms this by telling about the various merchants, who visited the port, including Frisians and Gotlanders. When the written sources become more abundant, this fact is even clearer. We just need to read Henry Letten’s Chronicle with its depiction of Livonia’s Christianization and the City of Riga’s inception i.e. the period 1180-1220. Västergarn, medieval Garnahamn, enjoys great reputation in legend and history. There was a large rural harbour with predecessors from ancient times, and there have been buildings and substantial defenses in relation to the importance of the harbour. The small church does not look like much, but it is just the choir to a large facility that was not ﬁnished. Just next to it are the foundations of an older church and the ruins of a round defense tower from the 1100s. This tower is inserted into a mighty fortress girdle in the form of a wall with partly preserved foundations. This half circle wall encloses a vast area from the church down to the beach. There have been many theories about this wall, which is of a similar nature as the famous ramparts around the ancient towns of Birka, Sliestorp, Grobina and Kiev. It is believed that this was Gotland’s large Viking Age city, Visby’s predecessor. Remains of an ancient harbour at Västergarn has been found a little farther north at Paviken, which, however, was silted up before the Middle Ages. There are rich treasure ﬁnds, mainly coins that bear Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea witness to the trade life in Viking Age times. In the Gotland museum (Fornsalen) in Visby and the Royal Coin Cabinet in Stockholm, these coins are now in heaps, often thousands from individual ﬁnds. The rural magniﬁcent church buildings in stone, whose oldest parts derive from the 1000s, and architecturally are Anglo-Norman inﬂuenced, bear witness of the Merchant Farmers’ wealth in the early Middle Ages. The same applies to the farm stone houses, many of which are preserved. Carl von Linné tells in his ‘Gotländska resa, 1741’ that there are still many rubbles left: “Stone walls from large houses and vaulted rooms, often three stories tall with narrow paths and stairs in the walls, did we see at the farms in the country as well as at the churches throughout the day. If these were built as towers or as fortresses for piracy or as houses for the monks of ancient times, or as residences for the parish gentlemen in Danish time, we do not know. Most walls were already ruined but could still for a long time be of service if the farmer had provided their roofs.” ears. We have Henry Letten’s Chronicle with information about the Livonians who were as at home on Gotland. The old extinct Prussian language has a lot in common with the Gotlandic language. Galve, who we see negotiating in London is a Baltic name and it is possible that he or his ancestors immigrated to Gotland from Courland or Prussia. Gotland and its nearest neighbours to the east Only 150 km of water separates Gotland from the Courland coast. It is the distance to Gotland’s nearest neighbours to the east, with which the Gotlanders for thousands of years sailed and ﬁshed, traded and fought, long before the Germans reached the Baltic Sea region. Who are then those closest neighbours to the east (note 32)? And how intimate contacts have there been between them and the Gotlanders? Not only the climate and nature are equal, but also customs and the way of life is similar to each other. There are also place and farm names on Gotland, which sound very familiar to e.g. Latvian Fig 102. Resurrection egg. It is a small ceramics egg with yellowish white tiger striping. Only ﬁve such eggs have been found in present-day Sweden, two in Sigtuna area and three on Gotland in Alva, Rone and Fröjel. The eggs are believed to originate from Kiev, where dozens have come to light during excavations. They are considered to symbolize a sealed tomb with a promised resurrection after death. 183 Tore Gannholm Among the Gotlandic negotiators in Novgorod in 1268 is a Jakob Curinge mentioned, probably a man of Curonian origin. There are plenty of other evidence of close links and similarities between Gotlanders on the one hand, and Curonians and Livonians on the other hand: A. On Gotland and in Courland the people have long lived in individual houses and not in villages as in Sweden and Denmark. Henry Letten’s chronicle tells how surprised the Germans were when they in the 1200s came to Courland and saw that the people did not live in villages. B. The Gotlandic yard crosses occurred in the Baltic Sea countries as an originally pagan cult symbol. C. In the Baltic Sea countries there were many ancient castles. These are similar in their design and placement to those in Gotland. D. Nine stone ships in northern Courland testify to close communications already in the Bronze Age. Such a way of burial was at this time typical for Gotland. E. At Grobina in Courland there are three major burial grounds, including a smaller one that is a Svea warrior burial ground. The largest cemetery has graves of clear Gotlandic origin. 120 graves have been under investigation, but it is estimated that the number of Gotlandic graves in the cemetery is more than 1000. F. We know from Estonia, especially along the north coast of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Muhu, ﬂat, usually round cairns, barrows or stone mixed stacks, in which one or more man-long cists are made of limestone slabs, usually with a skeleton, but sometimes with cremation. Similar tombs, namely bones in stone mixed piles with cofﬁns, we know only from Gotland, where they are likely to occur as early as the last period of the Bronze Age and certainly are testiﬁed during the ﬁrst period of the Iron Age. 184 It would therefore urgently point to Gotlandic colonists. G. On Gotland one has in the graves found jewellery that is typical from Courland. At Huglaifs in Silte was excavated the skeleton of a woman who only wear jewellery of Baltic design. She is considered to have been of Courland birth. H. ‘Bulverk’, similar to that in Tingstäde träsk, can be found at several places in the Baltic Sea region and further south along the coast. I. Of particular interest are place- and farm names on Gotland respectively Courland and in the other Baltic countries (note 33). Roma is a name that by the language researchers have been derived from the word ‘rum’. In Gotlandic it is the name of an open market or gathering place. Roma, however, is pronounced locally as ‘Råmme’, i.e. with a short å-sound, and can possibly be linked with the Baltic designation Romme, with the meaning sacred place of worship. It may be noted that a central place of worship in Lithuania bears the name Rommene. Such an interpretation might be plausible. However, one can also imagine that Roma is directly linked to its Roman namesake. In the 500s Gotlanders had close contacts with Italy and their tribal kinsmen, who ruled there under Theoderic the Great. Admittedly Theoderic’s capital was Ravenna, but the spiritual centre was Rome or Roma as it is called locally. There are also hints of Christian graves on Gotland from that time. Åke Ohlmarks says that an Arian Christian burial site from 500 CE has been demonstrated. Even the yard crosses on Gotland indicate a connection to the east. In the early pre-Christian Middle Ages there were yard crosses with a ring (sun symbol) at almost every farm in the Baltic Sea region. These crosses with a ring were banned by the Crusaders when they converted the non-Christian peoples to Christianity in the Baltic Sea region. They were con- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea ements continuously, although they are portrayed in varying shades. This results in a speciﬁc formal typology. Fig 103. Baltic tribes sidered as a pagan cult symbol and were therefore largely cut down. Eventually, since Christianity had won a total victory in the area, the remaining yard crosses were accepted and reinterpreted as Christian symbols. The Gotlandic yard crosses have apparently had the same background, cross-ring (Sun symbol). They are thus more ancient, than previously imagined, and one understands better why the rites on Gotland have been conducted around these yard crosses well into later times. When the farm crosses are accepted by the Catholic Church as Christian symbols, appear the monumental wooden roods in many of Gotland’s churches. There the body of Christ is surrounded by a glory in the shape of a ring or a solid disc (Fig 111). The most typical form of Gotland Ring cross of triumph cross type is represented by those cruciﬁxes that occurred during the period 1230-1300. During that time there occur common formal el- Fig 104. Yard cross at Lauks in Lokrume. Photo K. E. Gannholm Fig. 105. Cross hinges, Byzantain type, Gotlandic graves. After J. Staecker. 185 Tore Gannholm Gutagård Holmgarðr (Novgorod) was for centuries an important central site for the Gotlandic trade. On an Uppland rune stone from the late 1000s, is mentioned a St Olaf Church, which belonged to the Gotlandic trading Emporium. This church burnt down in 1152 but was soon rebuilt. According to Davidson, Novgorod goes back to the 800s, and it is therefore not impossible that Gutagård leads its ancestry back to that time. A Kievan Rus’ source, a regulation that is believed to have been issued by Yaroslav I the Wise, who ruled 1015-1054, mentioned that the Gotlanders were residing at a particular street in the city. Gutagård lies at the shore of the river Wolchow. Yaroslav’s own house was farther from the river, indicating that it was younger than Gutagård. Yaroslav I, Grand Prince of Kievan Rus’, known as Yaroslav the Wise, born about 978, died February 20, 1054. He was the son of the Varangian Grand Prince Vladimir the Great, and was vice-regent of Novgorod at the time of his father’s death in 1015. His eldest brother, Svyatopolk the Accursed, killed three of his other brothers and seized power in Kiev. Yaroslav, with the active support of the Novgorodians and the help of a Varangian guard, defeated Svyatopolk and became the Grand Prince of Kievan Rus’ in 1019 until his death in 1054. In 1019 Yaroslav married Ingegerd Olofsdotter, daughter of Olof Skötkonung the king of Sweden. Ingegerd was born in Sigtuna. She was engaged to be married to the Norwegian king Olaf II, but when Sweden and Norway got into a feud, the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung would no longer allow the marriage to take place. Instead Ingegerd’s father quickly arranged for a marriage to Yaroslav the Wise. Once in Kiev, her name was changed to the Greek Irene. Ingegerd was later declared a saint with the name of Sta. 186 Fig 106. Kievan Rus’ was a medieval polity in Europe, from the late 800s to the mid 1200s, founded by Gotlandic merchants who were by the Arabs called al-Rus’. It disintegrated under pressure from the Mongol invasion 1237–1240. The early phase of the Gotlandic rule on the Russian rivers is sometimes known as the Rus’ Khaganate (end 700s until mid 800s, while the history of Rus’ proper begins in 882, when the capital was moved from Novgorod to Kiev after the Gotlandic Varangians liberated this Slavic city from the Khazars’ tribute. The state reached its zenith in the mid 1000s, when it encompassed territories stretching south to the Black Sea, east to the Volga, and west to the Kingdom of Poland and to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980–1015) and his son Yaroslav I the Wise (1019–1054) constituted the “Golden Age” of Kiev, which saw the ofﬁcial adoption of Christianity in 988 and the creation of the ﬁrst East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda (‘Justice of Rus’). Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Anna in Novgorod and Kiev. Also in Miklagarðr, there was a St Olaf Church which was connected to the St Olaf Church in Novgorod. In the Novgorod chronicle Rus’ are mentioned in 852. Varangians (Gotlanders) occur for the ﬁrst time in the Novgorod chronicl in 859 and are mentioned in 862, 882, 898, 944, 980, 983, 1015, 1018, 1024, 1130 and in 1188. The later year tells of battles between Varangians and Novgorod people on Gotland. Perhaps it is these disagreements which are leading to the treaty that was concluded with Novgorod in 1189 between the Gotlanders and other Western peoples, and ensuring the peoples mutual beneﬁts on trade journeys. After this year Gotland occurs quite often in Kievan Rus’ sources. From the 1200s there are some other trade treaties preserved, not only between Gotland and Novgorod, but also between Gotland and Smolensk. The Gotlanders’ agreement with the prince of Smolensk, which also includes Riga is from 1229. It shows that the Gotlanders had earlier regulated trading links with his country. The Gotlandic trading on the Daugava has earlier had Kiev as a target. In the 1100s Smolensk took Kiev’s place. As an expression for the Merchant Farmers’ weaker position in the 1400s the Gutna Althingi rented out Gutagård to the Baltic Hanseatic cities who called it ‘Gotenhof ’ with Tallinn as the tenant. It may be mentioned that at a meeting in Visby in 1402 the dean in Vall, mr. Jacob, negotiated with the Tallinn bourger Hinze Stolte. On behalf of Gotland the dean Jakob received from mr Stolte, who was the authorized agent of the Hanseatic cities and merchants, rent for the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers old Gutagård in Novgorod for the previous year, and the lease was extended for another 10 years. According to Yrwing, the ‘Landsdomare’ demands and raises rent for Gutagård at least up to 1554. The Gotlanders have thus owned Gutagård well into modern times. According to professor Hain Rebas, the Axelsson family’s involvement was signiﬁcant: “It is clear that the Axelsson family’s meddling in Livonia intensiﬁed around 1470. But even until then had Olof, Åke, Erik, Ivar and Laurens Axelsson, in several respects, made themselves famous or infamous in the Livonian towns and castles. It began already in 1453. At that time Olaf had in the name of the Gutna Althingi started to ask new and from Reval more troublesome demands for increased rent for the ancient Gotlandic trading Emporium Gutagård,called by the Germans Gotenhof, away in Novgorod.” Ravages by Viking kings Despite Gotland’s autonomy one can not exclude the possibility of Gotland at hostile attacks temporarily may have yielded to foreign conquerors and paid tribute to them. Olaf Tryggvason was pirate in the Baltic Sea around the year 990 and ravaged also Gotland’s coasts. In 995 he became king of Norway, and Christianized the Norwegians with ﬁre, blood and torture. He was killed at the Battle of Svolder year 1000. Olaf played an important part in the often forcible, on pain of torture or death, conversion of the Norse to Christianity. He is said to have built the ﬁrst church in Norway, in 995, and to have founded the City of Trondheim in 997. Many Norwegians, who did not want to be Christianized, ﬂed to Sweden, including Erik Jarl, who went on raids in the Baltic Sea. According to Snorri Sturluson, he sailed along the green shores of Gotland, and at Stavar he met a few ships, and he slew the Gotlanders. Stavgard is located in Burs at the Bandelunda bay, one of the oldest known ancient harbours. Accord- 187 Tore Gannholm ing to legend, still told in Burs and Rone, the chief Store Stavar had been attacked by the Norwegians at Bandelunda bay, but got away by going towards the shore. Approximately 10 acres of the area outside the ‘Snäckhuset’ are full of large boulders and is probably the most rocky coast of Gotland. The Norwegians had thereafter landed in Grötlingbo, 13 km south, and by land gone to Stavgard in Burs. Stavar and his men had then driven the Norwegians in front of them to Grötlingbo, where the decisive battle had been on Sandesrum, whereby all Gotlanders were killed. The Norwegians then looked for Stavar’s buried treasure, but could not ﬁnd it. The treasure would, according to legend, consist of three horse-loads, that is just as much as three horses could carry. The two legends agree and have a reality behind it. The event has taken place in the year 1000. According to Snorri, Erik Jarl was on his way to the Battle of Svolder, and the ‘Snäckhuset’ has belonged to Store Stavar. In 1007 a Norwegian ﬂeet came under the command of the 13 year old Olaf Haraldsson, later Christianized and after his death called Olaf the Saint, on a ravaging expedition in the Baltic Sea. The campaign was, however, led by the king educator Hrane, who had been on Viking ravaging expeditions several times before. Olaf was the foster son of King Sigurd Syr in Ringerike, who wanted to get rid of his foster son, and therefore sent him on a ravaging expedition. Olafssaga: “The king sailed to Gotland in harvest, and prepared to plunder; but the Gotlanders assembled, and sent men to the king, offering to pay scatt. The king found this would suit him, and he received the scatt, and remained there all winter.” Since the Christians, after his death, made Olaf a saint on Gotland, there is no mention of his ravaging expedition in the Guta Saga (note 34). Olaf came a second time in 1030, after that he two 188 years before had ﬂed from Norway to his brother in law Prince Yaroslav in Kiev. Olaf had in 1019 married Astrid, a daughter of Olof Skötkonung. Astrid was born to King Olof Skötkonung and his Obotritian mistress Edla. King Olav was supposed to have married Astrid’s half sister, Olof Skötkonung’s legitimate daughter Ingegerd Olofsdotter. Ingegerd was, however, as mentioned earlier after her father’s wishes instead married to Yaroslav I the Wise, Grand Prince of Novgorod and Kiev. Olaf was now on his way back to Norway, to try and win back the monarchy. It is probably this trip that is alluded to in the Guta Saga. Ormica is a very rare name, but it was carried at this time by a powerful Gotlandic Merchant Farmer, Ormica of Hejnum, who appears in the history in connection with the Norwegian king Olaf II Haraldsson’s visit to Gotland in 1030, when he according to Guta Saga and the Olaf legend consistent story, would have ‘imposed Christianity’ on Gotland. After landing in Akergarn, current St. Olofsholm, King Olav was visited by friendly chiefs, among them Ormica, and they exchanged gifts. The Guta Saga says that the Gotlanders on their trading expeditions early came into contact with Christian people, and many would thus have migrated to the new doctrine. We know from written sources that already in the 900s there were resident Gotlanders in the Ortodox Christian Miklagarðr (Constantinople). With the knowledge we have of the very liberal attitude of medieval Gotland, we may well imagine that there have early been various denominations of Christian people on some Merchant Farmers’ farms. King Olaf would then be considered to have entered into cooperation with some of these Christian groups, who have accepted his line of Christianity. It is indeed very tempting to put Ormica of Hejnum, the Christian Northern Gotlanders’ chief, in connection with the name Or- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea mika on the sand stone whetter from Timans (ﬁg 98). He had visited Iceland, where Christianity had been adopted as the state religion in the year 1000. He also visited Jerusalem, but certainly not as a businessman but as a Christian pilgrim, and this ﬁrst known Gotland pilgrimage might have been triggered just by Ormicas meeting with Olaf and the jointly undertaken missionary work. All this is speculation, but it would be pretty certain that Church Christianity was widely adopted in Gotland in the ﬁrst half of the 1000s. Church buildings, both of wood and stone are known from that time, and that is when the foundation is laid for the great development of the ecclesiastical art on Gotland, which may be, together with the picture stones, regarded as the ﬁnest creation of the Gotlandic art culture. It is also quite possible that the custom to raise high mast ring crosses on the farms had its origin in this period of transition between pre-Christian time and Christian times. Säve has information on some 30 such farm crosses and says, that “it is supposed that they either are raised for a memorable event’s sake or as a sign from oldest times that Christianity in this farm was adopted, and in general as a blessed character and the protection of labourers, livestock, houses and homes.” Still at the end of the 1700s, the people on Sorby in Källunge ofﬁciated their morning prayer at the foot of the cross, which was one of the parties to the joint estate sanctuary. At Bopparve in Eksta such a cross is preserved in its original condition, and the cross at Lauks in Lokrume, which was very old, was replaced in 1929 with a new one in the same design. Around 1100 the parish formation should have been fully implemented. Thus emerges under its patron saint St. Olaf ’s protection, the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic. It looks like the ‘Bulverket’ in Tingstäde träsk, the largest known timber construction from prehistoric times, was built in relation to these ravages. The ‘Bulverket’ has not been built later than the end of the 900s or early 1000s, which also C14 dating supports. Bulverket in Tingstäde träsk is supposed to be a defense project. However, it is rather perhaps an ice market. It consisted of a square of four wharves, the northern, eastern and southern ones consisting of double rows of square caissons of logs dovetailed together. The western one of a triple row of such caissons. The whole structure measured about 170x170 m. Each caisson measured approximately 7x7 m. The wharves had once carried a deck, on Fig 107. Bulverket in Tingstäde träsk, the largest known timber construction from prehistoric times. It measures about 170x170 m. BuIverket, of which major parts are still under water, has with C14-method been dated back to the 900s. The plant consists of a quadrilateral bridge building on which the buildings in a chequered way have been placed. Around this lakefort there was a wooden palisade. Reconstruction by Harald Faith Ell after Arvid Zetterling’s measurement 189 Tore Gannholm Fig 108. Olaf II of Norway, later called the Saint, lands in Akergarn in 1030. He became here, after his death, patron saint. A sculpture of him with the broad ax in his hand took its place in most of Gotland’s churches, on the right side of the altar. Akergarn is known since then as St. Olofsholm. Snorri tells us that, when Olaf ﬂed from Norway in 1028, Hakon Jarl took possession of his ships. One of these was Visunden, that he left to an Icelander named Jökull Bardarson to captain. Much later he happened to run into King Olaf ’s men on Gotland and was taken prisoner. He was to be beheaded and after the ﬁrst blow, which struck him in the head and was a very large wound, he wrote a verse, which Snorri quotes. Painting by Erik Olsson which had stood log houses with dovetailed corners. Since we cannot be certain that all the logs have been preserved we can not determine how high were the caissons and consequently not how high was the deck above the surface of the water. But the impression we get is that the deck was quite low. The wharves enclosed a central open water surface measuring approx. 130x130 m. i.e. some 17,000 m2, to which there was an entrance from the north-west. The whole structure was surrounded by double concentric palisades. The four long wharves presented a long and vulnerable front to any attacker and would have made it very difﬁcult for the defenders to concentrate their forces and efforts at any one threatened point. The Bulwark can thus hardly have Fig 109. Ring clasp from Karls in Tingstäde mid 1000s 190 Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea been a fortiﬁcation or a fortiﬁed site. The Bulwark’s geographical position suggests other possibilities. On frozen winter roads you could reach Tingstäde from all parts of Gotland, before the lakes and bogs were drained, even more easily than today. In summertime the lake formed a harbour, at some distance from the coast where sea-borne attacks were always to be expected, but still to be reached by boat from Ire bay on the Baltic Sea, by way of lake Elinghem. At a time when heavy land transports were only possible in wintertime and the sailing season lasted less than six months there must have been a great need of places where goods could be stored between the two seasons, and where markets could be held. In such a setting the Bulwark wharves, with their warehouses and ’ofﬁces’, ﬁt perfectly, not as a fortress but as a breakwater for the central ‘harbour basin’ which, in wintertime, was also the market-place. There seems also to have been an ice market in Birka. There were probably many ice markets in the Middle Ages. Could the Bulwark, a seasonal market-place, possibly be Visby’s long-missing predecessor as Paviken was Västergarn’s? The early permanent Christian period Parishes, that were added during the Christening conversion time, would have meant a new congregation culture on Gotland. There were individual Christians who “built themselves churches for greater convenience” and here those came who lived nearby. Often it seems that the ancient sacred groves and sacriﬁcial sites have been taken over by the Christians. The pre-Christian places became a Christian place of worship, perhaps to emphasize the continuity of the religious life. At ﬁrst they had to make do with small wooden churches, but later they began to erect churches of stone, the natural building material on Gotland. With the parish formation followed that the parishioners had to pay the tenth of tax that was divided into three equal parts between the parish, church, and the priest. The ecclesiastical ordinances such as baptism, marriage and burial were held by the parish priest, but still the Thing remained as a community unit. Gotland is said to have been an unusually homogeneous society as the population structure is concerned. There has never been any feodal nobles on Gotland. There were of course social inequalities. The Merchant Farmers, who ran the trade and among other places visited outlying venues such as Atil, Volga Bulgar, Novgorod and Constantinople in the east and Bardowick, Schleswig, Bergen, London and Spain in the west, formed a wealthy upper class, who surely had power in their hands, even in political terms. It has been assumed that for instance judges were recruited mainly from these lineages. An intermediate position holds ‘rural residents’, which the Guta Lagh mentions. These were probably tenants. At the bottom of the scale of ranks we ﬁnd the serfs, who performed the heavy work, and who were for sale, mainly in the eastern trading venues. Not least in this area came Christianity and the Church to be signiﬁcant, particularly in humanizing direction. Also from the legal point of view the laws came to be mitigated by Christianity’s increasingly strong position in the Gotlandic society. Under the old pre-Christian view of legal matters, it was a duty to avenge acts of violence and other infringements. Now the pursued could ﬁnd sanctuary in a church, where he with his closest could be in the right to get 40-days of asylum. Such a protected church existed in each trisection. After this time - the 40 days - a 191 Tore Gannholm peace circle could be entrusted, which would include a church and three farms. A new social class arose on Gotland with the introduction of Christianity, namely the Christian priesthood. In addition to the highest judge (Landsdomaren) and the ‘Sätting’ judges the trisection deans were the most distinguished dignitaries. Gotland was an independent country, a Merchant Farmers’ Republic. They were not subordinated to any other country’s governance, perhaps mainly because of its location in the Baltic Sea region. In religious matters the Gotlanders had close contacts with the Byzantines and Kievan Rus’ in the east. In the west it was Denmark with the harbour in Sliesthorp later Schleswig. Therefore most of the early second wave of religious inﬂuences to the Gotlandic churh came from the Byzantizes and Keivan Rus’ and from Denmark. The Germans had in religious matters no inﬂuence on the Baltic Sea region before the founding of Lübeck in 1159 and the Artlenburg peace treaty in 1161. After that time followed immigration to Lübeck and further to Visby from Soest in North Rineland-Westphalia. The Gotlandic Church had up till now relied on passing bishops and kings to inaugurate churches. After the Artlenburg Treaty they concluded, probably in 1164, an agreement with the bishop in Linköping that he against a fee should take care of the administrative functions in the Gotlandic Church as required by the Pope Catholic Church, ‘since he resided closest to them.’ The agreement stated that he at a ﬁxed payment should perform the functions required from a bishop. From this time ‘Gothlandia’ is included in a diocese list, which includes landscapes of the ‘kingdom of Sweden’. This connection lasted until 1570, thus also into the Danish period. The Linköping bishop was to visit Gotland only every three years, when he went around and consecrated churches and inspected 192 congregations. Of course, Gotland had in this way an exceptional situation, which came to be reﬂected in the ecclesiastical life. Gotland had its own church, and was open to the larger world through its bustling trade and passing pilgrimage. The Gotlandic Church The functions of the Gotlandic parish according to Guta Lagh To get a better understanding of life in the Gotlandic society in the 1100s, we will analyze some of the clauses in the Guta Lagh, which deal with the functions of a parish. This offers us the opportunity to visit some of the problems faced by the Gotlandic farmer when Church Christianity made its inroads into the old social order. § 3. About tithes. All those who helped to form the parish and built a church, shall according to the Guta Lagh also participate in church services and pay tithes of their corn. This tithe is in turn divided between the church, the priest and the parish (for the livelihood of the poor, etc.). The entire tithe stays within the congregation and no part of it goes to the bishop, as it does elsewhere in the Nordic region. This tithe must be paid before the Annunciation day (25/3), when they obviously expect the harvest to be threshed. Would perchance anyone refuse to pay tithe, “the priest shall pronounce thereon three Sundays in a row, but on the fourth close the church door and suspend the service for the parish men, until all the tithes have been given.” All parishioners are thus excluded from the ecclesial community, which at that time would have seemed like a very harsh penalty. It assumes obviously that the other parishioners shall be forced to apply pressure on the offending, that he fulﬁlls his duty. The offending must also pay a ﬁne of three marks, which “all Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 110. Burs church The church consists of a large chancel, a long nave, a tower on the west side with galleries and a vestry on the north side of the chancel. The oldest part of the building is the nave, built in the ﬁrst half of the 1200s. This is followed by the tower from the mid 1200s. The mighty chancel, represent the ﬁrst stage of a major construction campaign from the second quarter of the 1300s. The church belongs as regards the composition to the so-called pack-saddle churches. together”, i.e. all parishioners must jointly search it out. The tithe question is a pure concern for the church, which only affects parishioners and no others. Its local restriction is also apparent, as these kind of cases do not appear to have been passed on to the local Thing. § 6. About holidays. With Christianity came the Christian Sunday and other Christian holidays into the picture, which is an entirely new phenomenon. On these days work was not allowed. It was only allowed to “keep times and listen to worship.” They had permission “to ride around their farm after the Mass was sung and the service was over.” The provisions were loosened further by adding, in exceptional cases, permission to go or ride on the Sunday, however, only with lesser burdens. Was it the case of larger loads, they needed the priest’s permission to do so. It was also allowed on Sunday to go to the marketplace with their goods. If you break these rules you are ﬁned and the goods, which you brought, are seized. These ﬁnes are distributed so that those who seized the offending receive half the ﬁne, while the assembly, within the limits of which the crime was committed, the other half, which as in the usual way is split between church, priest and parish. In this context appears an informant, which is extremely rare in the Guta Lagh. Perhaps it is in this context that these crimes can be committed by people who do not belong to the congregation. That the other half goes to the assembly, where the crime was committed, shows it to be an internal crime, committed against the Sunday peace of the congregation. Whether Sabbath crimes of this nature have been passed on to the Thing is not certain. In any case, nothing is mentioned in the law. § 8. About ‘Manhelg’. Cases involving manslaughter and assault is always dealt with at the usual Things. However, if such an act is performed on a religious holiday or during the major holidays, including a week at Christmas, seven weeks at Lent, Easter and Whitsun weeks and the three ‘gångedagar’, it is paid in addition to the ﬁnes for crime sentenced by the Thing also ﬁnes for holiday offense. These go to the church, within which the offense was committed, and distributed in the usual manner. Even this crime is considered a crime against church peace. This is more marked in the case of manslaughter in the church itself, as this will automatically trigger the ban, affecting the church in a particular way. These ﬁnes, the whole congregation shall seek out and everyone shall have part in it, as it says in the law. § 2. About Children. In the Germanic society it was very common to leave a child in the woods, and the 193 Tore Gannholm Fig 111. Burs church cruciﬁx. Beginning 1300s. system was used mainly when it came to the sick and deformed children, but could also be extended to other categories, if the master saw it ﬁt. This could of course not be accepted by the Christian community with its different view of human dignity. The central importance in this question is clear from the fact that this section of the Guta Lagh placed it immediately after the great proclamation of the adoption of Christianity as the only religion on Gotland. The section begins with the following sentence: “It is now next, that one must nourish each child who is born in our country, i.e. Gotland, and not thrown out.” Even in this section the priest plays in 194 the woman’s congregation a starring role. If in fact the woman who abused her child, has confessed her crimes to the priest in the church, she should pay penance and thus not have prosecution. If she does not confess, and this matter will be presented to the parish ofﬁcers, she should if she is guilty, be ﬁned three marks to the parish, “if the parish can claim them.” If this fails, the matter will be presented to the Thing’s men and then possibly on to the Gutna Althingi. Here is therefore a crime, which can be drawn up at civil court, if the matter can not be handled within the parish context. However, it is an internal law, as demonstrated by the pastor’s role. Of course, the culprit usually pays her ﬁne to the parish to escape further trial. § 4. About sacriﬁce. This section prohibits any invocation of “bogs or piles or pagan gods and shrines or stake yards” and all “such an invocation with food and drink that does not follow the Christian faith, then he is ﬁned three marks to the parish ofﬁcers.” This section has some fundamental similarities with the previous one. Also in this case the ﬁne is in the ﬁrst place to the parish, “if they can claim them.” It further provides that all parish ofﬁcers are to participate in the enforcement and that all should share in the ﬁnes. This applies namely here to an offense against the Christian parish community and Holy Communion and it is thus of purely internal signiﬁcance. The question, however, has in principle a wider scope, which makes it necessary to bring the charge on to the Thing, if the parish is not able to claim some ﬁnes. Other cases in which the parish is frequently involved , however, concern questions of very limited scope, where it comes natural to allow the parish to act. It should be mentioned the roads, as the parishes are obliged to maintain them. It concerns the way to the parish church, and the roads to the neighboring churches then possibly on to the Gut- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea na Althingi. Here is therefore a crime, which can be drawn up for civil court, if the matter can not be handled within the parish context. However, it is an internal law, as demonstrated by the pastor’s role. Of course, the culprit usually pays his ﬁne to the parish to escape further trial. It is interesting to see that almost all the cases listed here are still in the 1600s and 1700s counted as parish affairs. As such, this is a clear continuity from the 1200s until the 1700s. The gradual expansion of the Stone Churches in the 1100s before the arrival of he Cistercians From early times there are traces of wooden architecture in Eke, Dalhem, Hemse, Guldrupe, Sproge, Sundre and according to Guta Saga Botairs church in Visby. And according to Strelow, Fardhem. Unfortunately there remain only traces of Byzantine painting from wooden churches from the 900s and 1000s (note 35). From that time we know in Gotland little of stone architecture and mural painting, even the dating is disputed. There are signs of early stone church buildings in Sanda, Eskelhem, Garde, Havdhem, Källunge, Ekeby, probably more parishes. How many of them had Byzantine paintings, we don’t know. The style groupings are created to attribute individual masters which we know under the pseudonyms Professor Johnny Roosval assigned them: Hegwaldr, Byzantios, Semibyzantios, Majestatis, Sighraf and Calcarius. Although the groupings are about Style he lets the names imply different things. The names Hegwaldr and Sigraf are represented by inscriptions while Majestatis pseudonym has been coined for a reason, Majestas Domini. Fig 112. Hegwaldr’s font in Halla church. Sandstone We now go straight to about end 1000s beginning 1100s and to Hegwaldr’s fonts. His wild font stile is enough to give a period of character. He is in his sculptural technique the driving opposite to earlier times discrete fashion with a relief so low that it often only implies bumps. Hegwaldr’s reliefs are violently rounded. They push themselves out of the stone and into the real world. In all its clumsiness and naivety they are deﬁant in their demands to be the truth. This plastic self-assertion is completely new for Nordic art. Hegwaldr has, how original his dramatic scenes appear, based his romance about 195 Tore Gannholm art on a foreign school. But he stands, however, on a domestic Gotlandic base. Strap braid instead of the regular architecture of the framework, the characters lined layout, and accessories ‘map perspective’ is like the picture stones. He is a true Gotlander. Burgsvik’s stone industry came hereby to life. Hegwaldr reigned there supreme and his workshop continued, although handicapped by many competitors, in another generation. Hegwaldr’s own power as a workshop leader include the fonts in Ekeby, Etelhem, Fardhem, Ganthem, Halla, Linde, Lojsta, När, Rone, Sjonhem, Stånga, Viklau and Vänge. Accordingly the very backbone of Gotland’s body! It is quite natural that the lavish new fonts, that are replacing the wooden barrels from the earlier pe- Fig 113. Byzantios’ font in Atlingbo church. Sandstone 196 riod, were primarily commissioned by the wealthy parishes. There is also a building site in Etelhem, namely the nave of the core church, of which fragments have been preserved. A piece of portal sculpture preserved in Rone, the altar, belongs likely to Hegwaldr’s own time. Hegwaldr’s successor as leading font master, however, is not his own workshop. It is a novus homo, the anonymous Byzantios. With him were trained, more or less completely, the four byzantionids, Semibyzantios, Majestatis, Sighrafr and Bestiarius. An independent force higher than the second in rank is the master who created the Barlingbo font. If you mark with signs on the map all those persons found Oeuvre, it proves the following encirclement: Byzantios himself is concentrated in the region between the Roma plains and Klintehamn. In former days there was also a water route from the important harbour in Västergarn-Paviken up towards Roma, the rich farming area. Here one ﬁnds Byzantios fonts in Sanda, Eskelhem, Mästerby, Hogrän, Atlingbo, Träkumla, Hejde, Guldrupe, Vänge and Väte, where he built reliefs and adorned churches. It has been for a long time the master’s headquarters. The parishes in these areas were probably well-being particularly through foreign trade. The fonts ordered by them were carved in the Burgsvik region, and from the outer Sudret we have a stage line to the north marked by scattered fonts in Vamlingbo, Öja, Hablingbo, Levide, Fröjel. A line, which creates connection with the master’s Västergarn concentration. In addition, there are distant examples in Källunge and Garde. Even wood carvings on Gotland are only a part of the rich heritage of an artistic blooming, late-Romanesque stage. The ‘iconic churches’ period of stone sculpture by Sighraf and aliases champions Byzantios and Majestatis show signiﬁcant murals from a Kievan Rus’-Byzantine school etc. The Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea boom in the Gotlandic church art during the 1100s later part owns, as well as the following magniﬁcent development during the following half century, its base in Gotland’s international, trade-based material prosperity. The artistic impulses appear to the greatest extent to have reached Gotland on the same roads that the trade followed. Even the road from Denmark to the Holy Land went over Gotland and the Russian rivers. It would thus not have been a church organization or monastery order, which seemed conducive to the special bloom of Gotland’s medieval art. The issue of Byzantine inﬂuences in Gotlandic art in the 1100s has attracted scholarly interest for a long time. Latest research shows that the iconographic and stylistic description of the murals in Garde and Källunge allow us to ﬁnd new evidence to determine which place they actually have in Gotland’s and Northern Europe’s Art History. Garde church has according to Lagerlöf been built in the middle of the 1100s but it is probably older. Whilst ﬁrst part of Källunge church, according to Strelow, was built in 1072. There remains a stone relief dated to end 1000s. Both are typical Romanesque churches and very different from churches common in Kievan Rus’. The church buildings in Garde and Källunge have no dome and it has never been planned for such. Most Greek Orthodox churches have a dome. Both Garde and Källunge have also been rebuilt later. The towers were added in the middle of the1200s, and around 1300 and during the ﬁrst half of the 1300s was the Gothic choir built. When seeking parallels to the phenomenon of the second face with 1100s Byzantine paintings on Gotland, it is natural to turn to the areas where there was a similar union of the Roman and Byzantine culture. If we look at the paintings from the Fig 114. Sighraf ’s font in Grötlingbo church. Sandstone crypt in Aquileia which is ‘The Holy Land area’, there are important differences between this art and that on Gotland. In considering such artworks as some illuminations in Queen Militia Moventas hymnal and the icon with six saints from Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai (1180s), we also see Romanesque features, like e.g. in Garde. It seems most likely that the murals in Garde and Källunge churches in stylistic aspect generally could be compared with the just mentioned works. It looks that there is a rather large time difference between the creation of the murals in Garde and Källunge, but also a certain regulated development of this phenomenon, whose roots probably occur during the ﬁrst part of the 1100s, as shown in 197 Tore Gannholm corresponding murals in the Byzantine and Kievan Rus’ churches, icons and illuminations show that the murals at Garde cannot have been produced synchronously with those at Källunge. The murals at Garde lack illusion of depth and their backgrounds are of greater signiﬁcance than those Fig 115. Majestatis’ font in Lokrume church. Sandstone the painting on wood. Accordingly the Byzantine artistic tradition, which appeared in Garde was not simpliﬁed and it got absolutely no provincial traits in Källunge, rather the opposite. It loses the last Romanesque inﬂuence and becomes more important. In addition to this, analogies to the murals in Garde could mainly only be found in Novgorod. The group of comparisons to them in Källunge are even extensive. Thus, it can rightly be assumed that in the Gotlandic culture throughout the second half of the 1100s was a ‘ﬁxed’ connection between the art of Byzantium and medieval Kievan Rus’, not only with Novgorod, but also with other artistic centers. Fig 116. Viklau madonna 1100s. According to PeterTångeA stylistic comparison of the Gotlandic murals and berg this is a Gotlandic work of art. 198 Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea at Källunge. They can be dated to the mid 1100s, deﬁnitely not later than the 1160s. The murals at Källunge, on the other hand, with their much more pronounced three-dimensional image, have been dated to the 1190s. It is obvious that the masters of the murals actually learned their skills in Byzantine workshops, and have not merely had some general knowledge of the Byzantine art. The Gotlandic art traditions had as earlier mentioned close links with workshops in Constantinople. In addition to the murals in Garde and Källunge let us look at the painting in Mästerby church, which also has some Byzantine features but mainly in ornamentation. It is very interesting to note that it is hardly likely that the murals in Mästerby came so long after those in Källunge. In Mästerby dominate, however, clear Romanesque and ‘pre-Gothic’ features. This suggests that at the turn into the century end 1100s and the beginning of the 1200s, was in the Gotlandic artistic life, so to speak, a paradigm shift, where the Byzantine tradition must give way to the foundation laid for the Romanesque and later the pre-Gothic art. Such rapid changes in turn, show that even in the social and political life was a great need for drastic changes, linked to the dominant role of Western Europe that began to show its marks in the Gotlandic history during the second half of the 1100s. Therefore gives the dating of the paintings in Mästerby, that they belong to the ﬁrst decades of the 1200s. The artistic methods and characteristics of murals in Källunge match the stylistic characteristics of the works of art belonging to the so-called ‘monumental’ focus in Byzantine painting in the late 1100s. It is not a coincidence that at the description of murals, we begin to use words like ‘beautiful’, ‘ﬁne’, ‘elegant’. Also must be noted that an extremely high level of professional knowledge and skills is used by the masters who made the murals in Källunge. This gives us an opportunity to draw parallels with such works as the murals in Dmitry Cathedral in Vladimir (1195), in St. David’s Church in Thessaloniki (the late 1100s), the icon of Archangel Gabriel called ‘Angel with the Golden Hair’ from the Russian museum St. Petersburg (late 1100s), paintings in Panagia Arakiotissa (or ‘tou Arakos’) in Lagoudera in Cyprus (1192) and the murals in the monastery of St. John on Patmos (late 1100s). Beyond that, the murals in Källunge are of such a high standing that at professional work when we make analysis, we can see very small gradations of stylistic features. It looks like the murals in Källunge are closer to the murals in the refectory, dining room, in John’s Abbey than in its chapel dedicated to Mary. Although there are only a few years difference between them, the murals in the dining room are made a little later and can also be seen as little more expressive. The characteristics of the Källunge murals show that the murals belong to a so-called ‘aristocratic’ direction within the Byzantine painting. It is not a coincidence that most scientists compare these Gotlandic murals with just the paintings in Vladimir, whose client was a prince. It may also indicate that during the second half of the 1100s and forward to 1200, there were Gotlanders that could not only provide funds for church building and its decoration, but also had an exclusive ‘taste’. They could really appreciate the Byzantine art and had good knowledge of the artistic trends in the Byzantine world. We are thus faced with two churches with murals that are tied to the traditions of Byzantine art in the 1100s. To these we can also place a painting fragment from the church in Havdhem that dates sometime 1150-1200. There are also some painting fragments from Viklau church mentioned in ATA’s acts clearly related and inﬂuenced by Byzantine models and some 199 Tore Gannholm Fig 117. Garde. Reconstruction of the Byzantine paintings in the nave after surviving fragments. Both the north and south wall paintings are divided into more records than the western wall. According to Olsson’s reconstruction, there are ﬁve departments. In the top department there is a saint facing frontal in arches. Elisabeth Piltz has convincingly proven that here are produced the 40 martyrs of Sebastia. Sketch by Erik Olsson 1968 fragments in Lärbro which are today covered but may be associated with the Byzantine art. This is not surprising when we know the historical situation in Gotland during the 1000s and 1100s. The trade treaty signed in 911 by a Gotlandic Varangian delegation and the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI testiﬁes that the Varangians were settled in the quarter of Saint Mamas. With this close contact with Constantinople it is very logical that artists from Gotland also went there and studied in Byzantine workshops and brought back inﬂuences 200 from the East Christian world, which then probably came to be incorporated into the local Gotlandic traditions very early. Several churches have been rebuilt with larger churches. We don’t know how many other older churches there were with Byzantine paintings. Around 1100 the crusades were in full swing and Gotland became an important center on the way to the Holy Land. Foreign Commercial Farm churches began to be built in Visby. Inﬂuences from western European culture came via Denmark and Schleswig. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea German inﬂuences only begin with the Artlenburg pease treaty 1161. The most telling example of the union of different artistic directions are some painted boards from churches in Eke, Sundre and Dalhem that show that their master had a good knowledge of Byzantine art. One board in Eke has been dated to the 900s. Visby’s coming into being Visby is founded long before the Germans reached the Baltic Sea region and appeared on the scene with the Artlenburg peace treaty 1161. It is a pure Gotlandic inception. Visby’s pre-German history goes far back. According to Strelow, Visby was founded as a trading place in 897. Recent archaeological excavations testify to a settlement with its centre, market place, at just the current street Specksrum, which towards the land side was limited by a semicircular wall inside which the St. Olof, St. Clement and Drotten churches were located. Visby is likely to have started growing during the 600s, but from the 800s we can see cultural layers that show that a waterfront community starts to grow. And in the year 1000 the entire coastline from the northern entrance of the harbor to Donnersplats was built. Visby can very likely have been an ancient central location for at least the northwestern part of Gotland. This can be seen from the fact that ﬁve of Gotland’s 20 Things reach the sea in a stretch of less than ﬁve kilometres around Visby. These Things are counted from the south, Stenkumla Thing in Hejde ‘Sätting’, which northern border reaches Visby’s southern wall, Dede Thing, Endre Thing where Hejdeby reaches the eastern wall, Bro Thing and Lummelunda Thing, the latter four in Bro ‘Sätting’. This shows the importance Visby early had as worship and gathering place. The seafaring Arab al-Tartûschî visited Hedeby (Visby) about the year 973. Al-Tartûschî says that there were a few Christians and a small church. He took particular note of the good supply of drinking water, the woman’s free status and that a small number of the inhabitants were Christians. One of the reasons why Visby grew was the good supply of drinking water. We encounter similar phenomena in Sweden, such as Uppsala, Linköping and Skara, where the jurisdictional districts go up in points against the ancient cult sites. It may be added that these ﬁve Things, even in the 1500s have their common market at ‘byrummet’ south of Visby. It’s the same place where the country population gathered in the year 1361 to meet and be slaughtered by Valdemar’s army. Among those ﬁve Things, Dede Thing takes a central place. It is clear from the fact that Gutestuen in Visby as well as Roma with Gutna Althingi, are located in Dede Thing and are the only places to which Gutna Althingi is linked in the Middle Ages. The Thing is also placed ﬁrst in all extant Land books from 1484 to the middle of the1600s. With knowledge of the great conservatism that exists regarding the layout of the Land books this weighs heavily. Botair of Akebäck is from this Thing. His close connection to Visby suggests that he and his Thing brothers had their harbour and their ships there. He also built Gotland’s ﬁrst permanent church, which in fact speaks enough for Visby’s importance at the time of the adoption of Christianity. Visby is thus not only an ancient place of worship but also an important Thing place. In this capacity, Visby, of course, has been a market place, as it is related to sacriﬁce and Thing and developed a substantial trading. Visby must therefore have been a main town on Gotland already in the pre-Christian era and long before the Germans arrived. Bronze Age ﬁnds are completely missing in the medieval city area. Cultural layers from the Vendel era are not known. No Iron Age farms may have lain in 201 Tore Gannholm the way for Visby locals when they began to utilize cultivable local land for their food security, which may have occurred already during the early Middle Ages. In the urban area there are six ﬁnds from the pre-Roman and the Roman Iron Age (400 BCE - 400 CE). One of the ﬁnds consist of two Trajan denars, which in weighted form were viable even in the Viking Age. That is in substance ﬁve secure ﬁnds. These stray ﬁnds from a period of about 1000 years do not allow any conclusions about how the urban area has been inhabited during this time. Two stray ﬁnds from the Migration Period (400-550 CE) do not allow conclusions of such a nature either. The opposite is more likely. With the Vendel era (550-800 CE) the number of stray ﬁnds within the urban area increases. Cultural layers within the urban area is guaranteed only from the Viking Age and then within ﬁve Visby blocks. As a memory of a settlement next to Visby, the grave ﬁeld on the ‘Östra begravningsplatsen’, used from the 700s into the 1000s, may be mentioned. The area closest to Visby is now treeless, often with rock lying up in the daylight. If this once has been forested, it has been the same skinny pine forests on the entire coast as from Västkinde to Kolens kvarn. Slightly further inland lies, however, occasional patches of arable land. Such is the case to the east and north of Visborg castle, at Pilhagen, Gråbo and Länna from the southeast, at Annelund and Katrinelund north and along Endre and Follingbo road, east of the city. Since the cultural layers from the Stone Age habitation are in direct contact with the Viking Age or early-medieval culture layers, no settlement can have existed there between the Neolithic and the Viking Age. At the same time it appears that at the Viking Age and early Medieval times there was a new development in the same habitation area. Ar- 202 chaeological surveys in the neighborhood of the block ‘Kalvskinnet’, the years 1973-1974, provide a dating to the 900s and 1000s for the ﬁnds. Large amounts of boat rivets, wooden pins and pieces of rope were unearthed. A boat appeared to have been destroyed by ﬁre. ‘Caupskip’ have apparently been drawn up on the shores of the old harbor for repairs and storage. The old harbour meets us as the centre of an activity in the 900s, which highlights the importance of the Viking Age for the inception of the Visby society. It can not be linked to local area farmers. They continued to live on their farms, although a few of its residents in the Viking Age found their new existence in the emerging Visby Society. The reason that at this location there was an early emergence of a society of central importance to Gotland, can be assumed, that here in connection to the reefs and islets was a protected bay with an excellent harbour. When Steffen says, that at this location there were no prerequisites for this, he thinks immediately of a built harbour with docks and protective breakwaters. Viking Age ﬂat-bottomed vessels, however, had no need for such harbours. It is often enough to have a reasonably sheltered gravel or sand site, where they could pull up their ships. Only the larger ships would have required a quay. In contrast, Västergarn was a natural harbour where excavations have revealed quays inside Paviken. The big difference between Västergarn and Visby is that the former was silted up by sand and must be abandoned, while outside Visby there is stone foundation, and therefore could be kept open. Presumably Västergarn was the larger town before it must be abandoned. The area that limits the older Vi was, and consists still at its core elements of a damp and swampy area. It is an irrigation swamp, soaked in water from water veins, which pours forth from ‘Klinten’. The Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea area has therefore, as Steffen and others have pointed out, not been possible to utilize for urban development without systematic draining, which according to them was not possible and needed before the Germans’ arrival in Visby. When it immediately south and north of the waterlogged ﬁeld at the current St. Hansplan and Specksrum was land of a suitable kind, there is no reason to suppose that a primitive settlement on the scale, as has been outlined, would have made its way to the swamp area. However probably the proximity to the richly abundant water sources from Klinten have been crucial for the emergence of that to the north located oldest trading place. It is likely when the Germans, as a result of the Artlenburg Treaty in 1161, received the freedom of commerce on the Gotlandic coast, have sought out, or perhaps been designated a ﬁxed harbour namely Visby. From the end of the 1100s the ﬁnal stages of this marketplace grew at breakneck speed, so that within the space of a few generations it became the largest and richest city in the Baltic Sea region. The buildings in Visby are considered to be laid out according to a regulated plot scheme with narrow alleys between plots that passed down to the harbour. This dividing up could be attributed to the 800s, possibly earlier. The same type of farm and plot structure has been conﬁrmed in several of the contemporary town formations where the Gotlanders had trading Emporiums. The topographic structure of Visby was thus ideal for a trading city during the early Middle Ages. The inner city rises from the sea shore terraces up against Klinten, the steep limestone shelf in the east, which highest point is nearly 40 metres above sea level. On the narrow, barely 300 metres wide strip of beach between the sea to the west and the limestone shelf in the east, the ﬁrst settlements grew. Here was what we have seen above, a mar- itime extremely suitable natural harbour, a large curved bay, protected from the sea by a reef with a ﬂat sandy beach, a tranquil lagoon, where the light and shallow draft boats at the time were drawn up. Added to this was, in the centre of the current inner-city, a powerful stream of fresh water found, which broke out of the limestone rock, and provided the areas west of it with an abundance of drinking water. For this the still preserved medieval drainage and street ﬁllings bear witness. This water was like the harbour an important prerequisite for Visby’s development into a medieval city. One can still today, at a medieval well in the basement of one of the monastery buildings at S:a Karin, listen to the powerful roar of the stream, which now runs deep below the current street level. The north of the swamp area, around the cathedral and the area immediately west of it, was inhabited already in the Stone Age nearly 4,000 years ago. Then follows a long ﬁndless time in its history, until the ﬁnds of the 700s begin to rise again in scope and importance. Just south of the city, a burial ground from the 900s has been unearthed, that is indicative of an agglomeration of commercial nature. Other similar burial grounds just north of the city is further evidence that the coastal strip at Visby during the Viking Age was densely populated and had a central role. According to the Guta Saga here was a place of worship before the introduction of Christianity, a Vi that gave the town its name. The modern place-name research supports this notion. During the 700s there are major upheavals in the Baltic Sea region. It is a time of city formations among others, when a number of Baltic Sea region trading centres grew out to urban communities. Visby is clearly one among these early urban solutions together with such as Paviken, Grobina, Kiev, Sliesthorp and Birka. The ﬁbula ﬁnds, buck- 203 Tore Gannholm les designed as costume jewelry, in the urban area from the 800s, demonstrate that it is a commercial society. What is interesting in this context is that widespread peaceful trade existed through the Varangians (Gotlanders) who went to the East. Compare with the Viking raids that went to the West. There is a clear border between the Gotlanders and the Svear on one hand who from the 600s colonized many places on the East side of the Baltic Sea and the Danes, Norwegians and Västgötar who from the 800s started their raids and colonization in the west. The word Viking does not exist in the Baltic Sea region east of river Elbe or on the Russian rivers. What had the Gotlandic Merchant Farmer to sell in the Vendel era-Viking Age? For export it is visible in early times in the countryside and in Visby, that the Gotlandic smithery has produced spears and swords, that were exported to Finland and the East Baltic Sea area, still in the 1200s. An artistic production including limestone and sandstone also worked for export. Baptismal fonts from Gotland can in large quantities be found around the Baltic Sea region. The Merchant Farmers produced generally wool, leather, hides and homespun to such an extent that exports may have occurred. During the late Viking Age Visby became the gathering place for many Gotlandic Merchant Farmers, who devoted themselves to transit trade between the Kievan Rus’ trading centers, the Baltic Sea region, Scandinavia and Western Europe. They came from different parts of Gotland, and the exchange of goods, which they brought about had little to do with Gotland’s own production. For the Merchant Farmers this meant big gains in silver, and to some extent in gold. Only in exceptional cases was it supplements to the food supply. The indentation of the coast in Visby protected by islets attracted an interbaltic trade during the time the Merchant 204 Farmers stayed there during their collectively undertaken trading voyages. At the same time there grew a craft for the beneﬁt of the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ ‘caupskip’ and for the growth of the Viking Age society. This paved opportunities for an inﬂux of Gotlanders to the emerging society. At the old harbour exit stands a fortress tower, a defense tower, which since the 1700s has been known as ‘Kruttornet’ (the Powder Tower). It is the oldest secular building in Visby. It is furthest out to sea, where the shoreline from the north turns to the east, forming the bay, which was the natural harbour of Visby. It has been built there in close proximity to the older Gotlandic city to protect the harbour and market place. By its nature it is a Gotlandic defense tower of the same type, which we encounter in many places along the coast of Gotland. Closest church is St Olof inaugurated in 1103 by the Danish king Erik Ejegod, who passed Visby on his way to the Holy Land. According to a ship sailing instruction from the 1400s it was the oldest tower in the wall, the Lambs tower, at the north end of the medieval harbour, current Almedalen, with the little harbour exit. The Lambs tower was named in Latin ‘Turris lambitus’ which means that of water licked tower, the beach tower. Here the ships left the harbour. Entrance to the harbour was at ‘Turris ﬂuviatilis’ by which was meant the river tower at the southern entrance. It has been pointed out that ‘Kruttornet’ is not like other defense towers on Gotland, close to a church. However, it is not more than 160 metres between ‘Kruttornet’ and St. Olof ’s church, which lies on the shore of the plateau in the middle of the oldest settlement area. St. Olof ’s church would also have been the Gotlanders special parish church. We can most likely assume that Dede Thing harbour and market place has been here. The buildings were here probably, as in Sliesthorp-Schleswig and Birka mostly wattle and Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 118. Visby harbor in Almedalen Eight Estonian ships had anchored in the roadstead outside Visby in 1203. The Visby citizens did not want to ﬁght with them, but German pilgrims, who were then in Visby, asked Bishop Albert of Riga to bless them before they went off to kill the pagan crews. The Germans killed 60 Estonians, of whom 22 were brought down by a big German with a two-handed sword, before he himself succumbed. Painting by Erik Olsson daub houses with simple rod works construction. Please note that Visby was still part of the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic. They also had a St. Olaf ’s church in Novgorod and one in Miklagarðr (Istanbul). The St Olaf Church in Sigtuna is also most probably a Gotlandic Guildchurch. In this purely Gotlandic town there was another monumental building, namely the Sails House. The oldest church architecture in Visby is derived from the countryside. It is only from around 1200 that a continental style becomes dominant. The Gothic architecture is considered to have been introduced in Gotland about 1220 whilst it only starts i Sweden about 1250. As mentioned earlier, Visby is not a founded city. The city has grown over time especially from the 900s. It had a rapid growth at the end of the 1100s, and the place has in the 1200s appeared as a ‘civitas’, i.e. a city for the age. It had all the trappings of a relatively concentrated settlement, a busy harbour that was defended by a powerful stone tower, a major long-distance trade, and several churches in stone, that rose above the buildings. Visby’s emergence from the later part of the 1100s correspond well with the general city formation process. The 1100s are again the time of upheaval in Scandinavia, where the last remnants of the Viking Age were laid to rest and monks, knights and merchants come on the scene. Visby, as one of the harbours on the Gotlandic coast, which was already an important staging post on the way from west to east, is now becoming a central gathering place for foreign 205 Tore Gannholm merchants from all over the Baltic Sea region. The 1200s are characterized by an extensive city formation process in central and northern Europe. Instead of travelling around between market places, merchants settled down and established ﬁxed merchant families. Even craftsmen settled down and opened ﬁxed workshops. In addition, the larger ships demanded more and more investments in ﬁxed harbour facilities. Competing urban formations, such as Paviken, stopped growing and were wiped out little by little. It is very likely that the wealthy merchants from the country soon moved in and established themselves in a growing Visby. A sign of Visby’s importance is that the friars soon moved in, like they did in Lübeck. To Lübeck the Franciscans came ﬁrst. They were there in 1225, while Dominicans came two years later in 1227. To Visby the Dominicans must have arrived one of the years 1228 or 1229. The 13/9 1230 the pope directed a bull to the Dominican Convention on Gotland. At that time the order was apparently already established in Visby. From the year 1228 we can trace the Dominican oldest rules. In them are included as Rule No. 22 ‘De conventu mittendo’, i.e. about sending of a convention, one for Visby’s part actual enacting. According to that ‘constitutio’ was a Dominican convention only to be sent out to found a new convent, with general chapters permission, and it must also be composed of twelve monks and a prior and a lecturer, also known as doctor. This has significance for coming into being of new Dominican monasteries. When a Dominican convention is presenting itself in a new ﬁeld of activity, it is not by chance. It is carefully prepared. The place to which the Convention is sent must have been previously ascertained. The location for its monastery would be made available so that they could immediately start with the construction. First, they needed food 206 and dormitory and a church. It is envisaged that the Dominicans on their arrival in Visby took over an older unﬁnished church building. E. Bohrn, who led the excavations on the convent site says, however, that it can not be the case (Bohrn 1977 p. 95 ff). At the time of the arrival of the dominician convent or shortly before that, a small church had been built right on the spot where St Nicholas ruin stands today. It consisted of a square choir with apse. The absid choir may have been connected to a nave of wood. This church, by Bohrn called ‘Absid church’, has in his view been built around 1230 (Bohrn 1977 p. 107). In the 1240s a nave of stone with a west tower has been added to the abse choir. This new church is by Bohrn named ‘Middle church’. The construction, however, has been interrupted by a ﬁre in the early 1250s. With ‘Middle church’ the Dominicans may have had nothing to do, because it was planned with western towers and their churches had no towers (Bohrn 1977 s 96 f, 107). Consequently, we can not know anything about where the Dominicans had their hangout before the ﬁre. Only after it, i.e. well into the 1250s, they have taken over the church and moved over to the spot where their convent was built. The ‘Visby’ name does not appear to have any signiﬁcance until after the breakaway from the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic in 1288. Still in 1280, when both Visby Gotlanders and Visby Germans agree that the urban staple location in Bruges is moved to Aardenburg, it is the Gotlandic coast that is mentioned, and the Gotlandic large seal with the ewe is used. The name ‘Visby’ itself ﬁrst appears in 1203 when Henry Letten writes that pilgrims arrived unharmed to ‘Wysbu’, and in 1225 the name of Visby is mentioned for the ﬁrst time in the records, namely in Bishop Bengt’s letter about St Mary’s Church. During the 1200s Visby was without doubt the Bal- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea tic Sea region’s largest and richest city. To the archaeological evidence for the great age of this place the history of law research has annexed additional evidence. The oldest parts of Visby City Law, which are written down at the beginning of the 1300s, have been shown to contain a core of pure Nordic origin, with roots in a Nordic society with a long experience of trade and merchandise. Law historian Professor Ebel of Göttingen considers these elements in Visby City Law even to be primary in relation to the Swedish ‘bjärköarätter’ rules. There is thus no doubt that the law is designed in a predominantly urban Gotlandic society. Gotland has thus given impetus to the Svea kingdom and Birka, and not vice versa. Danish expansion As part of the Danish expansion, one has to see the advent of the St Canute guild in Visby documented from the middle of the 1100s. The Danish king Erik Ejegod passed Visby already in 1103 on his way to Jerusalem and consecrated at least one church. In the case of merchant vessels, which were all linked to the guild organizations in Visby, it may have been an obligation for them to pass the city in order to declare their cargo, and pay their fees. In Visby everybody was offered a berth during the late 1100s, as long as they respected the Gotlandic harbour peace - Pax Porta Nova - and used the Gotlandic coins. There are such glimpses in a few surviving letters from the end of the 1200s, where Visby is requesting the Council in Lübeck to seize ships, which passed Visby without prior written notiﬁcation. Even individuals are mentioned in the chronicle that they took the road over Visby. That the path over Gotland was the usual is clear from an epi- sode from the 1190s. The Lithuanian population are forcing Bishop Meinhardt to cancel a proposed trip to Germany. When he returns to his episcopal see he is met with the ironic question: “How much does now salt and cloth cost in Gotland?” It may here be added that salt and textiles in addition to wine were some of the most important import goods to Eastern Europe. As earlier mentioned, Snorri Sturluson says that as early as the 1020s, they went all the way from Norway to Novgorod on the coast up to Öland and then over to Gotland. The Chronicle also contains a dramatic and vivid eyewitness account of a battle outside Visby year 1203, between the Pilgrim ﬂeet from Germany and the Estonian peasant call-up, who were on return home after having plundered churches of bells and silver in Listerby in Blekinge. They had also brought a variety of people from Blekinge in order to sell them as slaves in Eastern Europe. Even Archbishop Andreas Sunesen, when he returns from Riga to Lund in April 1207 passed Visby. Visby’s role, as an important stop on the way from western to eastern Europe, explains much of the allure the city in the 1100s and 1200s exerted on the Northern European merchants and their organizations. Perhaps that was partly due to the fact that Gotland was a democratic Merchant Farmers’ Republic without power resources that otherwise the European princes offered. The city could here develop with more freedom than in many other places. Next to the trading Emporiums, we meet many guild associations with their curias or commercial farms. In the medieval sources the curia of the Order of the Sword is mentioned. It apparently was a shelter for the Knights, perhaps associated with their own church. Someone has come up with the theory that the Helge And Church (Holy Spirit Church), that remains as a ruin, may be identical to that church. Mentioned may also the Riga residents’ 207 Tore Gannholm Fig 119. Visby harbour in Almedalen. Entrance to the harbor was at Turris ﬂuviatilis by which was meant the river tower at the southern entrance. Painting by Erik Olsson. Church St. James be, which was apparently linked to the Riga residents’ trading yard in the town. As seen above the Danes come early into the picture. Their inﬂuence is more noticed in connection with the Danish expansion during the Valdemarian days, when Denmark is a great power. In 1203 Valdemar invaded and conquered Lübeck and Holstein, adding them to the territories controlled by Denmark. Lübeck becomes for a period a Danish town until the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227. Even to the east the Danes’ ambitions stretched. The Teutonic Knights had been attempting to Christianize the peoples of the eastern Baltic Sea region. By 1219 they were being hard pressed and turned to Valdemar for help. Pope Honorius III elevated Valdemar’s invasion of Estonia into a crusade. Valdemar raised an army and called all of Denmark’s ships to gather to transport the army eastward. Once assembled, the ﬂeet numbered 1500 ships. 208 When the army landed in Estonia, near modern-day Tallinn, the chiefs of the Estonians sat down with the Danes and agreed to acknowledge the Danish king as their overlord. Visby grew into a metropolis and the largest city in the Baltic Sea region. It must during the high season have shown a colourful and bustling life around the harbour and the city, where there are monasteries, shelters and foundations that see to the bodily and religious welfare. Here met a throng of merchants from all parts of Europe, the Teutonic knights from their order state in the east in their armour, prelates, monks and pilgrims on their way. The buildings must already have made an impression of a city. In the harbour has over time been sailing life and movement. Trading ships brought not only foreign merchants and expensive continental goods. They also had products from northern and eastern European forests, mines and agricultural areas, which were coveted in central, western and southern Eu- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea rope. For the Baltic Sea region’s merchants, Visby was a known target. In 1237 the Gotlandic merchant Peter Galve negotiated in London with King Henry III about trading privileges in the harbour of London. When Henry at the same time issued a letter to ‘all merchants from Gotland and their heirs’, it really was Gotlanders, both from Visby and the rest of Gotland. The exemption is from customs duties and charges on their trade in England. Even here it is the old Gotlandic trade on England that allows this as the explanation for the generous exemption from customs duties and fees. The privileged letter for ‘all the merchants from Gotland’ from 1237 is linked to that which Lübeck and other German cities obtain in 1238. It is a result of the booming Novgorod trade in Visby and Lübeck. Together with the Cologne merchants the Gotlanders had been especially favored in England, something that even the German merchants in Visby could exploit. The Gotlandic merchants had for some time a privileged position in England. The Gotlanders sold mainly Russian products in England. Royal orders to the treasurer for payment of the court’s purchases have been issued for Gotlandic merchants 1237, 1248 and 1250. Over the course of sixteen years (1235-50) the Gotlanders have thus provided the English king with wax and furs for no less than 1216 pounds sterling. Among the Gotlandic purveyors from this period except for Peter Galve we know Jacob de Albo, Paul, Sigurd Bonde and Botulf Byrkin (see note 36). Already in the 1100s we have proof that the Gotlanders traded in Norway. In the year 1191 Danish pilgrims saw Gotlandic ships in the harbour of Bergen and in 1248 when Bergen was ﬁre-ravaged, there were many cogs from Gotland in the harbor. Tönsberg appears to have had a Gotlandic trading Emporium. The reason may have been the Bohu- slän herring ﬁshery in which the Gotlandic merchants seem to have been interested. According to a papal bull, issued in 1334 at the request of the Gotlandic clergy and people, the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers still in the 1330s sailed on Norway. However, there was a more convenient way to London and southern England through Holstein over the Netherlands and Flanders. Of old the Gotlandic merchants were familiar with this road. When Lübeck and Hamburg from the Holstein counts in 1253 obtained a special protective letter for their transport of goods between the two cities, the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers also got their passage through Holstein guaranteed in the same way 1255. At the same time the Gotlandic merchants are helping Birger Jarl to build a new venue in the Lake Mälar area, named Stockholm. In 1187 Sigtuna was destroyed. According to some sources Sigtuna was attacked by Karelian pirates, who partially burned the town. Other sources speak of Estonians, other of Karelians in Novgorodian service. Other possible candidates are the Curonians. In 1250 a merchant from Lübeck appears for the ﬁrst time among the Gotlanders in England. When the English king in 1255 orders payments, the relationship has drastically changed. Only one Gotlander appear in the picture. In just ﬁve years, the German merchants have forced out the Gotlanders from their position as suppliers of luxury goods in eastern England. Control over the transit trade in Europe, across the Baltic Sea between East and West, has in a very short time passed from the Gotlanders to the Germans. The Germans have thus, by settling in Visby, been able to ﬂy the Gotlandic ﬂag and take advantage of the trade contacts and privileges the Gotlanders had established since long ago. Between 1303 and 1307 Gotlandic Merchant Farmers are once again active in England. They appear 209 Tore Gannholm in London, Cambridge, Ely, Hull, Lynn and Ravenswoorth. The Gotlandic activity coincides with the German cities blockage of Lynn from 1303 to 1310. A number of merchants from Gotland are named. Several of the 1300s Gotlandic merchants have been interested in trade between Norway and England. Among the goods imported to England are dried ﬁsh, whale-oil and falcons which give ground to assume that this trade has gone over Norway. A few times there is talk of Gotlandic ships, namely the Salomons from Gotland. Other products the Gotlanders have been taken in to England are timber, homespun, tar and copper. From England they have exported especially cloth, salt, wheat, barley, malt and almonds. The Guild Organizations on Gotland In the 1100s a Danish guild organization is formed in Visby, whose patron is initially Canute the Holy recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as patron saint of Denmark in 1101, under the name of San Canuto. Canute the Holy’s brother Eric I Evergood c. 1060 - July 10, 1103, also known as Eric the Good (Danish: Erik Ejegod), was King of Denmark following his brother Olaf I Hunger in 1095. Erik Ejegod visited Gotland in 1103 on his way to Jerusalem and inaugurated at least one church. It is clear that the Danish kings, and later also Henry the Lion have managed to achieve agreements with the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic. The only source that has been preserved about the Canute Guild is found in Valdemar the Great’s charters from the 1170s. Already the initial greetings in these charters give us a picture of the scale of the guild. It reads, “Valdemar sanctimonious King of 210 the Danes to all those under my dominion, who sail to Gotland our good graces and favors.” The letter is addressed to the Canute Guild’s central organization on Gotland, where all brothers at that time were tied. What is meant is an organization of Danish and thus also Scanian merchants, which on Gotland formed a trading company in the form of a sworn brotherhood to the Holy Canute’s honour. In this guild Valdemar himself as share holder enters to give the guild the government guarantee, which is badly needed in competition with other guild organizations in Visby. That they have met some resistance, is shown in Valdemar’s call to the brothers, that they neither because of protests or hostile behaviour of competitors should refrain from what they started. In this context, king Valdemar refers to the brothers’ guild house on Gotland, on which construction had started in order to keep a solemn feast, a “convivium sollenitatem”, to use the letter’s own Latin formulation. There are many indications that this guild house remained in Visby, even in the 1600s in the building which was called the Great Company’s house. The admission fees would go to the building of the guild house. The funds raised among the brothers would be forwarded to the monastery and church in Ringsted, that became the funeral church for the Valdemar clan and a centre for the Canute cult. The letter ends with a quiet greeting: “May God and our own peace for ever shield the one who keeps all the above that is said”. The Canute Guild on Gotland was an association of all Danish merchants, who ran the trading on Eastern Europe and primarily Novgorod (note 37). This central Canute Guild would, like the later German guilds, have kept their cash, their brothers catalogue and other documents concerning the guild organization in Visby. Apparently it has also from Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea the very beginning existed the equivalent local guild organizations at home in the Danish and Scanian towns. The charter speaks of the voluntary gifts that poured in to the guild in Ringsted, both from the guild on Gotland and from all cities in the country, where the Holy Canute’s feast was held. Later in the 1200s the Danish Canute guilds focused mainly on its trading activities on the Skåne market. These guilds were eventually transformed into general society guilds with a very broad recruitment and came so to dominate the sociable intercourse in the respective cities. They therefore had a signiﬁcance beyond the purely commercial. German merchants had after the Artlenburg peace treaty 1161 been allowed to settle on Gotland and form their own guilds. During two decades at the beginning of the 1200s Lübeck was a Danish town, whose inhabitants were assimilated with other Danes. As a result of this development, the originally Danish guild became in Visby a mainly German guild. About this the preserved seal of the 1300s carries witness. The same is also valid for the guild in Tallinn. The entry of the German merchants into the Baltic Sea In the 1000s, Germany was not so large and the German population was concentrated to the Rhine valley up to the River Elbe. The trading centre Bardowick near Hamburg was one of the places where the Gotlanders came in contact with the Germans. This can be seen from coins in silver treasures. Between the German trading places and the Baltic Sea region were non-christian Slavic areas. New farming techniques meant that the German economy began to grow. Between 1050-1250 the German population doubled to about 11 million. In the early 1100s the Germans began a policy of Fig 120. Model of the Fide ship (scale 1:20). The ﬁrst known image of the bow rudder. Photo and model building Henry Hallroth Visby. expansion and German peasants conquered and colonized previously entirely Slavic areas. When the Germans in the ﬁrst half of the 1100s broke through the Slavic barrier to the Baltic Sea region it was the ﬁrst time they had access to the Baltic Sea coast. At that time the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers still completely dominated trade in the Baltic Sea region, which was a continuation of Gotland’s domination of Eastern European trade from the Viking Age. Already in the 800s the Gotlanders dominated the trade on the Russian rivers and in 911 concluded a trade agreement with the emperor Leo IV in Miklagarðr. They also at that time established their famous trading Emporium in Novgorod (Holmgarðr), Gutagård. By the early 800s Charlemagne, whose Christianisation attempts were opposed by the Saxons, moved the Saxons out from the Trave area and instead brought in Polabian Slavs, who were allied to Charlemagne. Liubice (‘lovely’) was founded on the banks of the river Trave about four kilometres north of the present-day city centre of Lübeck. In the 900s it became the most important settlement of the Obotrite confederacy and a castle was built. The settle- 211 Tore Gannholm ment was burned down in 1138 by the non-Christian Rani from Rügen. Adolf II, Count of Schauenburg and Holstein, built in 1143, as a German settlement, on the river island Bucu a new castle which was ﬁrst mentioned by Helmold in 1147. The castle was destroyed by a ﬁre in 1157. Adolf had to cede the castle to Henry the Lion in 1158. In order to attract the Baltic Sea region merchants travelling to Gotland, in competition with Schleswig, Henry the Lion had the destroyed castle rebuilt and founded the City of Lübeck in 1159. He invited Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Kievan Rus’ merchants to carry on trade without tariff in his new city foundation Lübeck. He did everything to attract merchants to this new city. The Gotlanders had at least since emperor Lothair’s time as duke of Saxony (1106 - 1125), been guaranteed trading rights in Saxony. Probably since far back had the Gotlanders been trading on Bardowick where they had to pass Artlenburg and continued to do so. The Gotlanders were not attracted by the new city foundation and the previous agreement, dated to the 1120s, between the Emperor Lothair and the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers is broken, and there is mention of bloody clashes between Gotlanders and Germans. The hostilities mentioned in the Artlenburg document ensued (1159-1160). Peace was concluded in 1161, in the Saxon customs village Artlenburg, between the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic, ofﬁcially called the Gotlandic coast (Gutniska kusten), represented by Liknatte from Stenkyrka, and Henry the Lion of Saxony. This meant that trade peace between the Gotlanders and the Saxon-German merchants was restored. The Gotlanders are secured, against reciprocity, continued trading privileges in the Duchy of Saxony and are equated with the duke’s own merchants. 212 Fig 121. Lübeck’s seal, 1280 The Gotlanders thus have the right, without duties, to trade in all the Saxon towns, while the Germans have the same right in one of the harbours on the Gotlandic coast, namely Visby, where the Danes already had a guild. It is clear that the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic was a trading power that Henry the Lion must bow to. At the same time, however, it clearly shows his policies and goals. Sale of furs and wax on the markets in Western Europe was expanding and the best way to get some of that was to settle on Gotland and exploit the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ knowledge of the transit trade. There is no sign that the Germans participated in any remote trading across the Baltic Sea until some time after 1161. The Germans lacked both ships and naval experience. However, the Gotlandic success in the transit trade in the Baltic Sea region was attractive to the Germans. It did, however, take a long time before they managed to get Lübeck to play a role in the Baltic Sea trade and for a long time thereafter the Gotlandic coast was still the leading Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea trading place. The Novgorod market was opened for the German merchants in 1201. The German merchants would, in due course, gain access to the Baltic trade and in the wake of the Gotlanders’ contacts achieve relations with the Kievan Rus’ market. The treaty thus opens the way, ﬁrstly for a German trading house and then a German immigration to Visby, which through the German guild organizations later came to obtain a dominant place in the Baltic Sea region. During the latter part of the 1100s German merchants began to move to Visby, and in the ﬁrst decades of the 1200s immigration became signiﬁcant. It is, however, ﬁrst with Danish sovereignity over Lübeck in the early 1200s that trade in Lübeck started to take off. As we have seen, the Danes were established in Visby long before the Germans. To monitor the Gotlanders’ rights in Saxony Henry the Lion appointed a bailiff, Odelrik. His mandate was to ensure that the rules of the Artlenburg Treaty were followed on how the Gotlandic merchants would be treated ‘in omni Regno meo’, i.e. that the treaty was followed in the duke’s entire area. Thus Henry the Lion had deﬁned the jurisdiction area for both his own and Odelriks powers. These are linked to ‘regnum meum’, i.e. the area in which Henry the Lion had jurisdiction and where the Gotlandic merchants were privileged since emperor Lothars time. It is likely that Odelrik by Henry the Lion, at the takeover of Lübeck before the Artlenburg negotiations, had been contracted to be ‘the common Trave merchants’ bailiff and judge in the newly founded Lübeck. The Artlenburg peace treaty has only been preserved in a transcript. The Germans, for their part, were entitled to exercise their trading activities on Gotland under the corresponding guaranteed trade peace and legal security that existed for Gotlanders on Gotland. Henry the Lion had no powers to intervene in the Ger- man merchants’ conditions on Gotland. It was their own sake to organize their lives in foreign countries after the trade peace had been secured. The German merchants can now use these by the Gotlanders established trade routes, contacts and agreements, with various places and areas. Presumably it was initially in agreement with the Gotlanders. As the boom continues, more and more German merchants move to Visby. Slowly even Lübeck gradually becomes stronger. In order to travel over the Baltic Sea they need their own ships. After the year 1188, we have evidence that they start shipbuilding in Lübeck. As the availability of their own ships was limited, they were not allowed to sell either ships or shipping timber. To Visby, which until now had only been one of the harbours on the Gotlandic coast, more and more trade was concentrated. In 1180 Henry the Lion was stripped of his lands and declared an outlaw. He was exiled from Germany in 1182. When emperor Frederick Barbarossa went on the Crusade in 1189, Henry the Lion returned to Saxony, mobilized an army of his faithful, and conquered and ravaged the rich City of Bardowick. The old trading city was razed to the ground, with the exception of the churches. Until that time Bardowick was the most prosperous commercial city in north Germany. Bardowick (Bewick in Low Saxon) is located ﬁve km north of Lüneburg on the navigable river Ilmenau. The town was ﬁrst mentioned in 795 and was raised to city status in 972 by Otto I. Its name is derived from the Longobardi, the tribe for whom it was the home and centre, and from it the colonization of Lombardy started. In 1146 the collegiate church of Saints Peter and Paul is recorded. In 1186 the then competent Prince-Bishop of Verden, Tammo (d. 1188), further privileged the collegiate church. After Henry’s fall from power Lübeck became in 213 Tore Gannholm 1181 an Imperial city. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa gave the city a ruling council with twenty members. This organization survived into the 1800s. The council was dominated by merchants and caused Lübeck’s politics to be dominated by trade interests for centuries to come. The Lübeck town and castle changed ownership for periods. In 1203 Valdemar Sejr invaded and conquered Lübeck and Holsten. Lübeck became part of Denmark until the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227. Around 1200 Lübeck became the main point of departure for German colonists leaving for Visby and further transport to the Baltic Sea territories conquered by the Livonian Order, and later the Teutonic Order. In 1226 emperor Frederick II elevated the town to the status of an Imperial Free City, by which it became the Free City of Lübeck. In the 1300s after the foundation of the Hanseatic League in 1358 Lübeck became the ‘Queen of the Hanseatic League’, being by far the largest and most powerful member of this mediaeval monopolistic trade organization with its heyday in the 1400s. Remember Visby had been the leading city in the Baltic Sea region up until now but did not want to be subordinate to Lübeck. Visby wanted to decide over its own destiny. Therefore Visby declined to become a member of the Hanseatic League. It is completely wrong to call Visby ‘HANSESTADEN VISBY’ (the Hanseatic City of Visby) as it is done in todays touristic propaganda and World Heritage. It should say ‘MEDELTIDSSTADEN VISBY’(the Middle Age City of Visby). The treasure from Burge in Lummelunda is a good proof of Gotland’s close contacts with these German regions. It is striking how strongly the Burge treasure is dominated by German coins and how, among them the emphasis is on northwestern and central German imprints, e.g. from the duchys of Saxony and Thuringia. E.g. here occurs the ﬁrst 214 known coins with inscriptions by the Saxon ruler Lothar of Supplinburg, duke from 1106. He was elected German king in 1125 and was crowned emperor in Rome in 1133. Around the same time, in 1130 the Novgorod Chronicle tells about Russian Lodjas, that came from Gotland, North-west Germany and Northern Kievan Rus’. At this time this is more or less the same as Novgorod and Schleswig. Both were linked to the north-west European trade route, that for centuries was one for Northern and Western Europe very essential commodity exchange way. Gotland was the spider in the web. The Kievan Rus’ silver ingots, and the northwest German coins make the Burge treasure a particularly important historical illustration and source. A milestone is the Yaroslav treaty concluded between the Gotlandic and German merchants, on the one hand, and the Novgorod prince Yaroslav on the other. It belongs to the period 1189-1199. The treaty provides reciprocity in terms of freedoms and rights in trade both in Novgorod, on the Gotlandic coast, and in Germany. Through the treaty the Kievan Rus’ market was ﬁnally opened for the German merchants. The increase in inﬂux of German merchants in Visby, which we can see in the early 1200s, was probably related to the fact that they had their relations with Novgorod regulated by the aforementioned Yaroslav treaty. This inﬂux of German merchants together with the German crusaders that passed Visby on their way to Latvia had during the 1200s obviously great importance on the bustling trade to the south and its rapid development on Gotland. Gotland was an independent Merchant Farmers’ Republic whose chief representative was the country judge (Landsdomaren) and had since ancient times trade and defense treaties with the Svea kingdom. Under this treaty the Gotlanders had later in Christian times agreed to participate in ‘Ledungen’ with Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea seven ships ‘to heathen lands, but not against Christians’. This was a low price to pay to still dominate the trade with the Pope Christian countries. The Gotlanders had since anchient times good relations with the non-Christian peoples on the other side of the Baltic Sea. The crusades which began c. 1200 in the Baltic Sea region against non-Christian peoples mainly in the north and east (Finns, Karelians, Estonians, Latvians) sets Gotland in a difﬁcult position. The Gotlanders maintained a neutral position, ‘a let the money decide’. The German merchants in Visby had a completely different approach to this issue. They were close allies with the crusaders, which since 1193 had been active in Latvia. Gradually this came to lead to strong disagreements between Visby and the countryside. The old Merchant Farmers’ Republic wanted to preserve its social structure and its independence, while the merchants in Visby wanted to exploit the country as efﬁciently as possible and integrate it into a larger context. However, events went out of the Gotlanders hands and the monopolistic ‘Hanseatic League’ was founded in 1358 with Lübeck as its leader, but without Visby as a member. Riga maintained in 1225 that the city at the foundation in 1201 was awarded ‘ius Gutorum’, and in 1238 it was declared once again, that the dwellers ever since the foundation enjoyed ‘iura Gotlandiæ’. What was referred to was a series of rights and freedoms that distinguished the Gotlandic harbours in accordance with the legal relations within the Gotlandic community. These included freedom from duty, shore rights and within the judicial system freedom from the use of God’s judgment, single combat and red-hot iron. The Gotlanders were of the opinion that if you torture someone, it was a great risk that the tortured would be lying. These laws contrasted strongly with the German town laws. The Germans in Riga were during most of the 1200s requested to maintain their relations with the German mother country, as well as with the rest of Europe, over Visby. When the bishop, almost every year, was on his way to and from Germany, he therefore visited Visby. From there pilgrims and crusaders were taken to Riga, and from Visby they fetched, to begin with, artisans and some necessary import products such as salt and homespun. From Henry Letten’s description it is unambiguously shown that the overall German merchant ﬂeet, and later pilgrim ﬂeets with crusaders in spring and autumn on their way to or from Riga always passed Visby. For the Gotlandic export sheep farming was important. We can trace the old Gotlandic sheep (gutefår) back to the Bronze Age. The wool was used for the manufacture of homespun, both for domestic needs and for export. We can also see from the Gotlandic national symbol preserved in the Gotlandic Farmers’ Republic’s ‘Great Seal’ that the ewe lamb has a prominent place, and in the Beowulf epos the Gotlanders are called the ram people. As we have seen, Visby was at the beginning the target for the German merchants trading voyages. From Visby they found, over the last decades of the 1100s and early 1200s, the way to Kievan Rus’, Livonia, Estonia, Finland and Novgorod. Of that reason German merchants willingly moved over to Visby. There the settled German merchants obtained an organizing and mediating role for the visiting German merchants. During this preparatory stage in the German-Baltic trade there has been in Visby a mutual guild ‘Gilda communis’, which included the visiting and the resident German merchants. The German guild had its centre in St Mary’s Church, which served as a visiting church in Visby. For storage of transit goods 215 Tore Gannholm Fig 122. On Visby roadstead. Visby was an early base, and its harbour had a key position for the German crusades against the non-Christians in the Baltic States. In this city Bishop Albert of Riga came to play a central role. When in the summer 1199, he for the ﬁrst time passed Visby on the journey east, he preached in the city and ‘up to 500 men took the cross’, a startling ﬁgure if it is correct. In any case, this is testimony of Visby's great importance at this early stage. For Albert, Visby became a central point for all the upcoming crusades. The one that tells about this is a priest named Henry, called Henry Letten, who had been the bishop's companion and eyewitness to the events. Painting by Erik Olsson. they exploited both the church itself as well as a later built second ﬂoor. Even today the lift bar on the east gable of the church testiﬁes to its function as a warehouse. St Mary’s Church was originally in the 1190s used as the guild church and had a fairly modest absid sanctuary. It was expanded to a parish church and was as such completed in 1225. Until then the Germans had been using other churches as parish churches. St Mary’s Church became a natural centre for the German merchant guilds. Visby grew during this time to become the largest, richest and most important city in the Baltic Sea region with a population estimated to between 6 000 and 10 000 people. The German immigrants to Visby obtain more inﬂuence in Visby and strive with time towards a growing independence from the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and its Guthna Althingi. 216 In addition they wanted more control over the trade. The competition with the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers, who had hitherto had a dominant inﬂuence on the trade sharpened thus in a critical way. There is no doubt that the Visby Germans among compatriots in the German cities were regarded as an outpost of German trade interests. The establishment of a separate German commercial trading post in Novgorod, ﬁrst time mentioned in 1259, was therefore a great success for the Visby Germans. They had thus secured the future leadership in the Novgorod trade for themselves and their city. At the same time they organized themselves in their own urban society in Visby. The Visby Gotlanders followed the example to form a similar Gotlandic social organization. Together they thereafter built the city wall around the urban area and prepared for both urban communities secession from the Got- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea landic Merchant Farmers’ Republic. Merchants from to begin with Soest and later many other West German cities, Cologne, Dortmund, Minden, Hannover and many more, and from the new towns that emerged in the previous Wendish area at the Baltic Sea region, Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, etc. took part in the proﬁtable Kievan Rus’ trade. These merchants formed a trade organization in Visby ﬁrst mentioned in 1252: ‘The German Gotland travelling society’ or as it is ofﬁcially named ‘universi mercatores Romanii imperii Gotlandiam frequentantes’. From the beginning it was this that connected the German cities’ trade in the Baltic Sea region. They sailed under Gotlandic ﬂag and could therefore trade under Gotlandic trade agreements. The composition of the German trading towns bear witness to the Germans’ widespread organization and of the importance of Visby. Soest is a central town in Westphalia, in close connection with the great East-West trade route from the North Sea to the Danube basin. Soest plays alongside Dortmund an important role in the German eastward expansion. From here Lübeck was populated and also with the German immigration to Visby the Westphalian element is signiﬁcant. The medieval buildings in Visby have a typical Westphalian character like the actual street network. Visby’s role as a centre for the German trade guilds is clear in St Mary’s Church in relations with Novgorod. To begin with, during the ﬁrst hundred years, the Germans were using the Gotlandic trading Emporium Gutagård. However, Gutagård became overcrowded and the Gotlanders organized a second trading farm, St Petershof, which became the German commercial yard in Novgorod. The German St Petershof is, as said above, ﬁrst mentioned in the Trade Treaty of 1259, when merchants from the Gotlandic coast begged the right to own three commercial yards in Novgorod, which was granted. These yards are identiﬁed under the draft treaty from 1269 to Gotland’s St Olaf Manor, Gutagård, and their guild house, sold before 1269, and the Germans’ St Petershof. When St Petershof wintertime was shut down, its documents and papers were transferred to St Peter’s cofﬁn in St Mary’s Church in Visby. The cofﬁn was locked with four locks. The keys were in the winter stored in four different cities: Visby, Lübeck, Soest and Dortmund. In the spring, when the spring ﬂeet came to Visby, representatives for those four cities had to be present when the ‘Sunte Peters Keste’ was opened and the documents brought to St Petershof. In Visby, as mentioned earlier, the German crusaders appear from end 1100s. They were colonists who were followed by other migrants. Before the end of the 1200s the Teutonic Knights of St Mary established a state which included Prussia, Courland, Livonia and from 1346 Estonia, which area Valdemar Atterdag sold to the Teutonic Order. Thus came during the 1300s the areas from Holstein to the Gulf of Finland by degrees under German domination, and thus ﬁnally the control of the Baltic Sea region. All this changed Gotland’s position. Gotland’s Merchant Farmers were at the start of the period the leading merchants in the Baltic Sea region, with trade treaties and extensive connections in all directions. The Crusades and the struggle for trade routes affected their vital interests. The German advance led to a build up of a large German city community on Gotland, and this was fatal to the old Merchant Farmers’ trade. The central importance of the Visby harbour is also apparent in the documents. Bishop Albert, the founder of Riga and the Livonian state formation, went the year after he became bishop of Livland, i.e. 1199, over to Visby. There he according to Henry Letten, the portrayer of the Livonian mission, de- 217 Tore Gannholm voted nearly 500 men with the sign of the cross. He also secured the same forgiveness to those crusaders and pilgrims, that was given to the Jerusalem crusaders. The Livonians knew, as mentioned above as early as the 1190s, Visby as a place where they bought salt and homespun. When Bishop Albert in the following decades almost every year went to Germany to solicit pilgrims and crusaders, he always went via Visby. Since he 1202 had founded the Livonian Brothers of the Sword ‘Fratres militiæ Christi Livoniae’, the inﬂux of crusaders and pilgrims increased, and on their behalf the orden acquired a hostel in Lübeck, where they could await the crossing to Visby for transfer to Livland. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword also had such a shelter in Visby. We meet them in the Franciscans’ death list, where one is taken up as ‘Ruthwi de Curia Militum Christi,’ i. e. Ruthwi from the Brothers of the Sword’s yard. Ruthwi from Visby died during the ﬁrst half of the 1300s. The term ‘the Brothers of the Sword’s yard’ has in Visby, as in Lübeck persisted long after the Teutonic Order took over the property of the Brothers of the Sword. In 1237 the Brothers of the Sword were assimilated into the Teutonic order. At that time the art historically curious Holy Geist Octagon had come into beeing, built on two levels, probably designed for worship congregations from different social positions. Its architecture bears witness to the Crusaders in Jerusalem with the church and tomb of the Dome of the Rock, and the West German palace chapels in Aachen and Schwarzrheindorf. Also the octogon in the seal of the Templars is interesting. The architecture of the Holy Geist Church, has feudal origins, which may be explained in that it was built by the Teutonic Knights, whose members were familiar with the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and West Germany’s palace chapels. Between the knights’ fellowships and hospital brothers and 218 hospital sisters was a signiﬁcant rank difference. The Teutonic Order was still a special Hospitaller Orden. In the 1230s they took over the Holy Geist hospital in Bremen, which they kept until the Reformation. For a short time in the late 1220s, they also held the Holy Geist hospital in Lübeck, but the bishop and cathedral chapter had forced them to return it to the Council in the city. A Holy Geist hospital existed in Hamburg since 1247, in Kiel since 1257, and in Riga Bishop Albert founded a hospital in 1220. When they committed to undertake mission in Prussia, they should have brought a similar interest in basing their position in Visby on a Holy Geist hospital there. Land had been taken over from the Brothers of the Sword. A ‘curia Militum Christi’ existed already and was apparently allowed to continue as a guest hostel. The Holy Geist Octogon was apparently planned to connect to the south of the church situated medieval Holy Geist house. Visby had the charcter of a metropolis with central importance for the Baltic Sea region trade and also for the mission in Livland and Prussia why it makes the initiative of the Teutonic Knights natural. That the church is built in an architecture of feudal origin, mainly taken from southern Germany’s palace chapels is then also natural. There is yet another reason for the Teutonic order as the founder of the Holy Geist hospital on Gotland. The hospitals of the Order were open to everyone in the hospital province because the Holy See in its conditions conceded the Order the right to collect alms in the parish churches once a year. Therefore, there were Holy Geist money boxes both in the Gotlandic parish churches as well as in St Olaf ’s and St Peter churches in Novgorod. This also implies that the Holy Geist hospital came about as one for the entire island shared facility. The judges on Gotland had therefore, during the Middle Ages, the right to monitor, that half of the charities annually Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea were sent to the Holy Geist hospital in Visby. For Visby the conformation of the Teutonic Knights into the local society in 1237 was an event of signiﬁcance, because the city thereby became committed to its mission and colonization activities. As early as 1230 the Holy See had called on a series of ‘faithful’ provinces, of which Gotland alone in the Nordic countries is included, to turn against the heathen Pruss, who threatened the newly converted Christians. The invitation is repeated in a new papal letter 1231. In 1243 the papal throne started a great campaign to support the Teutonic Knights missionary work in Prussia, and this time the whole Nordic region as well as Gotland were included. The Dominician convention in Visby got its own bull to preach the crusade in Visby and on Gotland. The result was a stream of pilgrims and crusaders from Germany and Scandinavia that via Visby went to Prussia. One is inclined to assume that both the Holy Geist Church and the Holy Geist house were established to receive the travellers at that time. The Holy Geist house functioned namely also as a guesthouse. The Brothers of the Sword ‘domus Militum Christi’ has ﬁlled a similar role. Merchants, crusaders and pilgrims from different parts of Scandinavia and Germany have helped to give the impression of Visby as a city in the mid 1200s. Still in 1259 the Visby Germans, however, seem to lack the status on Gotland, which could entitle them to make their own trade treaties. They are still completely subordinated to the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and their Guthna Althingi. While Visby during the 1100s and 1200s was the largest city in the Baltic Sea region and the place where all threads of the Baltic Sea region trade ran together, Lübeck came at the end of the 1200s and early 1300s increasingly to challenge this role. In 1368, 10 years after the formation of the Hanseatic League, we ﬁnd a letter of the following wording from the cities of Zwolle and Kampen: “Lübeck has announced to the cities, ....... that it is neither permissible for Frisians or Flemish people to sail across the Baltic Sea to Gotland, as they to date according to old right have done, or that in the future might not be allowed for the Gotlanders to visit the Western Sea, such as those under the old right have done for a long time.” With this quote the newly formed monopolistic Hanseatic League (founded in 1358) fully expresses its takeover of the supremacy in the Baltic Sea region. No wonder Visby refused to become a member. The Novgorod Trade, the German St Peter’s trading house There was since the Artlenburg peace treaty 1161, which gave the Germans through the newly founded Lübeck access to the Baltic Sea region market, an understanding based on common commercial rights for the Saxon-German and Gotlandic merchants. This was the result of the reciprocity principle of the Artlenburg peace treaty. To this community the Livonian merchants won association after Bishop Albert had founded the Livonian state. It is clearly shown that Gotland was the leading party in the Baltic Sea region trade. At the founding in 1201 Riga obtained ‘ius Gutorum’, i.e. the same freedoms that characterized Visby harbor. After Riga in 1229 had opened a new Kievan Rus’ market, the Smolensk treaty was extended to apply also to the Gotlandic coast (Gutniska kusten). This was conﬁrmed with ‘all merchants seal’ through a special editing of the text that the same year was presented in Visby for the German ambassadors and ‘all Latin merchants’. This could not have occurred within a society of travellers to Gotland (Gotlandsfararesällskap) but within a representation of the merchant guilds, 219 Tore Gannholm which represented all of Gotland’s merchants, i.e. both rural and those in Visby, and for all German merchants, i.e. both those who lived in Visby and in the German cities on the continent. Therefore, one speaks of the charter of ‘all Latin merchants’ and ‘all merchants seal’. Visby had in the decades before the mid-1200s, by the inﬂux of German merchants, developed into the leading commercial city in the Baltic Sea region. The buildings must have made an impression of a great city. The marina has over time been full of sailing life and movement. Commercial ships did not only bring foreign merchants and expensive continental goods. Also products from Northern and Eastern Europe’s forests, mines and agricultural areas were sought after in Central, Western and Southern Europe. With it came, from the Continent and Scandinavia, Crusaders of noble birth and high rank, together with the pilgrims on their way eastwards. For the Baltic Sea region’s merchants Visby was a known target. The merchant ships from different harbours in the Baltic Sea region, that in the late 1100s and early 1200s left the harbour of Schleswig, were bound for Gotland according to Schleswig City Law. The Danish merchants had since the 1100s a Canute guild in Visby, which would have existed into the 1200s but probably was absorbed by the Germans when Lübeck was under Danish rule. That of Henry the Lion in 1159 founded Lübeck had during the 1160s opened the way to Gotland for the German merchants mainly from Westphalia. In the 1200s the German Baltic Sea trade was sharply activated. After Henry the Lion took control over Lübeck and started to attract the West German merchants, it took reasonable time, before the Baltic Sea region merchants grew accustomed to visit the Trave Harbour, where the movement of goods initially has been limited. It was therefore necessary for the Lü- 220 Fig 123. Medieval Livonia beckian merchants to seek contact with the Baltic Sea region markets. In doing so they were attracted by the Gotlandic harbours and apparently mainly Visby. With Gotlandic merchants they had previously had dealings in Schleswig, Oldesloe and Bardowick. Already in 1190 the Germans had, as we have seen, built a guest church in Visby for funds, which accumulated in a building fund and were paid by the arriving merchant ships’ skippers. It was therefore natural that the German guests in Visby organized themselves along with the immigrant German merchants in a ‘Gilda communis,’ a guild common to both guests and resident Germans. That this occurred is shown by Bishop Albert, who at the founding of Riga bestowed upon their city ‘ius gutorum’ i.e. the Gotlandic law system when he issued a charter in 1211, especially for the Gotlandic merchants, and forbade that they in Riga formed Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea a ‘Gilda communis’, as it was an encroachment on the royal jurisdiction. A ‘Gilda communis’ had viz. its own jurisdiction over its members. A similar organization, called ‘Meyne kopman by der Travene’, originally existed in Lübeck. The difference between Visby, London and Bruges consists in the fact that in London and Bruges, there was not a resident merchant layer, which had the leadership in the trade association, which was the case in Visby. In London and Bruges they selected merchant wardens, who had the lead. The development brought with it, that the Visby Germans in 1225 took over St Mary’s church and turned her into their own parish church. Thus, they also broke out of the ‘Gilda communis’ and formed ‘The Gotland resident Germans’ merchant guild’. In this context ‘The Gotland visiting Germans’ guild’ was established in Visby, which was linked to St Mary’s Church and the guests continued their obligations to pay their contributions to the church. The German merchant guild in Visby, however, retained the lead in ‘The Gotland visiting Germans’ guild’, now representing ‘Gutniska kusten’ in the negotiations on trade rights in the Baltic Sea markets. The word Hanse has therefore no place in Visby and does not appear in the Baltic Sea region in the 1100s and 1200s. In Visby, residing German merchants obtained in 1225 the right to form their own congregation at St Mary’s Church. Further knowledge of this trading community, we get in 1232 when Duke Albrecht I of Saxony issued trading privileges for a ‘universitas communium mercatorum’ within his duchy. The letter has been sent to Riga, where the original is preserved. It was this ‘universitas’, or associations of merchants, who in 1229 conﬁrmed the Visby edition of the Smolensk treaty with ‘all the merchants seal’ the same that we have met in a number of 1200s documents under the name ‘universi mer- catores’. Its continued existence was undermined, however, by the monopolization of the trade by city societies. The result was the break between town and country on Gotland in 1288. The Merchant Farmers were then placed outside the Community. To ‘universi mercatores’ belonged thereafter only the Gotlandic merchants in Visby. This general merchant company was behind the coming into being of guild III a. When this guild was replaced with guild III the merchant society’s inﬂuence was diminished and is likely to be completely nulliﬁed during the second decade of the 1300s. This guild of merchants travelling to Visby we encounter in the records the ﬁrst time in 1252, when they in the Flanders demanded, among other things, reduced tariffs and extended trading rights. The negotiations were conducted by the Lübeck magistrate Herman Hoyer and the Hamburg article clerk master Jordan. This led to several similar charters being issued. The principal term of these charters are, however, ‘Romanum imperium’. For its merchants and cities these charters were issued for ‘all of the Roman Empire merchants who visited Gotland’, one for Hamburg, one for Lübeck and one for Westphalia and Rhineland merchants. All were valid for ‘mercatores Romani imperii’ with the same speciﬁcation. Among the cities of the Roman Empire Köln, Dortmund, Soest, Münster and to those associated cities are noted. It is clear that the listed cities also belonged to the guild of merchants travelling to Visby and were participants in the Novgorod trade, with the possible exception of Köln and Aachen. The latter is only mentioned in one of the letters. When the merchants in the Holy Roman Empire in 1253 acquired a protection letter from the Holstein counts for its commercial trafﬁc through Holstein to Hamburg, it was logical for the same counts that they in 1255 granted a similar protection letter for 221 Tore Gannholm Fig 124. Fårösund in 1210. Henry Letten talks about a battle in 1210 between the Crusaders and the Curonians in Fårösund. Tradition says that when the bishop after having left his vassals with some pilgrims in Livonia, he was with pilgrims on the return journey to Germany. Curonians unexpectedly arrived, enemies of the name of Christ, in the strait at the seashore with eight warships. The Courland ships were within the reef at Hau grönu. After a few of the pilgrims had been killed by the enemy's lances, some drowned and some have been wounded, the others returned to the cogs and escaped. The Curonians then gathered the dead corpses, stripped them and divided the clothes and the rest of the booty among themselves. The burghers of Gotland, however, afterwards collected the bodies and buried them in prayer. But it was almost 30 knights and others who were killed. Painting by Eric Olsson the Gotlandic merchants, both for those from Visby as those from Gotland’s countryside. In so doing, they conﬁrmed also the privileges which the Gotlandic merchants received in Artlenburg 1161. Germans and Gotlanders were still ‘communes mercatores’. It is thus the Roman Empire Merchants, who visited Gotland, for whom the Flanders market was particularly important in the mid 1200s. These are the merchants who appear with the requirements of the East-West trade. Visby had great beneﬁts from this as long as it could maintain its leading position. Even in 1280 not only the German Visby merchants, but also those from Gotland that is the island’s all merchants, endorsed the move of the staple from 222 Bruges to Aardenburg. It was logical as the Gotlandic trading Emporium in Novgorod was still used by Gotland’s all Gotlandic merchants. With the break between city and country in 1288, rural merchants trading on the Flanders market were hindered, and eventually their trade ceased completely. The Bruges and Flanders markets were in the mid 1200s important trading venues for the Gotland travellers. They provided the Flanders market with some of its most important commodities such as furs and wax from Novgorod, copper and osmund iron from Sweden, corn and timber from Prussia and Livonia, and from the latter country also potash. To Bruges the Italian, Spanish, French and South Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea German merchants found their way on land roads, and later through the Gibraltar Strait. They brought spices, silk, metal goods, wine and West Sea salt to the Flanders market. In the Flanders the highly prized Flemish broadcloth was produced with wool imported from England. Such goods the Gotland travellers brought back to the Baltic Sea region. Hamburg’s old ship’s law, which is probably from before 1270 mentions men, who lease shipping ‘to Norweghene oder to Gotlande’, i.e. to Norway and Gotland. This suggests that trade trafﬁc through the Sound was common already in the mid 1200s. The ﬁrst mention of direct Visby trade to the Flanders meets us in 1333. In that year, the Visby Council wrote ‘by the two tongues’ to the town of Nieuport, not far from Ostende, and requested that the cargo, salvaged from a sunken ship outside the town, would be extradited. The cargo belonged to 3/4 to the Visby burgher Henry Schwartz, while the remaining quarter belonged to the deceased captain Herman. The ship was listed to belong in Visby. The German prosperity of the Novgorod trade can be linked to the decades after 1225. The German St Petershof is ﬁrst mentioned in 1259. In order to protect peace and security in the Baltic Sea region, Lübeck signed in the middle of the 1200s, a number of agreements with other trading cities (‘Civitate maritimae’). The ﬁrst treaty was in 1280 with Hamburg and soon also with ﬁve Wendish cities: Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald and Stettin. Also the Visby Germans (‘advocatus, consul et commune Theutonicorum ciuitatis Wisbucensis’), who organized the two-sided urban society around 1260, joined this association for the protection of trade across the Baltic Sea region for ten years. To this Riga joined for the eight remaining years in 1282. It was important to balance Lübeck’s growing inﬂuence in the trade. In a record from 1280, where both the Gotlan- dic and the German city societies in Visby agree to the move of the trading place from Bruges to Aardenburg there is mentioned ‘universi mercatores Flandriam frequentantes’ as an organization of Baltic Sea region merchants who negotiated with the Flemish Count and whose requirements were been met by him. At the civil war between the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and Visby in 1288 also the Gotlandic part of Visby joined this association. The purpose of this association was, if anyone wanted to inﬂict or inﬂicted any of the merchants who were connected with them injustice or injury in the Trave harbor, on the Baltic Sea, or in any harbour or additional space between Öresund and Novgorod, it would be a joint effort and expenditure to repel or retaliate this. After the Germans got their own trading house in Novgorod, Petershof, ﬁrst mentioned in 1259, sentences pronounced there had been possible to appeal to a higher court in the German merchant guild in Visby. From the beginning, the Germans had been using the Gotlandic Gutagård, but when it became too crowded the Gotlanders arranged for a new trading house for the Germans, Petershof, further inland. In 1293 the Wendish city union decided that the court in question should be moved from Visby to Lübeck. However, Lübeck failed in this intent. A compromise was reached whereby Visby and Lübeck shared responsibility. This compromise agreement seemed to settle the rivalry between the two cities. For the Germans in Visby this was a serious concession they gave when they agreed to rob their merchant company of its inﬂuence over the Novgorod trade. Thus, the city had in fact eliminated the foundation for its former position in the Novgorod trade. Lübeck had increased in importance and started to challenge Visby as the most 223 Tore Gannholm powerful city in the Baltic Sea region. The question was therefore how long Visby now would be able to compete as an equal party with Lübeck. The Gotland travellers’ guild in Visby lost during the 1300s in importance, but not as Dollinger mean by the establishment of the covenant between Lübeck and Visby in 1280 when the two cities pledged to secure trade routes across the Baltic Sea. According to Dollinger it was the task of the Gotland travellers guild, which was deprived the organization in 1280 in a humiliating manner without the company even mentioned it in the documents. This is obviously not the case. The Gotland travellers’ guild may never have felt to have had such a task. It lacked the necessary power and resources. That task was instead some time in the hands of the councils. So had Lübeck and Hamburg in 1241 already pledged to secure the trade route through Holstein to the Flanders. They committed themselves to ﬁght robbers and other merchant enemies ‘in communi expensa’, i.e. with joint expenses. In 1243 and 1244 the right for Lübeck and Hamburg merchants to safely travel through Holland has also been further underwritten by the Dutch Count and the Bishop of Utrecht. When this right is conﬁrmed in 1249, the conﬁrmation is directed to Lübeck and Hamburg. Year 1255 Lübeck and Hamburg closes a covenant ‘pro communi necessitate pacis’, i.e. for the common peace necessity. In 1259 it is extended by an alliance between Lübeck, Wismar and Rostock for the same purpose. It originally covered only one year but was renewed in 1265 with unlimited duration. Instead it provides annual gatherings. As a representative for the Slavic towns and merchants, Lübeck acquired in 1278 trading privileges in Denmark and in the same year in Norway for a number of German ‘seaside towns’. The latter term is more elastic than the term ‘Slavic’ cities and this also includes the German merchants in Visby and Riga. 224 The term ‘Wendish cities - Civitate Slavie’ is repeated in the 1280s again and again in the records alongside ‘seaside towns - Civitate maritimae’. The Wendish city covenant received increased ﬁrmness in the Rostocker Landfrieden 1283. It was addressed to the Brandenburg Baltic Sea policy, which threatened the position of Lübeck as a free Imperial City. The Rostocker Landfrieden had been concluded for ten years. It contained also obligations for the members in war, but special interests weakened the cohesion. With Norway the German merchants came into conﬂict in 1283, after the Norwegian government had seized German goods in Bergen. In 1284 the cities that belonged to the land peace covenant decided to impose a food products embargo against Norway. Strict rules for the cities, that did not abide to its obligations in connection with the embargo, were ﬁxed. Bremen, who broke the embargo, was expelled from the city association. Norway was threatened by food shortages, but a peace came about after an arbitration by the Swedish king Magnus Ladulås in 1285. It was beneﬁcial to the Wendish towns and the Germans in Visby and Riga. Peace with Norway in 1285 was a great success for the Lübeck urban policy. Plans to make the Baltic Sea region one of the German Baltic towns controlled waters seems to have been present. The term ‘mercatores Romani imperii’ was used in 1252 as a label for the parent political entity, to which all these German merchants and towns belonged, which carried on trading on the Flanders market. It remains so in the 1280s, as there exists no organized community for all German merchants and towns in the East-West trade. This market was still controlled by Gotland. To mark a Community they resort to the name ‘mercatores Romani imperii’. The alliance between Lübeck and the Visby German society in 1280 was aimed at protection against any- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea one who wanted to inﬂict injury in the Trave harbor, or on the Baltic Sea or in any harbour or mooring space between Öresund and Novgorod. With joint effort and expenditure they were obliged to repel or retaliate any threat. The alliance was expanded, as mentioned, in 1282 and extended to include Riga for the remaining eight years. The alliance adds the previous treaties between Lübeck, Hamburg and the Wendish cities. The entire trading route between Bruges and Novgorod was thus under the protection of those involved in German-Baltic Sea trade. The increased insecurity for the merchants involved in remote trading had brought up this federation policy. Yet it was however only based on two city unions (i.e. Lübeck and the Wendish towns and Lübeck and Visby-Riga), with Lübeck as the connecting link. Outside stood until further the Gotlandic urban society in Visby. During the 1280s the two urban communities in Visby probably built the old wall around the city. Concurrently in 1286 a German merchant ship run aground on the coast of Wirland, not far from Tallinn. Although the merchants were guaranteed freedom from the beach right, the local magnates seized the cargo, and sold part of it in Tallin. The owners of the goods turned to the Danish authorities in Estonia without any result, and Lübeck then turned to the Danish regency of Erik Menved, who ordered the centurion in Tallin to give the merchants justice. As Lübeckian envoy Johan von Doway functioned in dealing with this issue. In so doing, he has taken the initiative to undertake special negotiations in Visby, which led to the issue of a document on midsummer day 1287. It contains decisions taken by the ‘omnium mercatorum civitatum et locorum terram Gotlandiam frequentantium’ and the original document in Lübeck has been sealed with ‘sigillum omnium mercatorum’. ‘All merchants from different cities and places, who visited Gotland’, are issuing the decisions. Thus, it is ‘universi mercatores’ in Visby, which is the acting party, i.e. the Merchant Society, which means that even the Gotlandic urban society took part in the decisions. The charter contains detailed provisions on how cities near a place where beach right is applied, would act. In doing so, one speaks of a merchants’ association in all places and roads, ‘societas seu consodalitas mercatorum in omnibus locis et viis’, and is threatening each city, which does not comply with the decisions to be expelled from the merchants’ association. Lübeck seems to be the actual initiator. The regulations are a direct continuation of the previous federal policies to ensure the movement of goods between Novgorod and East Baltikum over the Baltic Sea and through Holstein and Holland to the Flanders. For Visby, this meant a problem. The City was split in two urban communities, of which the Gotlandic side represented the entire island’s interests in the Baltic Sea region trade and behind it was the Guthna Althinghi. In the ‘ledungs’ agreement with Sweden from 1285 it states that exiles would not enjoy any protection on Gotland and it is named ‘maiores et praecipui ac primi terrae et civitatis’, perceived as representatives of a unit, which could hardly operate in the German Baltic Sea town association. The Civil War in 1288 brought an end to this relationship. Visby broke loose from the Gotlandic Community, which happened with the consent of the Visby Gotlanders. In England, at the same time, a change in the German merchants’ position had taken place. Both Hamburg and Lübeck had been allowed to form their own associations in London, called Merchant Hanse of the same species as Cologne had. Cologne has apparently not been able to maintain its unique position. These associations must in every case by London’s authorities have been regarded as a ‘Ge- 225 Tore Gannholm samthansa’. As such they meet in 1282 in connection with a settlement with the German merchants to repair and maintenance of the gate in the city wall, called Bishopsgate. The settlement has been reached between London and the ‘hansa Almanie in eadem Civitate’. On Nov 18 in 1281, however, Edward I had conﬁrmed Henry III’s privilege letter from 1260 for the merchants of the German Empire, who owned a warehouse in London, which is popularly called the ‘Gildehalle Teutonicorum’. The expression is directly taken over from the charter of 1260. In 1299 however they speak of ‘mercatores regni Alemannie illos scilicet, qui sunt de gilda Teutonicorum et de haunca Alemannie in Londonia’. In the late 1200s we see a ‘Gesamthansa’ in London. When the merger occurred can not accurately be determined. However, the deal on the repair and maintenance of Bishopsgate in 1282 assumes that the London authorities considered the German merchants in the city as they were brought together in a ‘Gesamthansa’. This does not prevent the fact that the ‘Gildehalle’ might still have belonged to Cologne. On the plot area, where the ‘Gildehalle’ since the 1100s had been located had by the mid 1200s new buildings apparently been built for the Baltic Sea region and Hamburg merchants. It is this ‘Gesamthansa’ in London, which in 1299 is called the ‘hansa Alemannie’. In 1291, i.e. three years after the breach between urban and rural areas on Gotland, ‘universitas mercatorum terram Gotlandie gracia mercandi applicancium’, i.e. ‘the association of merchants that for trade’s sake visited Gotland,’ issued a proxy for the citizens in Lübeck, Visby and Riga to appoint representatives for the negotiations in Novgorod on matters which concerned the freedom of the merchants there. The reason was that the Baltic Sea region merchants were attacked and looted. It is the third time that this guest organization meets us in 226 the source material. The ﬁrst time is in the Flanders in 1252, when it obtains privileges, issued for ‘mercatores Romani imperii Gotlandiam frequentantes’. For Lübeck ‘the association of merchants that for trade’s sake landed on Gotland,’ issues in 1260 a vidimation by Linköping Bishop Henry as conﬁrmation of Bishop Bengt’s letter to St Mary’s Church. The vidimation is probably from the early 1260s. It has been conﬁrmed by ‘sigillum theutonicorum Gotlandiam frequentancium’. With the 1290s i.e. after Visby freed itself from dependence on the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic, Lübeck launched a campaign to transfer the forum for law appellations from the St Peters factory in Novgorod from Visby to Lübeck. The campaign was primarily intended against the powers of the Gotlandsfararesällskapet, but hence also towards Visby. The attempt failed, as we have seen above, but Lübeck enforced that the society’s seal was not to be used from 1299. Lübeck came, however back, probably during the second decade of the 1300s, and had then success. Visby was forced to agree to a compromise, under which Lübeck and Visby jointly would serve as a forum for appellations. Thus stood the Gotland travellers guild for its extinction and the question was now, how long Visby could hold its own against Lübeck’s growing inﬂuence. An undated story by ‘nuncii civitatum’, the urban communities messenger, probably belonging to the year 1292 has probably been prompted by the above assignment. The envoys had failed. Riga had by subscribing to the German Baltic Sea region town Alliance satisﬁed themselves a position in the Baltic trade in addition to Lübeck and Visby. In 1312 the Wendish City League was dissolved. Lübeck was then quite isolated. Only by adopting the guild III in the 1300s second decade Lübeck managed ﬁnally to dismantle Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea the merchant company. When Lübeck and Visby agreed to share control of the Novgorod yard (St Petershof), there was no longer room for a merchant company in Visby. Its residual powers were now completely transferred to the merchant meeting in Novgorod. A Low German model of the Visby law has existed in the German city society in Visby at the latest about 1270. It would in many cases after 1288 have been applied also in the Gotland urban society, at least in the trade. This has obviously facilitated the codiﬁcation of Visby City Law. Another re-organization among the German merchants in foreign markets came to Flanders. Bruges lacked a functioning organization. On the 28th of October 1347, however, the present merchants in Bruges were gathered in the Carmelites monastery’s refectory and decided ﬁrst to obtain a statute book, in which the ordinances and decisions could be entered and that the visiting German merchants were organized into three ‘drittel’ (ﬁrkins), the Wendish, the Westphalian-Prussian and the Gotland-Livonian. There was a merchant meeting that took these decisions. The new Bruges Organization did not function satisfactorily. Disagreement when decisions were taken were not rare. The powers of the alderman were not properly ﬁxed. In June 1356 appeared a representation of aldermen from the merchants hometowns in Bruges. It was chaired by Henrik Plescow from Lübeck. The Visby-Livonian ‘drittel’ was represented by the magistrate Johan van Brunswik from Visby and Herman Bredenschede from Livland. The negotiations led to that the gathered aldermen conﬁrmed the ‘drittel’ organisation but at the same time subordinated the Bruges ofﬁce under the councils of the hometowns. Conﬂicts with Bruges and the Flanders Count about the merchants’ position in the Flander market made, however, that the towns decided to leave Bruges and move over to the Dutch Dordrecht. A Hanse day in Lübeck 1358 (this counts as the ﬁrst Hanse day after the founding of this covenant) with representatives from the Lübeckian and the Prussian ‘drittels’ decided on these measures in order to force concessions on the Flanders. Solidarity for the move was called for from the cities. Insurance of it from non-represented ‘drittles’ seem to have been obtained. It was envisaged that the apparel industry in the Flanders would be paralyzed and food shortage occur. During the Anglo-French Hundred year war (13371453) German merchants had suffered losses for which they demanded compensation from the Flemish city of Bruges and the Count, as they guaranteed security for its trade in the Flanders. Lists of the damage claims from the merchants in the ‘drittles’ had been drawn up and submitted to the Hanse day in Lübeck on 3/8 1358. Among these there is also a list from merchants in the Visby ‘drittle’, which includes the brothers Herman and Ambrose Swedinghusen and Albert Subber, Henry van Kalmeren and Hinse van Eysinghusen, all Visby merchants. During the 1360s, Visby’s trade on the Flanders was probably still substantial. Even Gotlandic rafters, ‘Gothensche Sparren’ reached the Flanders market, according to the list of brokerage fees, which was established in 1360. The Gotlandic Church and the diocese in Linköping The medieval country church is Gotland’s pride and honor. So peculiar and so closed in itself is the Gotlandic ecclesiastical art, that the island in all art history books must always have its own chapter. Gotland has its own art history! 227 Tore Gannholm Gotland is the island of the proud church towers. The white towers with sharp, brown tarred tips is its architectural signature. They are the descendants of cathedrals. Their parents are the mighty West German domes. The towers of Tingstäde, Stenkyrka and Vall belong to the most impressive tower buildings in Scandinavia. In the east stands the tower of Gothem and in the southeast, slender as a ship’s mast, Rone tower ‘Lang Jakaå’. In the west under the mountain slope in Visby is located the cathedral’s large three-masted towers wreath as in a harbour, and on Sudret rests, looking out over the sea in the east and west, ‘Gra Gasi’ (Grey Goose) in Öja in its nest of lush meadows. Over Martebo bog watches the thick Lokrume ‘Boddu’, and over the rich Dalhem district reigns a cathedral tower with boastful pinnacles, borrowed from French Gothic. During the 1200s and ﬁrst half of the 1300s an impressive rebuilding and enlarging of many churches took place on Gotland. Sometimes it was for reasons of necessity, because the church had burned down, but for the most part rebuilding was a free parish initiative. The goal was to make the church greater and more impressive than before. The old Romanesque stone churches on Gotland, many with Byzantine art, had become comparatively small. Using income from the thriving Baltic Sea trade the Gotlanders could now greatly magnify their parish churches in the Gothic style with distinctive local character. The Gothic style reached Gotland about 1220 while it started on the Swedish mainland about 1250. Under the inﬂuence from northern Germany the St Mary’s Church in Visby was rebuilt to a spacious and magniﬁcent hall church, a pattern that spread across Gotland. The country churches received often two-or triple-aisled naves with high arches supported on slender pillars. The 1200s churches stand today as veritable peasant cathedrals, eloquent witnesses in stone of 228 a period for the Baltic Sea region’s incredible riches. The upgrade to larger churches of the Gotlandic church project was, however, abruptly halted after the mid 1300s. A contributing factor was the decline in trading activity after the formation of the Hanseatic League in 1358 and their ambitions to stop free trade and monopolize their own trade. Another factor was the Black Death. In the wake of a bubonic plague epidemic 1347-1352 came church buildings across Europe to a halt. Further Valdemar Atterdag’s invasion of Gotland killed a large part of the remaining rural male population. Since the dawn of history Roma on Gotland has been an important central place, with good road links in all directions. East of Roma extends primarily, as a protection against attack from the east, a mile-long chain of swamps and marshes. At Högbro just south of Roma is an passage, which is an important defense point in Gotland’s medieval military history. From Högbro beams the road out towards the east and southeast. In the north you have to go all the way up to Dalhem to ﬁnd the next passage. In 1164 the Cistercians founded a monastery in Roma, at the inauguration called ‘Sancta Maria de Guthnalia’. The monastery is considered by archaeological ﬁnds to have been built on the site of the Gutna Althingi where Things negotiations were held and named after the Thing. This in turn suggests that the monks had been called by the Gutna Althingi. It will become an outpost for the idea of crusades and part of the Pope Catholic Church’s missionary work in Eastern Europe (note 38). With the Artlenburg peace treaty in 1161 contacts, between the German culture in the North Rhine-Westphalia area headed by Soest and Gotland were opened. This will have the greatest impact on the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and its policies in the Middle Ages. In 1318 Ruma Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea for the ﬁrst time appears in the records and the year 1419 ‘Rumm-kloster’. The Cistercian order is at this time heavily involved in the crusade idea and it is Cistercians behind the birth of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and the crusades against the Baltic states at the end of the 1100s and the beginning of the 1200s. Bishop Albert of Riga (Albert of Buxhoeveden) founded the military order of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword (Latin: Fratres militiæ Christi Livoniae, in German Schwertbrüderorden) in 1202. Pope Innocent III sanctioned the establishment in 1204. The membership of the order comprised German ‘warrior monks’. Alternative names of the order include the Christ Knights, Sword Brethren, and The Militia of Christ of Livonia. Following their defeat at the Battle of Saule in 1236, the surviving Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order as an autonomous branch and became known as the Livonian Order. Roma monastery is closely linked to this policy and obtains later by the Danish royal family, who took the monastery under its protection, very large estates in Estonia in connection with the Danish conquest of this country in 1219. In connection with this extension the monastery builds a large palace in Tallinn for the monastery’s manager and large warehouses for storage of farm yields. In 1249 a Cistercian nunnery is opened in Tallin. Roma monastery and the Cistercian order become a support for the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers in the 1200s in their struggle against Visby and its German burghers, and give their policies an Eastern European focus. We also see it later at the end of the 1300s, when the Baltic Sea cities in opposition to the Wendish cities are given access to the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic’s Gutagård. According to the Landbook from 1635 the Roma monastery also had large estates in Högby and Källa parishes on Öland (A. Ahlqvist, Ölands historia och beskrivning). The Guta Saga explains in a separate chapter Gotlands relations to Linköping diocese and of the agreement, which was reached between the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and the bishop in Linköping. The correctness of the narrative information is conﬁrmed in a letter, that some time between 1220 and 1223 was issued by Archbishop Andreas Sunesen in Lund to Bishop Bengt in Linköping. Guta Saga says that before Gotland ranged itself in Linköping diocese, foreign bishops, who temporarily passed Gotland on pilgrimages to the Holy Land had consecrated their churches and cemeteries. ‘At that time the road went east over Gotland through Kievan Rus’ and Greece to Jerusalem.’ This is consistent with reality, as Gotland in those days was in the middle of the great trade route from Western Europe across Kievan Rus’ to Miklagarðr (Constantinople), Greece and on to the Holy Land. Guta Saga notes not without pride that fact. It may be mentioned in this connection, that Saxo in his chronicle tells how king Erik Ejegod from Denmark on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his queen and a splendid retinue of knights and attendants about the year 1103 passes Visby, where he inaugurates St. Olaf ’s church near the harbour. From there he goes through the Russian rivers to Miklagarðr where he was kindly received by the Byzantine emperor, after which he continued down through the Greek archipelago. Neither he nor his queen came back home to Denmark again. King Erik died on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean and his Queen Bodil in Jerusalem. It may be mentioned that from 1123 there is a letter from Pope Callixtus II (1119-1124) to emperor Henry V, which sets Hamburg-Bremen supremacy over the bishops of ‘Sveciae, Gotlandiæ, Norvegiæ’. It should be noted that the Gotlandic Church was re- 229 Tore Gannholm garded as an independent political and church organizational unit. It is also interesting to note that the popes in letters talk about establishing ‘ius Gutorum’ in the now Christianized areas in the east. This meant that they were granted the same rights and freedoms conferred on Gotland, which was considered valuable. Special ‘protection letters’ were issued by various popes for the Gotlandic Church in the years 1253, 1296 and the 1334. The Pope promises in those to give his protection against various kinds of injustices committed against the church and the people on Gotland. The Gotlanders appear to have had a strong presence in the border zone between the Pope Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The ﬁnal break between these two churches occurred in 1054 when the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch in Constantinople excommunicated each other. Since the Gotlanders in their trade relations were deeply involved in the Greek Orthodox Miklagarðr (Constantinople), Kievan Rus’ and the Catholic Denmark with Schleswig, they had a unique position and could thus probably play out the two churches against each other. This shows up later when the Linköping bishop, from time to time, tried to interfere in the internal affairs of the Gotlandic Church. The disturbances with the Pope Catholic Germans, which resulted in the Artlenburg treaty of 1161 may well have had a religious undertone. Soon thereafter the Roma monastery was founded and Gotland’s association to the Linköping diocese has probably also occurred at that time. As shown in Guta Saga it gradually became necessary to integrate the Gotlandic church in the Pope Catholic system of administration. For this purpose, ‘they sent message to the bishop of Linköping, for he was closest to them,’ and made an agreement, which is of great interest for our understanding of Gotland’s peculiar eccle- 230 siastical political position in the Nordic countries. According to Guta Saga the Gotlanders themselves took the initiative and it is also acknowledged by the Archbishop who issued the letter, which states that the Gotlanders voluntarily adopted the faith, and yielded to the bishop of Linköping ‘without anyone forcing them to do so’. As we have seen, different Christian faiths were obviously represented on Gotland. What had happened was that, of convenience, they had conﬁned themselves to the belief that the bishop in Linköping represented. The reason why they to their ecclesiastical head elected the Bishop in Linköping is according to Guta Saga just that he lived closest to them. The decision would therefore be purely practical considerations and did not involve any political statement. Judging by Gotland’s later history this seems true. There is no doubt that it is the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers, who dictated the agreement themselves. This gives namely the Gotlandic Church a very high degree of independence, which is larger than in other places. Looking at the actual design of the Agreement it may immediately be regarded as a purely commercial contract, which not only regulates the ﬁnancial dealings, but also limits the bishop’s actions. The agreement primarily ﬁxes the duties and burdens, which the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers assume in connection with inaugurations and visitations, which the bishop is obliged to perform, and for the allowance, which will then be paid. The Gotlanders pay for his real effort but no more. This is documentary covered by a letter from the Gotlandic population to the Archbishop in Uppsala, dated 1304, in which they complain that the Bishop in Linköping, at the inauguration of the churches in Hörsne, Västergarn (Garnae) and Sanda made one too extensive and expensive visit on Gotland. In that context it may be stressed that the Merchant Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Farmers on Gotland never paid the bishops tithes, one thing that the Gotlanders probably are alone with throughout the Catholic world. The tithes issue has apparently been settled already when the agreement was signed. A long series of Acts show how bishop after bishop during the 1200s tried to achieve an audit of the agreement, which now showed Gotland like an anomaly within the Linköping diocese. The Gotlanders defended themselves ably because their cause was formally strong and they knew how to exploit their vast connections outside the diocese. When Bishop Karl in the 1210s, wanted to change the division of tithes, the Gotlanders appealed to the church’s primate, the learned Archbishop Andreas Sunesson in Lund. He had been to Gotland himself and knew the island’s circumstances, and he mediated in Gotland’s favor. This communication probably triggered the archbishops suggestion that the Guta Lagh should be written down. During the following bishops, Bengt and Lars, the mediator role was played by the legate from the Holy See William of Modena (later of Sabina). During 1226 and 1248 he stayed in Visby, ratiﬁed constitutions and conﬁrmed Bishops’ privileges, and he also put in a word in Rome for the Gotlanders. As early as 1230 the Holy See had called on a series of ‘faithful’ provinces, of which Gotland alone in the Nordic countries is included, to turn against the heathen Pruss, who threatened the newly converted Christians. The invitation is repeated in a new papal letter 1231. It is interesting to note that when the Swedes had Skänninge möte in 1248 the papal legate William of Modena did not come from Rome but from Visby where he was resident. Gradually the Gotlanders obtained a good habit to acquire papal letters, which conﬁrmed their ancient rights. A concrete picture of how this rather peculiar relationship between bishop, clergy and congre- gation in this part of his diocese turned out is the following. Year 1217 Pope Honorius III conﬁrmed an old agreement on the tithes division on Gotland. When the Linköping bishop wanted to implement a change in the old tithes division the Gotlanders obtained by Gregory IX in 1230 a conﬁrmation of the old division. Probably the bishop wanted to introduce bishop’s tithes. According to a new papal conﬁrmation of 1253 the tithes on Gotland were divided between church, priest and poor. A document from 1296, says that the bishop’s representative at the papal curia Master Helyas from Spoleto, an Italian lawyer who had helped the Swedish church with several services, entered a formal protest against the Gotlandic deputy Master Nicolaus Gisonis. This otherwise unknown man had persuaded Boniface VIII to conﬁrm the Gotlandic Church’s own practices in the appointment of priests and deans. The agreement determines the outset “that the bishop should come from Linköping to Gotland every three years with twelve of his men, who will follow him with the Merchant Farmers’ horses, so many and no more.” The bishop’s entourage is here clearly limited to twelve men. He is not allowed to bring his own horses. The Merchant Farmers themselves shall make horses available to him and his companions. The size of the bishop’s crew is obviously a factor, when it comes to maintenance. Possibly it is purely political consideration behind the provision. The wording of the letter may suggest that. After leaving the details of the twelve companions and their horses it is added: “for with larger party or entourage he is not allowed to travel through the country.” His visits are also clearly limited to once every three years when he will inspect half of Gotland’s parishes. The other half will pay one between the Merchant Farmers and the bishop agreed ransom in money, which varies depending on parish size 231 Tore Gannholm and economic capacity. The parishes on Gotland are thus divided into two groups, alternately those inspected, and those which pay the ransom. According to the letter, he has ‘no right’ to come to Gotland more frequently. For each church the bishop inaugurates, he will have three mark penningar and also three meals, ‘and no more.’ At the consecration of an altar, he shall have twelve öre (i.e. 1 1/2 mark) and a meal. However, if both church and altar are consecrated at the same time “then they shall both be consecrated for three mark penningar and three meals,” i.e. the same compensation, which applies when the church alone is consecrated. There is a clear and businesslike limitation of the bishop’s compensation for services rendered. Even on the bishop’s jurisdiction over the clergy, or in cases of parishioners’ discipline and morality, there are some typical restrictions. The agreement provides that these cases should always be adjudicated in the trisection on Gotland, where the crime was committed, “because the men that live there next know best about the truth.” The addition testiﬁes to common sense. Even the very location to Gotland was probably a Gotlandic wish, even if the distance across the sea to Linköping may have played a role. If the case was not judged in the trisection, it would be referred to the decision of Gutna Althinghi. Exceptions apply in very difﬁcult cases and when such a big sin has been committed that deans can not adjudicate the case. A certain amount of sentencing authority has apparently been transferred to the deans on Gotland, but the Gutna Althinghi, not the bishop, is the highest authority. Even the ﬁnes, which the bishop has the right to impose, has a certain limitation. They must not exceed three mark penningar. That is the same restriction that applies to ﬁnes in the lower district units 232 on Gotland. The bishop did not have anything to say in case of priest elections, which the Linköping early bishops were very unhappy with. Since ancient times, election of priests on Gotland was done by an introduction system, whereby the Linköping bishop’s inﬂuence was limited to essentially a formal conﬁrmation. The right to introduction belonged to patrioni, which in general was a commoners patrioni. The provisions testify to the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers independent position in relation to the Bishop in Linköping. Also in connection with the ecclesiastical law, it is the Gutna Althingi that makes the real decisions. Regarding the law on leaving a child in the woods it has, according Guta Lagh’s own words, had the design ‘which all men agree’ (§ 2). This also applies to public holidays, to be authenticated on Gotland, which in the ﬁnal analysis must be approved by the Gutna Althingi. The law would therefore undoubtedly be an expression of the Gotlandic society’s own views. With its extensive links and its more continental civilization Gotland and Visby could provide input, that the Swedish dioceses were without. And on several occasions it appeared to be a strength for the Linköping bishop that his diocese went outside the Swedish king’s effective power range. During the 1300s, we see several examples of where Swedish bishops who get into conﬂict with the secular Swedish power come in exile to Gotland. In 1371 the sources conﬁrm that Archbishop Birger Gregersson was in exile on Gotland (note 39). Much speaks for that the Gutna Althingi signed the agreement to use the services from the Bishop of Linköping in 1164. At the same time the Bishop brought monks from Nydala monastery that was founded a few years earlier and got permission to found a monastery on Gotland, which was close Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea to the Thing place of the Gutna Althingi in Roma, of that age and S:t Nicholai, which later changed Sancta Maria de Guthnalia. its character by extensions, originally had the same temperament. So had also Helge And, though its main part was octagon, not cubic. The construction method was strongly determined Around 1210-40 by the German population. The German nationVisby was unchallenged leader of the al shrine of S:ta Maria was leading in front of all others, but none of the others dispute the German Transitional Style It is true that the country churches by far surpass blood, although in most of them one element of those of Visby by originality and imagination. But Gotland is undeniable. The Germanization of Viseven Visby had its artistic culture, which require at- by was a fact. tention. It is a very young culture that takes speed Germany during this century was an artistically imfrom the mid 1100s, that in seniority can not com- pressive power. The question is if not the 1200s pete with the rural more than a thousand year old represent the absolute level of height for the whole traditions in art culture. It is enough to compare the of the current German-speaking area in art. gleaming row of Gotlandic picture stones, one of In building, sculpture, mural- and glass-painting the major international phenomena in the history and goldsmith’s art gave the Transitional Period of art! But Visby needs attention. Partly for its own in Germany some of their best qualities to Visby, sake. The city grew namely fast to a small giant in which by some simpliﬁcation and ﬁrmness, howits short medieval prosperity and created, though ever, was adapted to a Nordic ﬂavor. In the newly not in so autonomous forms as the country parish- prosperous harbour city the foreign concessions es, a treasure of architecture that still in its ruined competed with each other, and with the new arrivstate arouses admiration with its solid proportions, als of monastic orders, in church building. Happy and its rare successful ﬁt to the land and sea. Visby are the artists who landed at the Visby bridge at must also be recognized for her performance in the the beginning of the fertile half-century 1200-1250. wholeness of the Gotlandic art. During the heyday They did not wait for orders. The sacred ediﬁces of the Transition Period, this input was high. Yes, grew with pictures and paintings as grape stocks in Visby was then the undisputed cultural leader of the a ﬁred hothouse. Such a production could not fail to expand, and then whole island. The city achieves now, around 1220-50, its manhood of course, primarily to the rural areas. The young and now is created the cityscape, which is actually artist subject from the parishes went as journeymen still alive today. Churches took shape, a real Visby to the Germans. They then returned with ideas to Style is borne, and most churches have not changed their native home area, over large parts of Gotland, since they were completed during this short peri- and included the new ideas into the Gotlandic art od, that in art history bears the unfair watery name school. One thinks not only in architecture but also in saint sculptures and wall paintings, which spread called the ‘Transition Period’. Like today it was the serious cubic shapes as in S:t like a reﬂex from the Germanization of Visby. The Lars, S:t Drotten and St. Clement that characteriz- art can geographically in those about thirty years be es the Visby style. S:t Hans and S:t Per in the stile considered to form a whole for the whole island, 233 Tore Gannholm town and country under Visby’s leadership. Gotland’s ﬁrst church building age is over. The second face begins immediately in the Gotland country churches and the monastery in Roma. Gothic architecture is in itself as a style, a jewelry, a lyrical outburst. The material in the walls is eliminated by an optical magic and becomes the transparency in the window frames and tracery. The transparency comes forth in the perspective widening portals, where daring boldness boasts in the steep water roofs. The simplicity was in the top ﬂight spiers. No weight, no care. This dream made inroads in the Gotlandic culture around 1240. Although inspired by the big European Gothic plant sites in France, Germany and England, Gotland became very different from these. Wall dissolution of the French wiry frame work was completely unknown here. Our churches have clean, ﬂat mural surfaces and yet no material weight. It is the color and the light daring surface in the bright plaster, which repeals the mass weight. The church in its whiteness is like wearing light summer clothes. The sacred meaning with the building is completed by the tower. The tower is Jacob’s dream ladder. Gothic towers are always by nature high, but nowhere so ruling as in these country churches (n.b. those who managed to get their tower ﬁnished). In Sweden’s model Gothic Cathedral, Uppsala, is the ratio so that the spire is as high as the church is long. For the Gotlanders apply, as we have seen, another law, which gives the tower such a massive predominance, that the church seems almost like a pagoda, a tower as a symbol of saintliness, but without practical use. In the ﬁrst stage of the Gothic style, Young Gothic, all is not completed, but work is under way in so many places and in such a large scale that one gets the impression that of the meadows in the spring, where suddenly in the new sunshine ﬂowers shoot up everywhere. 234 Yes, in this way Gothic architecture grows in the country. What is done at the same time in the city? In Visby there are no Young Gothic churches! Of course, something has been built in the new style. However, the main impression of the current churches is that they in the 1200s must have been about the same as we now see as ruins. Visby is the city of transitional style. It is the costume that Visby clericalism has chosen and that it keeps. Was it of mood or economics? Both parts! Visby could not and would not in its cold calculation, build another municipal building than a solid wall. A wall facing the sea, but also against the country, and with double graves. How would stone and people be enough for churches, when it came to building a wall 3,440 m in length? It is obvious that Visby’s rearmament meant a force against the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers. The aspiring Germanized merchant city, that laid claim to take over the leadership in the Baltic Sea region, was seriously annoyed by the competition from the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers. Visby looked forward to a rectiﬁed international trade in accordance with practical modern German methods and meant by all means to implement their requirements, and reduce the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers to what suited them, namely the plow and milk bucket. But there was another reason for the city wall. Every Christian riparian owner on the Baltic Sea shores believed themselves in danger for not yet Christianized Estonians, Karelians, etc. peoples. Year 1226 had the papal nuncio Wilhelm of Modena with his own eyes seen, in the open sea, a ship of prisoners from the Swedish coast, robbed by people from Saaremaa. It is at least his own statement. Perhaps it was political propaganda, that so eagerly colored the Holy See, that was working for a ‘crusade’ alliance against the non-Christians in the east Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea and the Orthodox Kievan Rus’? The Germans in Visby as well as the Danes and the Swedes were not averse to the crusade. Repeatedly they seek to attract even the Gotlanders, but they are keen on their neutrality and continue even their trade with the non-Christians. In Karelian soil many Gotlandic ornaments with 1200s decor have been found. Yes, the Gotlanders sold even without inhibition weapons to the non-Christians! All this helps to explain the admirable economy of the country side, which in full measure came to beneﬁt from the ﬁne arts as a whole. Here no money was sacriﬁced on fortiﬁcations. They contented themselves with the ancient defense towers from the 1100s and with a few simple fortiﬁcations at some churches and cemeteries, which are now difﬁcult to observe and are in general from the 1200s. The gothic churches, far from being useful as closed fortresses, in contrary called to the whole world with its wide ingenuous windows and portals: ‘Please come on in!’ What a difference from Öland and Bornholm, that had professionally militarized churches that seemed like giant ships ﬂoating on the Baltic Sea, packed with gun turrets! Also on high risk stretches of the Swedish mainland coast we have these round churches! In his foreign policy liberality, his defense nihilism and his aesthetic orientation, the 1200s Gotlandic country person is like the ﬁnely cultivated Dane from ‘to what use can it be’? What a difference in the way of thinking from the people in Visby! We seem to hear the German council members energetic propaganda for building a city wall, mocking rural residents’ waste by building new, large churches with strange portals. The rural Young Gothic champions are innumerable, their work spread out over the hole of Gotland. As a whole the Young Gothic can not have any limits on the map. Lafrans, the son of the transition time champion Botvid, the only in name known, has his clientele mostly in the northeastern part of Gotland, Bro, Rute and Kräklinge Things, plus a few stray cases in the west and south. He is the decorative talent, magniﬁcent carpentry, resourceful in his portals, sometimes almost textile decorated in stone. His snobbery with the Greek foot in measuring up, shows that he in some way, some time has been the assistant to a Frater Barbatus, although his ornamental way does not match the strict Cistercian taste. He is the best in his last works, e.g. Lau sanctuary, where he enacted its shape under the inﬂuence of Ronensis. The contemporary glass paintings are so beautiful Fig 125. Stånga church. 235 Tore Gannholm gle lumps, also there in reactionary compliance with such from the 1230s, as in Vamlingbo and Dalhem. In his sculptures he can go even deeper back in the art of the paternal island. His Christ mocking in the Stånga facade can be compared with Hegwaldr’s Christ’s capture in the Etelhem font. Egypticus is with one word Gotland’s true son and speaks his Gotlandic language with conviction. He has a remarkable understanding for ancient times, among others it shows in his ability to adjust his own shapes to older periods, e.g. in Stånga, which is a reconstruction of a 160 years old building. Egypticus follows in his portals, to begin with, the schedule of high Gothic. Probably he was a journeyman in Fabulator’s workshop. In the oldest Egypticus’ building, Lye sanctuary, the headbands are in ﬁgure Fabulators’ style, and the glass paintings are on the level with high Gothic. It is Christ’s story in small ﬁgurative fabulations. But the small Contra Gothic, the Gotlandic scale is not suitable for an Egypticus. His plastic fantasy insists upon the cubic ells. He cuts Christ national architectural golden age Contra indicates the contrary. But of course, the or the Mother of God in supernatural size of the time 1325-1370 is not an absolute contrast to the gables on the portals, and plans a huge frieze with Gothic. It is itself Gothic, in some things more Christ’s tortured history and worship of the Magis gothic than high Gothic, e.g. the striving after for Stånga Church (ﬁg. 126). It is the iconic facade height. See the ‘Lang Jakaå’, Rone Church’s bold from Byzantio’s days in ten-fold magniﬁcation. tower. And remember the new rule for the pro- However, even if Egypticus is the Gotlander in portions, which we know from Egypticus! Among front of others, the spark has kindled at the touch the great masses the new era is thus still faithful to of a foreign art skill. All of Europe after High the verticality. It is in the details that the reaction Gothic tend toward drastic realism and heavy earth‘Contra’ is found, namely with the heavy, thick and bound proportions. Has Egypticus had a hand in the English sculptures in Linköping Cathedral, the square instead of the light, crisp and sharp. Master Egypticus is dominating this period with heavy reliefs in the main portal tympanon? Between the most candid expression. He has as distinctive the diocese cathedral and Gotland was of course a feature the windows’ sun benches with a powerful traditional connection. None of his churches is a projecting heavy rain drop and is rounding its inte- fully executed work by him with sanctuary, nave and rior columns fat and strong. It is the proportions tower. Completed are only the two, where Egypof the Transitional style that are coming back. On ticus with a tower or otherwise supplemented an the bases he puts instead of leaves, thick quadran- older building: Rone by Ronensis and Stånga by the that one is astonished to discover that such masterpieces are found in every gothic window from the period. Glass fragments and traces of fasteners in stone cross-bars prove it. In the country churches, built in Gotlandic stones by Gotlandic hands, in the islanders’ own now purely national, explicit simple style, stood in every window the magniﬁcent treasures from afar acquired art skills. The Gotlandic culture tradition has since the Bronze Age incorporated good ideas from outside and made them their own. During the 900s and 1000s there were massive Byzantine inﬂuences from Miklagarðr with the Gotlandic Varangians presence there. It is the rich Merchant Farmer who adorns his Gotlandic girl in wedding dress with a tiara of precious stones. 236 Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea ‘Veck-kapitälmästaren’. His greatest work, the sancturaries and naves in Hablingbo and Grötlingbo have remained unﬁnished. They have for all times had to give up the Gothic in spirit and size to the nave matching tower. And why? After Egypticus the Gotlandic church architecture’s thread of life was cut. After him, nothing, other than a single inner outﬁt. All building plans were broken by Valdemar’s invasion in 1361, whose main result was a thorough devastation and plunder of the Gotlandic countryside, especially to judge from the inscription in Fide in southern Gotland, Egypticus’ ﬁeld of action. The disaster in 1361 has been as crippling to the church building as was the civil war in 1288, only even deeper. When it was possible for the strength to return in the plundered parishes came the result of the creation of the Hanseatic League from 1358 in the Baltic Sea trade. It was strictly monopolistic implemented and accepted no competition from Fig 127. Stånga church. Only in Gotland will you ﬁnd a well-dressed maid accompanying and carrying the luggage for the Holy family to Egypt. Fig 126. Rone church. Calvary group: Christ on the cross ﬂanked by the Virgin and St John, end of 1300s. Carved and gilded tablet on lower end of rood, with the symbol of St Matthew, a winged man. Fig 128. Martebo church. Same motive as on Stånga church 237 Tore Gannholm the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers. It is possible that one of Egypticus’ great works was completed only after 1361, it would be Stånga (ﬁg 125). Its giant sculptures appear in one detail, console and canopy, to be affected by the Swerting chapel in Visby and thus being added after 1350. They were obviously designed for a nave of very great length. After 1361, the company was doomed. Egypticus saved then what could be saved by a compromise. The old church from the Cisterciensian time had its arches raised, and the already ﬁnished sculptures of the portal and huge friezes were cemented in, as much as possible, on the south front. Egypticus’ area of concentration is the very southern part, the country of the mighty gray-green sandstone blocks. Other relevant things spread far and wide, but it is clear that the emphasis now lies to the south. It is noteworthy that the most important of the following period wooden sculptures and paintings also belong to the South. See e.g. Rone cruciﬁx. Cultural background Gotland’s medieval mural painting As seeen above, on the painting area, Gotland holds since old times its own position as a home for high quality art. Often the paintings join closely and admirably, complementary to the architecture, and the character is always here and seems to distinguish the Gotlandic art. It makes the study of painting an important part of the Gotlandic art research. In the older ferment of the Gotlandic stone church painting stand the paintings in Vamlingbo, where the 1200s arch ornaments are perhaps partly performed by the architect-sculptors themselves. The ﬁgure compositions in Klinte church chapel vault, as well as the paintings in the Heiliger Geist Hos- 238 pital in Lübeck, with related apostles in Lärbro, are the most important. The Gotlandic painting afﬁnity with Swedish and Baltic painting from about 1300, with Strängnäs paintings type, is shown by the beautiful vault paintings in Sanda. The 1300s take us otherwise to meet the paintings of the Dalhem Master in Dalhem and Lojsta and in the extensive, from separate times deriving decorations in Bunge. Of great interest is also the painted sacrament cabinets, painted in several churches, and those from a ruined chapel chair derived painted boards in Kräklingbo? The 1400s artistically most remarkable paintings include the magniﬁcent apostle suit in Othem. The passion paintings belong to the characteristic features of a Gotlandic country church interior. Recent years church restorations have greatly increased the number of monuments. Individual suites have apparently never been covered with lime and have been portrayed by ancient antiquarian travel writers, such as Wallin, Hilfeling and Ekdahl. In Fide church on southern Gotland, in the triumphal arch, there is left a small free from plaster surface, on which is applied a painting, depicting Christ as Man of Sorrows, a thin wavering ﬁgure in front of the cross. Above the picture is a renowned and multi-featured inscription: Edes succense gens cesa dolens ruit ense. It is a chronograph which itself conceals the year 1361, the year of Valdemar Atterdags war expedition to Gotland. This, in all its poverty radical painting with the taciturn inscription, gives an irresistible fatal mood. It can be said to be the prelude to the late medieval art on Gotland. It can stand as an illustration to Roosvals congenial characterization of the Gotlandic art of the time of Engelbrecht: ... an air of piety and proletarian ... The suffering Savior wept in hopeless bitterness, and this enclosed in servalistic rigid angular face and friendly bodies .... Either the inscription of Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea this painting is the year it says or is to be placed a generation later. This Misericordie picture with its pathetic mood of sorrow and distress, of intensely experienced passion time, stands as a beginning entrance to the following representation. The ending of the 1300s and Gotland’s 1400s art had to contend with great difﬁculties. Its subject matter is branded with the country’s political and economic powerlessness. The free and powerful Merchant Farmer class, who were carriers of the earlier Byzantine art, and the magniﬁcent art culture of the High Middle Ages, had already for a century been competed out of the Baltic Sea large trade through the city of Visby, and later North Germany’s powerful trading groups. The beginning to the end of the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic’s free trade could already be set at the civil war between city and country in 1288. The last crushing blow fell with the Back Death and Valdemar Atterdags expedition in 1361. The events of this fateful year must, however, not be overstated. The importance and need to restrain to deeper causes for the fall of the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers culture is not directly related to the Valdemar campaign but farther back in time. However, it is undeniable that 1361 forms a border line in the Gotlandic cultural history. After 1361 ceases the big church building companies on the Gotlandic countryside, and the former 1300s high level sculpture workshops such as the Vamlingbo Master and Ala Master as well. Only through the Bäl Master’s strong rural-related art is the domestic development brought forward. Even Visby, that was victorious over the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic in 1288, had in the early 1300s seen its better days. Its dominant position among the Baltic Sea region cities weakens. It is pushed more and more in the background through the formation of the Hanseatic League in 1358, and must give up hegemony in the Baltic Sea region to the rapidly growing Lübeck. This is not only in the economic and political ﬁeld but also within the world of art. Previously the decline was directly related to the Valdemar campaign. Legends tell of ransom and looting. The excavations in Korsbetningen and the resultant new studies of the history of the Valdemar campaign clearly shows that the city was not affected by the disaster. Visby only payed the stipulated ransom not to be looted and immediately got its trading privilages conﬁrmed, including the whole of Denmark. The real devastating effects hit the countryside that had to bear the brunt. In the mass graves at Korsbetningen rest mainly Gotlandic peasant warriors. It is the Gotlandic country people who have fought their last battle, not the Visby citizens. It is also clear that Visby after 1361 still enjoyed some wealth and still was able to ﬁnance the construction of larger building projects. However, precarious times during the wars between King Albrecht and Queen Margaret, with supporting pirate empires on the sea, could not have failed to inhibit Gotland. In the late 1300s the splendid reconstruction of S:ta Karin’s choir was completed and its new choir chairs were inaugurated in 1408. Around 1400 also S:t Nicolai had a new hansom choir and slightly later, the rebuilding of S:ta Maria’s east tower was ﬁnished. All this is entirely in a rich and beautiful Gothic, which at this time was only surpassed by a building in Sweden, the new choir in the cathedral in Linköping. There is hardly nothing preserved of art from the Visby churches. It thus eludes us our present knowledge, which signiﬁcance the late medieval Visby art may have had for the countryside. Even stronger than previously has, generally towards the end of the Middle Ages, art practice been focused on cities. However, the special situation on Gotland suggests 239 Tore Gannholm that some rural dependence of the city need not necessarily be assumed. Gotland’s countryside has often before been able to come in contact with foreign art centers without Visby mediation. Dissension between the political power groups and plagued by battles and sieges is Visby during the 1400s more and more withdrawn. Erik of Pomerania built his pirate nest, the fort Visborg, which becomes in the Danish mortgage lords, Axelsönerna, a tyrant’s castle. It depresses the burghers to completely depend on the master of the castle, during which likewise all the country is tributary. The bad times have come in earnest. Gone is the Merchant Farmer’s free merchandise trading, or he is at least leading a languishing time. Already now we encounter the Gotlandic farmer of modern times type, assigned to other, less lucrative trades: masonry, tar and coal burning, ﬁshing, and a reluctant and primitive carried on agriculture. But the remarkable and historic interesting thing is to ﬁnd how Gotland’s folk still during this difﬁcult time maintain their independence in many respects. They appear as a political entity and holds in the 1400s still their old famous trading Emporium in Novgorod, Gutagård, that now does not give other income than its rent. The country’s main center is still Gutna Althingi in Roma, the seat of its jurisdiction. In the Gotlandic art one may almost have to go back to the 1100s, to ‘the wild style’ champion, Hegwaldr, to ﬁnd a counterpart to this indifference to beauty of form before the need for expressive power. In times of trial a people sticks together around its national traditions. In Gotland of the 1400s appears really a national archaic feature. Ornamental and ﬁgurative style join often with older designs, and several direct copies of ancient works of art can be demonstrated. More visual and truer can not the Gotlandic mental quality in the 1400s art be interpreted. 240 The expansion of Christianity, the Crusades On July 11, 1930 they took down the old spire on Källunge church to be replaced by a new one. It was found then that the old weathervane was too rusty and broken to be put back up and was therefore sent to a coppersmith in Visby for obtaining new hinges. It was here that Professor Johnny Roosval got knowledge of the discovery, and it soon became known that the vane from Källunge was an art historical sensation, whose single counterpart in Sweden was the famous vane from Söderala in Hälsingland. According to Roosval the vane should be from the early 1000s, and originally it would have been used as commander’s ﬂag on a warship, an article of kit, which at the mobilization of Gotlands naval forces in the 1000s would be retrieved from its storage room in what might be called ‘roll marketing area church’. The gilded copper vane, now kept in a booth in Källunge church, is richly decorated with ornaments in the so-called Ringrike style. A wind- Fig 129. Weathervane in Ringrike style, early 1000s. Källunge church. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 130. The seven ‘Ledungs’ ships. Since the Gotlanders acquired bishop and priests, and completely embraced Christianity, they also had to join the crusades and follow the Swedish king in raids with seven ships against non-Christian countries, but not against Christians. Painting by Erik Olsson. ing dragon is enmeshed in ingenious ornaments of snakes. On the opposite side is fought a battle between a lion and a snake, perhaps symbolizing the struggle of good against evil. The surrounding palmette vine shows the artist’s contact with Christian art. The vane is crowned by a lion in free sculpture, among others a symbol of the victorious Christ. During the ﬁrst centuries of the Middle Ages the history of Northern Europe was characterized by the crusades against the Baltic Sea coastal countries in South and East. These areas were inhabited by none-Christian tribes consisting of Slavic, Baltic and Finnish peoples. The Roman Catholic Church declared that the conquest of these countries had the same meaning as the Crusades to the Holy Land. The ofﬁcial starting point for the Northern Crusades was Pope Celestine III’s call in 1193. The east Baltic world was transformed by military conquest: ﬁrst the Livs, Latgallians and Estonians, then the Semigallians, Curonians, Prussians and the Finns underwent defeat, baptism, military occupation and sometimes extermination by groups of Danes, Germans and Swedes. The Danish king Valdemar I had in 1168 conquered Mecklenburg and Pomerania with Rügen lying between the Elbe and Oder and the Wends were Christianized. Saxony was interested in the same areas and in the long run, it was they who retired with victory and a number of large cities grew up there. The Germans also came to Prussia, Courland and Livonia. The river Daugava has been a trade route since antiquity, and was part of the Viking Age Gotlandic Daugava-Dnieper navigation route to Miklagarðr. A 241 Tore Gannholm sheltered natural harbour 15 km upriver from the mouth of the Daugava, the site of today’s Riga, has been recorded, as Duna Urbs as early as the 100s. The area was settled by the Livonians. Along with German traders from Westphalia arrived also the monk Meinhard of Segeberg in 1186, in order to convert the non-Christians to Pope Christianity. Pope Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christianity had already been spread in Latvia more than a century earlier, and many Latvians were baptised. Meinhard settled among the Livonians and built a castle and church at Ikškile, upstream from Riga, and established his bishopric there. The Livonians, however, continued to practice their own religions. Meinhard died in Ikškile in 1196, having failed in his mission. In 1198 the Bishop Bertold arrived with a contingent of crusaders and commenced a campaign of forced Christianization. Bertold was killed soon afterwards and his forces defeated. The Church mobilized to avenge. Pope Innocent III issued a bull declaring a crusade against the Livonians. Bishop Albert was proclaimed Bishop of Livonia, by his uncle Hartwig of Uthlede Prince-Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg, in 1199. Albert landed in Riga in 1200 with 23 ships and 500 Westphalian crusaders. In 1201 he founded Riga together with Gotlandic Merchant Farmers and transferred the seat of the Livonian bishopric from Ikškile to Riga, extorting agreement to do so from the elders of Riga by force. There were several Danish crusades against the Baltic coast in the east. By 1219 was the most northern part of Estonia conquered. This was done in collaboration with the Germans in Livonia. North of the Gulf of Finland the Swedes pulled forward through Finland to Karelia. They were met from the east by the Greek Orthodox Novgorod. The Gotlanders seem to have maintained the old relations all the time. They now found a new ex- 242 port item, baptismal fonts which can be found all around the Baltic Sea. Even gravestones were exported. Behind the efforts of the spread of Christianity was economic and power politics. From Estonia, Denmark dominated the Gulf of Finland. King Valdemar and archbishop Andreas Sunesen served his subjects well when they undertook the crusade in 1219. Lübeck celebrated Valdemar Sejr as its overlord in 1203 until 1225. In a number of Danish cities had earlier been founded fraternities of merchants, whose members traded on Novgorod from a ﬁxed commercial yard in Visby. Valdemar Sejr had given these organizations, St Canute guilds, special privileges. Swedish kings searched as late as Magnus Eriksson in the mid 1300s to gain dominion over the River Neva, which navigable channel went to Lake Ladoga and further over Wolchow to Novgorod at lake Ilmen. The Swedes and Novgordians fought for a century over this hub. The Germans in Riga controlled the second river route to Kiev and Miklagarðr, the route over the river Daugava to the springs of the river Dnieper, where Smolensk was the main marketplace. Gotland’s importance still at that time as a center, probably the most important, can statistically also be demonstrated by its huge exports of baptismal fonts. Within the Baltic Sea region Gotland dominated artistic movements, even in the late 1200s. Gotland’s own need for baptismal fonts was now satisﬁed, therefore very little of the new baptismal fonts in young gothic style can be found on Gotland. Gotlandic baptismal fonts of this new style on the other hand are to be found everywhere in countries around the Baltic Sea region. During the 1100s the Gotlanders used sandstone from the south of the island, then limestone. More than a thousand Gotlandic fonts went in the 1200s and 1300s on export to Scandinavia and Northern Europe. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Gotland and the future Hanseatic towns It is commonly believed that Gotland and Visby ﬂourished thanks to the Hanseatic League. The truth is very much the opposite. Visby was never a member of the Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League was the reason for Gotland’s decline. For over a hundred years the Germans sailed under Gotlandic ﬂag and used Gotlandic trade treaties. After their arrival in the Baltic Sea region it took 200 years before the foundation of the monopolistic Hanseatic League in 1358, which deﬁnitely put a stop to the Gotlanders former trade dominance. First appearance of the Hanseatic League in Visby was a surprise attack on the city in 1525 when part of Visby was burnt down (ﬁg 140). ‘Hanse’ is an old Germanic word that originally signiﬁed an armed group. Merchants from Cologne appeared in early 1100s in Flanders and England in such types of ‘Hansas’ to protect themself from assault and harassment during their commercial travelling and when on foreign sites. On Gotland and in the Baltic Sea region the word ‘Hanse’ does not occur in the 1100s and 1200s because there was a resident German population obeying to Gotlandic law. The Gotlandic merchants were called Varangians when they traveled on the Russian rivers and served in the Byzantine emperors guard in Miklagarðr. There are no traces of a Merchant Hanse in Visby. Visby was, however, one of the participant founders of the embryo of the Hanseatic League in 1356 but did not join and take part in the ﬁrst Hanse-day in Lübeck 1358. Lübeck, however, took for granted that Visby wanted to be a member. On the Hanseday in Lübeck 1364 where Visby was not represented they stated that the merchants in Visby belonged to the German Hanseatic League. On the Hanseday in Cologne in 1367 representatives from Vis- by said that they would not like to be forced to be connected to the Hanseatic League, but as before they would like to determine their own trade. Their request was accepted. The Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ trading on the Russian rivers during the Viking Age seem to have joined together in organizations sworn to support each other and share the proﬁts. They called themselves ‘Varangians’ from ‘var,’ solemn pledge. They were also mercenaries enrolled by the Khazarian Khagan, the Kievan Rus’ princes and the emperor in Miklagarðr. In 988 Basil II formed a body guard of Gotlandic Varangians. Alongside the German merchants who appeared as guests in Visby a numerous group of resident Germans gradually settled in Visby. These took eventually the decisive inﬂuence in Gotlandsfararesällskapet (an association of German merchants travelling to Visby). Its main seal with which documents for the German merchants’ common interests should be sealed was kept in Visby. This seal was abolished in 1298 after which only the seal of the Germans living in Visby was to be used. Other conditions pulled the development in the same direction. At the end of the 1200s the whole of the Baltic Sea region’s south-east coast was in German, Danish and Swedish hands and merchant ships from Lübeck could safely follow the coast on their way to Novgorod. The old route, where Gotland had been a vital staging point was no longer necessary to use. In addition, they now used better ships and navigation. Lübeckian ‘Cogs’ sailed in an increasing number directly to Novgorod. Gotland became superﬂuous as an intermediate point. The trade center shifted increasingly from Visby to Lübeck. However, in 1323 Visby was still in full control of the Novgorod trade. At the peace negotiations between Sweden and Novgorod this year two Visby representatives, a Gotlandic and a German, 243 Tore Gannholm Fig 131. Visby - Regina Maris, the Queen of the Sea. Painting by Erik Olsson. The oldest tower in the wall is the Lambets tower at the north end of the medieval harbour, current Almedalen, now called Kruttornet with the small harbor exit. Lambets tower was in Latin called Turris lambitus, which means that of the water licked Tower, beach tower. Here the ships left the harbour. Into the harbor they came at Turris ﬂuviatilis which means the river tower at the southern entrance. This information comes from a ship sailing instruction from the 1400s in Hanseatische Archiv in Lübeck. looked after the interests for the transit harbour Visby, and for the immediate future secured their merchants free Neva passage. To get an idea of what goods were shipped from and to Visby we can refer to the pound duty accounts. According to professor Hugo Yrwing, ‘Gotlands medeltid’ p. 145: “1368 was imported to Lübeck from Gotland butter, iron, copper, oil, skins of various types, including salted and cut hides, furs and skins such as ermine-, sheep-, goat- and hareskin, unspeciﬁed skin bales, tanned leather, tallow, wax, chalk, limestone, millstones, meat, fat, ﬂax, herring, ﬁsh, tar, honey and nuts. The exports from Lübeck to Gotland was not very versatile. It consisted in particular of honey, cloth of various kinds, such as English broadcloth and Poperinge cloth, silk, linen, salt, pepper, beer and wine. The list includes also casks without detailed information and shopkeep- 244 ers’ goods without speciﬁcation. Iron, copper, hides, furs, skins, fur bales and wax are transit goods, partly with the exception of hides and skins. In addition to Stockholm, Visby was the principal transit place for the Swedish copper and Swedish iron.” The following is a letter of the same wording from the cities of Zwolle and Kampen to Lübeck without year: “Lübeck has announced the cities, ....... that it is neither permissible for the Frisians and Flemings to sail across the Baltic Sea to Gotland, as so far the old law has allowed, or that in the future might not be allowed Gotlanders to visit the Western sea, such as those under the old law already for a long time have done. “ In this quotation, the Hanseatic League’s complete takeover of supremacy in the Baltic Sea region comes to the expression. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Magnus Ladulås’ involvement in Gotland Magnus Ladulås is the ﬁrst of the Swedish medieval rulers, who according to the sources more actively intervened in the history of Gotland. At his coronation in 1276 he granted the Gotlandic merchants (‘consules, seniores et universitas tam Theuthonicae quam Guthensis, Gutland inhabitantes’) considerable beneﬁts. Magnus Ladulås decided to establish a new agreement with the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic to stabilize conditions in the Baltic Sea region. The times had greatly changed since the ﬁrst trade and defense agreement from the 550s with the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic was signed. He accordingly extended the very old trade agreement with the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic, which contained free trading rights in the areas ruled by the Svear, and exempt from having to pay duty on export of necessities of life. In addition they were at protracted visits to the Swedish cities liberated to pay some local taxes. These beneﬁts had certainly an interdependent application, but they came naturally the merchants from Gotland more to beneﬁt than their Swedish colleagues. (See Trade agreement mentioned in Guta Saga). Immediately after Magnus deposed his brother Valdemar from the throne in 1275, he began to forge political and economic relations even with Lübeck, Riga and other German cities. He acted as a mediator on several occasions including a conﬂict between Norway and the Wendish cities including Germans in Visby and Riga, as in the Civil War on Gotland 1288. It is interesting to note that trade in Stockholm in the 1250s seems to have been built up by merchants from Visby. During the ﬁrst centuries of Stockholm’s existence, it is mainly Visby families who manage trading in Stockholm. Visby under the cover of Guthna Althingi was a major power in northern Europe and it was necessary to have its favor. However, Visby’s authoritative German part of burgers pursued their own policy. So, e.g., concluded they in 1280 a 10 year alliance with Lübeck in order to protect shipping in the Baltic Sea region. Magnus Ladulås decided in 1285 to seek a new settlement of Sweden’s agreements and treaties with Gotland, in particular its ‘Ledungs’ obligations i.e. its participation in crusades which were related to Gotland’s duties as member of the Christian community, on which the provisions hitherto had been not too clear. In the late 1200s the old ‘Ledungs’ order lost its practical signiﬁcance. The ‘Ledungs’ obligation, which the Gotlanders had committed themselves to can not be considered as an inclusion of Gotland in the Swedish ‘Ledungs’ system. It is rather a partial ‘Ledungs’ duty against the Swedish kingdom intended to spread Pope Christianity among the non-Pope Christian peoples, i.e. a duty to support crusades. This duty for crusades by the Gotlanders has been entirely dependent on their will. It was not unconditional, but could be discharged by personal ‘Ledungs’ duty or the payment of the stipulated ‘Ledungslame’ in accordance with what they themselves decided at Gutna Althingi. The Swedish King now preferred money as Ledungslame, so he could equip his forces himself. The two envoys Anund Haraldsson and the Uppsalian arch-deacon John Oduphi, that Magnus sent to Gotland, reached a new agreement. This new agreement is conﬁrmed in a letter from King Magnus dated 7 October 1285. There is announced the reorganization that the Swedish king no longer has to provide advance warning for ‘Ledungslame’, but it is now paid every year. The letter conﬁrms the rest of the old agreement as Guta Saga has recounted. King Magnus saw the partly German Visby’s quest 245 Tore Gannholm Fig 132. Regina Maris Visby city wall - East side moat with the Dalman’s Gate. The wall around Visby was built in two phases. The ﬁrst low wall, which was crenelated, equipped with portholes, and without the great towers, was built in the 1230s until the mid-century. Visby’s power grew and the relationship became strained between the merchants in the City and the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers, which led to strife in 1288. Up to the year 1299 they built on the wall, so it became higher, and now came even the towers. Visby was in the 1200s the Baltic Sea region's largest and richest city. Painting by Erik Olsson to free itself from the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic. He has cleverly exploited Visby citizens’ situation. They could not break with both the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and the Swedish king, in case they should manage to free themselves from the Gotlandic community, while maintaining and expanding the trade they had. Therefore, they had to prove and humble themselves against the Swedish king and to accept his demands. Gotland was in the focal point of internal Swedish policy and Baltic Sea region policy. Sweden already had Finland and only ﬁve years after the Gotlandic civil war Sweden started its crusade against Novgorod led by Torgils Knutsson of Aranäs, regent for the underage king Birger. The Republic 246 of Novgorod had attacked Tavastland in 1292 and marshal Torkel led the third Swedish crusade against Novgorod in 1293 and conquered parts of Karelia, where he founded the stronghold of Viborg. Until the Civil War in 1288 the Gutna Althingi was the highest authority for the whole of Gotland and subject to none but were equal partner in the agreements and treaties with other countries. Since the treaty with the Swedish King said that he would protect the Gotlanders if they asked for help, he therefore was asked to mediate in the conﬂict. After Visby broke away from the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic they created their own alliances, which they had already done by associating themselves with the Wendish City League, and Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Gotland’s position in the Nordic countries was thus changing character. Within the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic the prosperity eventually deminishes, what we later clearly see in the decline in church building. Many churches could not be ﬁnished, but were in the second half of the 1300s ﬁnished in simpler ways, what we today can see many signs from. Lau church is such a case. Even after Valdemar Atterdag’s attack on Gotland in 1361, Magnus Eriksson’s City Law states that merchants from Gotland, in principle, enjoy previously obtained trading privileges in Sweden. The civil war and the brake away of Visby The 1280s was a turbulent decade on Gotland. The antagonism between the countryside and the increasingly expanding city with its many foreign residents was increasing. Among other things the Visby burghers wanted to force the rural merchants to pay high tariffs and new charges to use the Visby harbour. At the same time they erected and completed the city wall towards the land side, which the people in the countryside rightly or wrongly considered as a threat. Visby had by this time become a power in northern Europe. The Visby Germans signed in 1280 a 10 year alliance with Lübeck to the common interest for protection of the vital shipping in the Baltic Sea region. They were quite independent in their political conduct towards the Gotlandic Merchant Farmer’s Republic. They were for 10 years afﬁliated with a federation of German cities, which in the 1280s waged war with Norway’s King Eric. The coutryside felt itself more and more displaced, and when they were prevented to send an embas- sy to the Swedish king, civil war was unavoidable. Both parties sought help from elsewhere. The rural people had help from the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic States, where they had long and good trade relations, while the Visby burghers sought help from the German seaside towns Lübeck, Rostock, Wismar, etc. In spring 1288, a battle took place at Högbro in Halla. Rural troops, who apparently were inferior equipped, suffered several defeats. The clergy in both the countryside and in Visby tried to mediate peace, but without success. In this situation, the Swedish king intervened as a mediator. In August 1288 the Visby burghers were called to Nyköping and were there forced to make peace with the country population. The king felt that they acted willfully when they had built the high, well-fortiﬁed wall. They had to pay heavy ﬁnes. The old peace and trade agreement earlier mentioned had been renewed in 1285 and king Magnus was committed to help the Gotlanders if they asked for help. The fact that it was a civil war complicated matters. Thus Magnus Ladulås was in a difﬁcult situation. Gotland, and its unique island society, went through an internal conﬂict that had ended in a bloody civil war between the Visby burghers and the rural population. No one wins and ﬁghting between city and country ceases through mediation by Magnus Ladulås. However, it does not seem as if this short-lived civil war to an appreciable extent has affected Gotland’s economic and cultural status. For the rural areas the agreement must instead have meant a newfound security. They had been assured that they would not have to fare unexpected attacks. The often observed stagnation in connection with the internal friction appears to be excessive. Construction activities may, e.g. hardly have slowed signiﬁcantly by this relatively small feud. In fact, Gotland is in a relatively calm political stage at the end of the 1200s. 247 Tore Gannholm To be the nearest neighbor, and the owner of the Visby dominated trading in Stockholm, and to protect the division of Gotland, the Swedish king prescribed conditions for Visby. This brought the free City Republic Visby into the realms of the Swedish king. Gotland now has two republics, the ancient Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic, and the City Republic dominated by the German-speaking part of the city with Low German and Gotlandic as ofﬁcial languages. Each republic has its administration and its foreign policy. Visby thus came under the direct patronage of the King of Sweden and increased its cooperation with other German cities, which participated in the lucrative East-West trade. No change is however taking place in the relationship between the autonomous Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic and the Swedish kingdom. To achieve the status of a free trading city, directly under the Swedish king’s patronage, Visby’s citizens had to subject themselves to various obligations. If the city broke its obligations, they had the obligation to pay substantial monetary ﬁnes. In return, they received very extensive trading privileges, which certainly was of beneﬁt to Magnus Ladulås in the development of the commerce in the Svea kingdom and for the Visby burghers in the newly founded Stockholm. As the Swedes, through the fortress of Viborg, came to control trafﬁc on the Neva, Visby had through its contacts with the Swedes safeguarded trade with Novgorod. Visby’s political position was now comparable to the one that Lübeck had. One could say that it was a free city, directly under the Swedish king with certain speciﬁed obligations to him like those Lübeck had to the Holy Roman Emperor. It would take until 1973 before Visby came back as a part of Gotland, than in the shape of the Municipality of Gotland. An epoch in the history of Gotland is thereafter ended (note 40). 248 Swedish invasion attempt In 1313 the Swedish King Birger tried to interfere in the Gotlandic Farmers’ Republic’s internal affairs by an attack on the country, apparently attracted by Gotland’s riches. He was captured on Röcklinge backar in Lärbro after loosing the battle. The legend says that the Swedish king hid in a hazel bush, which was later called ‘the King’s hazel’. He was soon discovered and pulled out of his hiding place. The farmers wanted immediately to kill him, but a man from Hejnum averted them from doing so and said that the king’s powerful friends surely would cruelly avenge his death. This was Birger’s rescue. The peasant who saved Birger’s life was by the grateful king knighted. His farm in Hejnum is to this day called Riddare (Knight). A monument has been erected over the incident. The Erik’s Chronicle, which also speaks of Birger’s defeat, declares that after this setback: “the king returned home and got no more tribute from them.” However Olaus Petri mentions in his chronicle, that Birger entered into an agreement same year with the Gotlandic Farmers’ Republic and the City of Visby, where they together would raise the annual tribute to 200 mark silver, which sum, however, in 1320 by the new king’s guardians was reduced to the old amount. It seems odd that the king despite his defeat achieved this success. One explanation may be that the king for the deal had the support of the burghers in Visby. At that time he granted them the right for non-prohibited goods (as contraband was counted weapons, iron and steel) to travel through the Neva to Novgorod. It was an important concession, as since the Marshal Tyrgils Knutsson 1293 conquered part of Karelia, and begun construction of Vyborg fortress, trafﬁc on the river Neva had at times been subject to blockade. It was war between Sweden and Novgorod until the peace in Nöteborg 1323. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 133. ‘Kraup fram din rackare!’ (Come out you rascal!) The Swedish king Birger Magnusson needed money and he wanted to raise the tribute of 60 marks silver which the Gotlanders willingly had paid for several hundred years for free trade in Sweden and protection and assistance. When the Gotlanders refused to pay the increased tribute, the Swedish King came in1313 to Gotland with his ﬂeet and landed in Slite, to chastise the stubborn Gotlanders. A battle took place on Röcklinge backe in Lärbro. The Northern Gotlanders were led by their chiefs from Duss in Bro and Angelbos in Lärbro. The Swedish army was beaten. King Birger hid under a hazel bush, but was found and the butcher from Vallstena shouted: ‘Kraup fram din rackare!’ Painting by Erik Olsson According to a papal letter from 1229 the Gotlanders of age sold weapons, horses, ships, and food to the non-Christian peoples around the interior of the Gulf of Finland and along the road to Novgorod. These weapons were used against Christian Finlanders, why the pope asked that this trade would be banned. Birger Magnusson was also later connected with Gotland. He had in a deceitful way imprisoned his brothers at ‘The Nyköping Banquet’, and by this evoked an overwhelming insurgency movement in Sweden. He was forced to ﬂee in the spring of 1318 to Gotland. In November of that year a truce was signed which among other things stipulated that Birger and his family had the right to stay on Gotland, provided the inhabitants on Gotland allowed it. In 1322 Visby had its privileges in Sweden conﬁrmed, and any conﬂict between the urban republic of Visby and the Swedish king was so settled. To this was added the new privilege that the Visby merchants, free of duty, would enter herring in Swedish harbours, if they were accompanied with relevant documents. During the reign of Magnus Eriksson the relationship between Gotland, Visby and Sweden has been 249 Tore Gannholm smooth. Since Gotland was an independent republic the King of Sweden could not introduce his new national law there (note 41). Nor could he subject Visby to the Swedish City Act. Instead Magnus solemnly conﬁrmed the new city law in Visby, which they had worked out. In this regard he sought to defend the Visby Gotlandic burghers’ interests by proposing that the city law not only would have a German text, but also one of the country’s tongue. Similarly, it was suggested that each of the city’s ‘two tongues’ would have its own seal. However, probably none of the king’s proposals seem to have been heeded. Visby remained one of Germans almost completely dominated city. The country side lived its own rather secluded life in happy ignorance of the dangers which threatened their freedom and prosperity. Gotland’s time as a Great Power is over During the 1200s the terms for the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers changed in several ways. The more deep going ships came in early 1200s. This meant that the shallow wharves were abandoned or lost its meaning. There was also an economic structural change at this time. Trading was concentrated to places where resistant store buildings and bridges of the new design, which satisﬁed the requirements for the mooring of vessels deep within the walls and ramparts, were the characteristics of the basic elements. Visby is such an example. More and more of the Gotlandic trade was concentrated to the rapidly growing Visby. At the same time Germans appeared more superior competitors to the Gotlanders on trade routes in northern Europe. Already at the end 250 of the 1200s, therefore Gotland and then also Visby’s importance has been reduced by moving the focal point out of the Baltic Sea region, from Gotland to the northern German cities with Lübeck in the lead. The guild organizations loses its meaning during the 1200s. As a result the leading traders can now stay at home in their hometowns and exercise their power through their own Council institutions. Meanwhile the Skanör market becomes increasingly more important, and dynamic new towns are springing up around the Baltic Sea region, such as Tallinn, Riga, Danzig, and Stockholm. In 1286 for the ﬁrst time a schooner is sailing past Visby. It will be a great uproar, but it is a sign of what is happening. For Gotland this means that the trade routes are increasingly passing the island by. In order to protect peace and security in the Baltic Sea region, Lübeck signed in the middle of the 1200s, a number of agreements with other trading cities (‘Civitate maritimae’). The trade organization then becomes a federation of cities with varied composition, where Lübeck at the beginning of the 1300s competes with Visby for the management of the Novgorod Trade. Gotland had no attractive single market or raw material resources that attracted to exploitation. Gotland’s importance had in the 1200s and 1300s been based on the status as inter-Nordic trading center. The Gotlandic harbours found themselves by degrees in an economic and political backwater. The events in 1288, when Visby broke out of the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic, destroyed all the prerequisites, for the long run, for Gotlandic remote trading. We meet, however, still in the ﬁrst half century of the 1300s, Gotlandic Merchant Farmers active on their old markets. Also Visby’s real heyday was over, but the city continued to ﬂourish as a local trade superpower. The Maritime citys’ trade developed into real city unions. City councils were ﬂexible organizations with vary- Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea ing goals and membership. After a period of crisis in the early 1300s an attempt was made to a more rational and permanent grouping of cities. They divided the northern European market in three areas, a Lübeckian-Saxon, a Westphalian-Prussian and a Gotlandic-Livonian, the latter with Visby as its leader. The grouping was to some extent done to counteract Lübeck’s increasingly dominant inﬂuence. It was accomplished in the 1340s, and although Visby later declined to become a member of the Hanseatic League the Gotlandic-Livonian drittel had permanence even after the Hanseatic League was formed in 1358. In a letter to Tallinn, year 1388, Visby was still called the leader of ‘our third’ by the trading house in Stockholm. When Stockholm became a city around 1252, it was Visby merchants who formed the core, why it must have been a close relationship between these two cities. Stockholm has probably been a Gotlandic venue much earlier, as the defense tower, which later was called Three Crowns (Tre kronor), dated to the 1100s, is very similar to Kruttornet in Visby. Visby was still in the late 1300s more important to Stockholm than Lübeck. Documents from the 1300s give an unambiguous picture of Visby as a rich and thriving market town with extensive connections in both East and West. Even the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ trade continued after Lübeck had broken the Gotlandic domination in the Baltic Sea region, but the Gotlanders became constantly more and more repressed by the German merchants. Then follows the carnage in Visby in 1342, when more than ten of the city’s leading men, including two city mayors, lose their heads on the town square, probably the Roland Square. When Magnus Eriksson came of age, he seems to have been able to persuade the Visby mayors Herman Swerting and Johannes Moop to pay ledungslame, without the consent of the burghers and without Magnus right to demand such. It seems to have occurred while the Swedish king was in conﬂict with some German cities. He had imprisoned German merchants and conﬁscated their goods. The mayors had come in an awkward conﬂict of interest, and apparently been considered to have acted both wilfully and illegal in a position where consideration should have been taken to the king’s conduct towards the city merchants. The upheaval caused a difﬁcult economic setback for Visby. This was partly by the capital ﬂight that followed by several of the executed families, who left the city, partly by the loss of initiative. Leading men would instead devote their services to other commercial cities. It can be regarded as something of an irony that later the mayor of Lübeck, James Pleskov, who gathers the ﬁrst embryo Hanse Day in Lübeck in 1356, was born in Visby and the son of one of the executed councilors. As mentioned above the Hanse Day in 1358 in Lübeck marks the ofﬁcial formation of the Hanseatic League. Before that date the word Hanse does not appear in the Baltic Sea. Visby did not become a member of the Hanseatic League and never took part in its dealings. The carnage in 1342 marks the beginning of Visby’s decline. The decline in population thus leads to the result that the city during its medieval continuation preserves the look that it had during the 1200s. Therefore also the majority of the surviving medieval buildings are dated just from this century. At Lutterhorn on the west coast of Fårö is a small, of shingle banks cut off lagoon which is called Gamlehamn, the Old Harbour. The two or three feet deep lagoon is the inner part of a well-protected water arm that still during the early Middle Ages opened up against the Lutterhorn bay. Geologists presume that it was dammed up by any of the storm surges that in the 1300s scourged the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts. Thus, it is 600 years since ships 251 Tore Gannholm Fig 134. The night between 24 and 25 February (the evangelist Matthew’s night) in 1302 broke such a storm out that the ships in Västergarn were washed up on the shore and destroyed. Gamle hamn on Fårö may have sludged up at this time. It is said also that the island of Rügen was submerged at the same time. Erik Olsson has drawn the two churches and Västerhuse Castle that probably was demolished in the 1490s by the feudal lord Jens Holgersson Ulvstand and used in the construction of Glimmingehus in Skåne. It is interesting to note that the carved stones of Glimmingehus keeps the Gotlandic measurement, 55.3 to 55.4 cm, which is considerably shorter than the Danish, which was 66.77 cm and after which the house was built. drifted in and out through the narrow entrance, but they have left traces. On top of the gravel beach around the harbour’s inner part extends a layer of sand, which is a remnant of uncounted hectolitres of ballast, unloaded from the ships before they had taken new load at the piers. From them remain just a lot of rocks, and about the cargos that were taken ashore, we know just that among other goods also were roof- and wall-bricks and clay jugs of that all over northern Europe spread brand of the Middle Ages that made the Rhein city Siegburg famous. Such shards have been found on the beach. And close to the harbor are the remains of a building 252 that completes the image of the deserted medieval loading place, St. Äulas (Olaf) church. There are low foundations of a chancel and a nave, which probably supported a fairly modest wooden building. Inside a collapsed churchyard wall are some graves with cists of older Medieval type. Surely it is foreign traders who have been laid to their last resting-place on a distant shore. The secluded bay of Lutterhorn has easily understandable left no traces in the annals. Västergarn, on the other hand, the medieval Garnahamn, enjoys great reputation in legend and history. There was a large rural harbour with predecessors from ancient Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea times, and there has been with trade connected buildings and substantial defenses. The small church does not look like much, but it is also just the choir to a large facility that was not ﬁnished. But just next to it are the foundations of an older church and the ruins of a round defense tower from the 1100s. This tower is inserted into a mighty fortress girdle, that in the form of a partly preserved wall in a half circle encloses a vast area from the church down to the beach. King Valdemar’s campaign on Gotland and Visby did not fundamentally change the city’s position. It, however, caused the Gotlandic rural population much damage. After Valdemar Atterdag’s campaigns on Gotland in 1361 came a long period of military entanglements in the Baltic Sea region that disrupted the peaceful trade and resulted in deteriorating proﬁtability for the Visby burghers. The Black Death In the middle of the 1300s the then known world was hit by a terrible plague. From Asia came a plague disease with trade ships and caravans to the Mediterranean. From there it spread over Europe and visited country after country. Carrier of the disease were ﬂeas. They attacked ﬁrst rats and then moved on to humans. When dead rats began to show in the street dirt and wells, it was a matter of days before the plague claimed its ﬁrst victims among the population. There were two different types of the disease (Yersinia pestis), bubonic plague in which mortality was approximately 50% and a pneumonic plague where there was no salvation. A similar plague, the Justinian bubonic plague, ravaged probably also on Gotland in the 500s. To Gotland came the Black Death or ‘Digerdöden’, as it was known in Scandinavia in 1350. According to Strelow died in Visby over 8000 people. It is an uncontrollable and probably exaggerated ﬁgure, like his assertion that many parishes were completely deserted. However, there is no reason to believe that Gotland escaped more lightly than other parts of Europe. The epidemic spread of course fear and terror wherever it went. No one knew what caused it, just that no one was safe and that death in most cases was unavoidable for the infected. Some saw God’s punishment in what happened, while scientists sought the explanation in natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or the position of heavenly bodies. Others believed that evil people came around and poisoned wells. My grandmother’s mother, who was born in 1846, was still telling from the oral tradition that the Black Death raged so hard that in one parish, there were so few left that they could ﬁt on a grave-slab. Danish invasion The Valdemar campaign is in a sense the end of an era. What then follows in the Gotlandic history is indeed sad to say, but it has more the character of a thrilling pirate novel, that is not devoid of picturesque elements. Therefore, history is increasingly concentrated to Visby. The city is more than the country the pole around which the interests and occurrences are focused. Valdemar Atterdag became Danish king in 1340. In the 1340s and 1350s he carried out the consolidation of the Danish kingdom. He soon came into a hostile relation to Holstein, that by inheritance had been divided among several counts, and the German imperial cities, whose inﬂuence he was trying to limit. 253 Tore Gannholm Fig 135. Gotland has more than 100 medieval churches. From the early stone churches, which were of ﬁne masonry, there remain only fragments. These were replaced during the Young Gothic time by the larger churches. Lau church that is one of Gotland’s largest country churches is built as a three naves church hall in the 1270s and was scheduled for a major tower. When the times changed they had to put all plans on the shelf. Photo K. E. Gannholm A third North German power, which played a key role in the Nordic countries’ history, was Mecklenburg. Its ruler Albrecht II (1329-71), married to Magnus Eriksson’s sister Euphemia strove eagerly to gain a foothold north of the Baltic Sea. In 1360 Valdemar recaptured Scania from Sweden, to which it belonged for a short time from 1332. 254 Fifteen years earlier, 1346, Valdemar had sold Estonia to the Teutonic Order and it became part of the State of the Teutonic Order. The Gotland-invasion was a direct continuation of this war. Now Gotland becomes the core of a new Danish Baltic Sea dominion. Gotland actually came to eventually play this role right up to the 1600s, when the balance of power shifted. In addition Gotland was the richest state in the Baltic Sea region when Valdemar attacked it. It is unlikely that Valdemar was able to see that the glory days of Visby already were over in 1361. However, it was not this side of the story that was vital. The conquest of Visby was intended as a counter power to the Hanseatic League, formed three years earlier. Valdemar at the time conducted difﬁcult negotiations with the German cities about their merchants trading in Denmark, especially in the Scania market. Maybe the king and his advisors counted on that the campaign could scare Lübeck to compliance, but they may not have been blind to the fact that it also could have the opposite effect. The Danish conquest of Gotland did not bring about any direct transformation of the Gotlandic community. With Denmark’s short lived occupation of Gotland, the balance in the Baltic Sea region had been disturbed, and other neighbors in the region began to look at the island. The house of Mecklenburg succeeded in placing Albrecht of Mecklenburg on the Swedish throne, when Magnus Eriksson was displaced. After Valdemar Atterdag’s death his daughter Queen Margaret in connection with her son Olaf ’s accession to the throne forced Visby in an act of homage in 1376, to recognize King Olaf as the city’s ‘rightful master’ with the hereditary right as successor. Note only the City Republic of Visby, not the Gotlandic Merchant Farmers’ Republic. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 136. Valdemar Atterdag When the Gotlanders were beaten, the city burghers opened the gates, and out came a negotiating team consisting of twelve men in just their shirts with a rope round their necks and carrying the city’s keys, the complete submission according to medieval custom. Painting by Erik Olsson The Invasion On July 22, 1361 Valdemar Atterdag landed with his army probably at Kronvalls ﬁshing village in Eksta. The Gotlandic peasants were beaten in three battles. The second battle was at Ejmunds bridge. The third and last battle was fought outside Visby city walls, where 1800 Gotlanders, of which many old people and cripples were ‘slaughtered’ by the Danes, while the Visby burghers had a party inside the city walls with lots of noise so the inhabitants could not hear the battle noise. Nobody in the city was allowed to enter the walls and watch. They did not open the gates or take part in the battle. One can read on the Memory Cross which is in Latin: “they fell outside the gates of Visby.” After the Gotlandic peasant army had been wiped out the Visby burghers sub- mitted the city to the victor by capitulation according to custom. According to legend, Valdemar extracted a large treasure, (later popularly known as ‘Visby ransom’), from the city in order not to plunder it. However, it may not have been too much, because he wanted to keep the town viable. Two days later he gave Visby full trading rights in all Denmark. There is no indication that they should have paid more than the normal sum not to have the city sacked. We can’t ﬁnd any bases for the famous 1800s painting, ‘Valdemar Atterdag is holding Visby to ransom 1361’. It is probably a made up story. We must not forget that the Gotlanders were weakened, after ten years earlier, having suffered the Black Death, and that they fought against Danish 255 Tore Gannholm professional soldiers. After the battle outside the walls of Visby, the countryside in the south was ravaged and plundered, and the Gotlanders suffered a lot. The defeated peasantry was subjected to murder, ﬁre and robbery. The Franciscans have recorded in their diary: “He killed too many people, because the peasants were unarmed. They were armed with forks and sticks”. It is no coincidence that the core complex of the Valdemar legends are not including Visby, but are concentrated to Storsudret, which in medieval times was a very rich area, with a concentration of large, stone-built Merchant farms. Valdemar’s rampage on southern Gotland is not mentioned in the historical sources, but we still have adequate proof that the tales have their roots in the bloody reality. In the church in Fide is southern Gotland’s Valdemar cross. Above the ﬁgure of Christ, who is bent over his own pain and human evil, is painted a Latin text, which reads: “The temple on ﬁre, people killed, in grief he trembles for the sword” The defensive nature of Valdemar’s Gotlandic expedition emerges in its own way in the immediate consequences of the Danish conquest which reﬂect itself on Visby and Gotland. Visby retained the independent status, which it acquired in 1288, when Magnus Ladulås through his mediation resolved the conﬂict between the Gotlandic Farmers’ Republic and its rebellious city. The Danish involvement for Visby’s part came to no other change than the city’s commitment to the Swedish king, was moved to Valdemar. Visby also remained under Danish rule a sort of free imperial city. Without consideration to Denmark it carried out its own trade policies. Valdemar has not sought to put Visby under his direct control. He did not want to deprive the city its status as a free trading city. It seems to just be a pawn in a bigger game. On the contrary, he seems 256 to have intended, as little as possible, to intervene in its conditions. Valdemar’s dominion over Gotland rested on an extremely weak basis. It was resting on the Visby Society’s loyalty and the weakness of the Swedish Kingdom. As Lord over Visby Valdemar had taken over the Swedish king’s duty to assist the City of Visby with its defense. The tribute implied that Visby had a right to expect it, but the City was aware that its position was critical and dependent on the assistance it could get from the Hanseatic Cities. It appears from a letter from the Visby Council to the Hanseatic cities in 1362, where they stressed, that if any prince went to attack Gotland, they needed help from the Hanseatic Cities. Otherwise, both Visby and the Hanseatic Cities generally would suffer even greater damage than what had occurred. This came true pretty quickly when deposed kings began to exploit Gotland as base for their pirate operations. The result was that Visby never joined the Hanseatic League and did not become a Hanseatic City. On the Hanse day in Lübeck in 1364 where Visby was not represented it was stated that the merchants in Visby belonged to the German Hanseatic League. This was refuted on the Hanse day in Cologne in 1367 where representatives from Visby explained, that they would not be forced to be connected with the Hanseatic League, but as before determine over their own trade. Their request was accepted. Valdemar Atterdag called himself from the conquest of Gotland in 1361 the king of the Danes, Wends and Goths. That title he wore as a result of conquest law. King Valdemar had taken over sovereignty over Gotland from the defeated Gotlanders, not from the Swedish king. The bailiffs, that King Valdemar left behind were, however, quickly killed by the Gotlanders, why the occupation of Gotland was very short lived. Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 137. When the Danish King Valdemar Atterdag had beaten the Gotlanders and entered Visby without a ﬁght, according to legend, and by the Visby bourghers been payed stipulated ransom, the Danish army was let loose on the Gotlandic countryside in order to rob and plunder. In Fide church is a very telling evidence of what happened to the Gotlanders after the defeat outside Visby walls. Painting by Erik Olsson In fact, there are many factors that contributed to the fact that Gotland in the late 1300s would experience a period of decline, that it never recovered from. The great plagues in the middle of the century, when its population declined catastrophically, must have meant a difﬁcult irreparable disaster. Furthermore, Gotland, from the 1360s, was sidelined by the in 1358 formed Hanseatic League trade sphere of inﬂuence. This meant a major setback mostly for Visby. Despite these unfortunate circumstances, the decline was hardly of a nature that work, e.g. building, was completely stagnated. In the countryside there was a lot of construction during the 1360s and 1370s, and in Visby was added at the end of the 1300s two large sanctuaries in Sta Karin and St. Nicholas. The greatness of the City of Visby can be said to have lasted from about 1140 to 1390. During this time Visby was the center for trade in the Baltic Sea region. In ecclesiastical terms Gotland belonged throughout the Middle Ages to Linköping diocese. Despite the Danish conquest in 1361 they preserved the connection with the life of the church in Sweden. This is very important to remember, even if relations between Gotland and Linköping were not so busy. Since the journey over the water could be risky and time consuming the bishop’s visits were restricted to what was necessary. His duties were sometimes handled by others. E.g. the abbot in Roma was authorized to inaugurate the nuns of his orden in Solberga monastery outside Visby. The importance of Linköping diocese on Gotland is shown in the lengths of saints, although they also show interesting continental elements that are lacking in other Swedish dioceses. 257 Tore Gannholm The Vitalian Brotherhood The history of Gotland becomes a pirate novel. The battle at Falköping in 1389 changes the Nordic region’s political scene. Albrecht of Mecklenburg was there defeated and together with his son taken prisoner. Denmark’s and Norway’s regent Margaret was now also regent in Sweden, ‘befullmyndiga fru’ (note 42). The Victual Brothers (Vitalians or Vitalian Brotherhood) were a companionship of privateers who later turned to piracy. They were hired in 1392 by the Dukes of Mecklenburg to ﬁght against Denmark. The Danish Queen Margareta had imprisoned Albrecht of Mecklenburg and his son in order to subdue the kingdom of Sweden. Albrecht had been King of Sweden since 1364 and Duke of Mecklenburg since 1383. From 1392 the Victual Brothers were acting as pirates, who made the Baltic Sea region unsafe. They became known as the Vitalian brotherhood. They began their campaign with among other things to run riot and ravage Gotland. There they built the pirate fortress Landskrone on Vivesholm in Sanda. In the absence of a strong Nordic battle ﬂeet Margareta was long impotent against those troublesome pirates. Eventually came on the scene a personality, that long with intense interest had followed the long-standing power struggle between Margareta and Albrecht. It was the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Konrad von Jungingen. He was head of the ‘Teutonic Knights’ peculiar aristocratic republic, which then included both Prussia, Estonia and Livonia. The many Hanseatic cities in these countries (including Tallinn, Riga and Danzig) were obviously very much Fig 138. The Teutonic knights disembark in Västergarn in snowfall 21st of March 1398 with 80 ships, 5000 men, 400 horses, 50 knights, catapults and cannons. They took Visby without a ﬁght, and burned the mounts of the Vitalian brothers. The pirates who did not fall in battle were slain. Painting by Erik Olsson 258 Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea interested that shipping in the Baltic Sea was not hindered by the anti-social Vitalian brothers. It was also from a political prestige point of view for him important that the disputed island was incorporated into the power of the Orden State. The merchants on Gotland had of age had valuable trade privileges in Novgorod, which the Orden now could claim to its advantage. Visby was certainly a city in decline, but perhaps it could again ﬂourish under the Orden State’s protection? With great care their Grand Master prepared the Gotlandic campaign during the winter of 1398. From the Orden State’s knights he obtained wellarmed troops and from the Hanseatic Citys an impressive ﬂeet of ships. From Danzig sailed no fewer than 4 000 men on 84 ships. The invasion came as a big surprise for the Mecklenburgians and the Vitalian brotherhood. The enemy’s superiority was overwhelming as for a total they could themselves set up no more than 500 warriors. A treaty was signed in Västergarn with the three commanders of the Order army. According to the treaty both the Mecklenburgians and the Vitalian brotherhood were to sail from Visby on Easter Sunday 1398. Gotland was submitted to the Teutonic Order and would remain its property unless the Grand Master struck a new agreement with King Albrecht. The Mecklenburgian episode in the history of Gotland was over. However, by an agreement in Helsingborg in 1408 the Teutonic Order committed itself to cede Gotland to Margareta for a compensation of 9000 English nobles. The Orden State stayed ten years on Gotland. At a meeting in Kalmar in September of that year Gotland was thus ceded to the young King Erik, after the compensation sum was paid. The only thing the Grand Master could do for the Visby burghers was to obtain that they were allowed to keep their former privileges. Visborg, Royal Castle and Pirates Nest Queen Margaret and her co-ruler Erik of Pomerania became rulers of Gotland (see note 43). Jösse Eriksson, who in 1410 was ordained to bailiff for Gotland, was Danish. The same applied to his successor Trud Hase. Self did King Erik arrive in the summer of 1411 to his new possession. He had realized that Gotland could never be justiﬁed unless the island had a strong military fulcrum. Therefore, he immediately began to build a large castle in the southwest corner of the city wall from where he could master the harbor entrance. Visborg castle now becomes the centerpiece in Gotland’s colorful history, until the proud stronghold in 1679 was blown up in the air by its last Danish crew. The destruction of the ruins of Visborg castle was continued by the Swedes who used it for burning of limestone. Two lime kilns - one at the current Piparhålstrappan, the other where Skansen now is - were fed with stone and timber from the castle. Only in 1711 was this ruthless but for the developers proﬁtable destruction of Visborg’s ruins halted. The condition of the ruins gave in 1885 C.J. Bergman cause for bitter comment: “Everywhere in Wisby is the contrast between past and present sketched in vivid and moving features. Beside the few remaining walls of Wisborg castle one understands this contrast most clearly. On the steep ridge, where the palace throned proud and stately, with its knights’ halls and its women’s house, with its church and its arsenal, with its treasurer’s ofﬁce and its ‘Coin-tower’, with its many towers and bastions ... there is now humble quarters of small houses and plots, and the only wall corner that remained there, has a few huts, with the poorest people in the city. The mighty castle, which was the seat of kings and knights, freebooters and tyrants, is now levelled 259 Tore Gannholm Fig 139. Visborg castle. When Erik XIII of Pomerania in September 1408, at a meeting in Helsningborg, took over Gotland from the Teutonic Order he had paid a total of 9000 English gold nobles for it. In 1411 King Erik came with an army over to Gotland. He landed on 29 July and on 1 August laid the ﬁrst stone to Visborg castle. Gotland’s governor, Trugot Hase, was entrusted with the continued building of the castle and to the majority it was completed in 25 years. Hase died 1437 and left a large fortune gathered by plundering ships and stranding business. In the spring of 1437 came King Erik to Gotland and settled on Visborg castle bringing his wealth and his mistress, the beautiful Cecilia. From here he practised piracy in near twelve years. Visborg castle was then the strongest fortress in the Baltic Sea. Painting by Eric Olsson. with the ground, and even most traces of its extension obliterated. In this way Wisborg has fallen and disappeared, and the strong tower ‘Sluk upp’ has together with the fortress, whose one corner pillar it was, been engulfed by destruction.“ Engelbrecht’s liberation war in Sweden dethroned the union ruler who was sitting on Visborg throughout thirteen years (1437-1449). All of his many political plans were wrecked and since he years 1439-1440 formally was set aside as king of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, only Gotland remained of the vast realm given in his hands by Queen Margareta. 260 After having lent the newly elected Danish King Christian a larger sum of money, Olof Axelsson took Gotland in pawn and installed himself as the king’s bailiff on Visborg. Until his death in 1464 Olof Axelsson was the mighty ruler over Gotland and as such he pursued his own foreign policy. He interferred in the internal conﬂicts and contradictions of the weakened German Orden State. Above all he was concerned to his own advantage to use all the privileges that Gotland and Visby during their bygone glory days had acquired in the commercial metropolis Novgorod. Here the Gotlandic Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Merchant Farmers’ Republic still held the remains of the ancient trading Emporium ‘Gutagård’, now Germinized to ‘Gotenhof ’. In 1517, King Christian II gave his capable Admiral Severin Norby Gotland as pledge province and installed him as captain on Visborg, what he rewarded with unswerving loyalty even after the king was disposed in Sweden (1521) and Denmark (1523). Over his ﬁgure lies a romantic light. Brave and daring, he was the greatest ‘freebooter’ on Gotland. During Gustav Vasa’s war of liberation Norby fought valiantly on various fronts for king Christian. As the Hanseatic cities with Lübeck in the lead stood on the side of Gustav and lent him large sums of money, Norby with his king’s goodwill captured all Hanseatic ships that came his way. Thus, he caught the hostility of the Hanseatic Cities. Gustav Vasa, vividly supported by Lübeck who called Gotland Fig 140. When Erik XIII for a time had been on Visborg’s castle, he was to sail to Söderköping. He came in distress at Karlsö. He succeeded, however, with his ﬂagship Rosenkrantz to save himself under the lee of Stora Karlsö, where he put himself on land. The storm increased and Rosenkrantz and another ship were wrecked, and about 120 men died in the waves. Painting by Eric Olsson. 261 Tore Gannholm Fig 141. in 1449 Olof Axelsson Tott received Gotland in ﬁef and pledge from King Christian and his position was more independent than a typical feudal lord. Olof Axelsson Tott strengthened the castle further. Severin Norby was the last ﬁef-holder, and when he left Gotland in 1525 it became a tributary state under the Danish king. Danish lords then ruled over the castle on the behalf of the Danish king until the peace in Brömsebro 1645 when Gotland and the castle came in Swedish hands for the ﬁrst time. The Danes took it back in 1676, but at the peace between Sweden and Denmark in Lund, October 7, 1679 Admiral Juel had orders to blow up the strong towers and tear down all the houses before the Danes left Gotland to Sweden. Painting by Eric Olsson. both ‘the lock to the Baltic Sea’ as ‘a beautiful gem,’ made himself felt. A combined Swedish-Lübeckian detachment commanded by Berndt van Mehlen landed at different places on the Gotlandic coast in the spring of 1524. They took Gotland and began to besiege Visby and Visborg but failed to take either the city or castle. Disappointed and annoyed at Lübeck for under false pretenses have induced him to undertake the Gotlandic campaign Gustav decided to evacuate the island. Interesting to note is that Berndt van Mehlen and Severin Norby were brothers in arms of Christian II. They had both been knighted by King Christian in the Stockholm Cathedral in 1520. van Mehlen was also during the 262 siege of the Visborg castle godfather at the baptism of Norby’s daughter inside the castle. The Lübeckians now staged their own campaign in the spring of 1525. They landed with their troops north of Visby on May 13th. The residents were startled by a ﬂash attack. Soon was the front of the northern city wall pierced, a general looting began. A large part of the city was devastated and burned, including several churches together with the Dominican monastery. But against the walls of Visborg, defended by Norby’s commandant Otto Ulefeld, the German mercenary troops attack was bounced back. It is also reported that the Lübeckians seized Visby city documents. The total absence Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea of any ofﬁcial records from the medieval Visby may perhaps be partly explained by the Lübeckians looting of the city hall. The war booty has never been recovered in the archives in Lübeck. Maybe they were never there, but were destroyed? This event ended a century and a half of unrest and piracy around Gotland. Severin Norby was the last person who had Gotland as pawnbroker and we have now reached a turning point in the history of Gotland. From 1530 to 1645 Gotland is a protectorate directly subordinated to the Danish king. Gotland is no longer a political bone of contention and storm center in the North. Gotland Danish protectorate When studying Gotland’s Danish time, the following should be considered. Within the Danish kingdom Gotland was an isolated and distant province, which was much left to itself. Neither the King nor his counsel could closer control its management. Only occasionally were Council commissions there to remedy severe abuse and keep Inquisition. The rural population’s former self ruling was largely broken already in the 1400s and the country people had fallen into a feudal dependence on the castle lord in Visborg. The clergy was after the Reformation politically powerless. Visby had completely lost Fig 142. In 1446 was the name of the Swedish King Christopher of Bavaria. The severe crop failure in the country gave him the name ‘Bark King’. He was the nephew of Erik of Pomerania, who then sat on Visborg castle and whose pirates captured ships with goods to Sweden. Christopher must put an end to this for the people starved, so he came with his ﬂeet to Västergarn in August 1446 to seek a settlement with his uncle. They quarreled for two days on arrows distance. The agreement was that peace would be kept for a year and Kristoffer had to pay well for it. On his way from there the Bark King was shipwrecked and came close to losing his life in the waves. He died two years later and it is written about him: “Most every night past midnight, he was drinking, loose living and fornication was his thing.” Painting by Eric Olsson. 263 Tore Gannholm Fig 143. Erik of Pomerania had 500 pirates on Gotland and awaited another 1000 from Pomerania. Then Christopher of Bavaria died and Karl Knutsson Bonde was elected to Swedish king. He had attended the two kings meeting in 1446.The ﬁrst thing he did was to send an army over to Gotland. With 2000 soldiers he occupied Visby, but he could not get at Erik of Pomerania, who sat on Visborg castle, the strongest fortress in Scandinavia. He intended to take Gotland and as soon as he was present on the ﬂeet he sailed to Gotland. In July he anchored at Västergarn with 150 sails, which means ships and an army of 6,000 men. There a meeting took place between the Swedish Supreme Commander Green, ﬂeet commander Junker Gerhard, and Olof Axelsson Tott, now Lord of Visborg. A truce was reached on July 15 applicable until St. Hans or midsummer of the following year. Meanwhile Erik delayed the negotiations with the Swedes and sold Gotland to the Danes and King Christian I. Then the Danish army went a shore in Västergarn and so was Gotland Danish. But ﬁrst must the Landsdomare on Gotland with the Gotlandic seal conﬁrm this and it was done in Västerhejde church Painting by Eric Olsson. its former autonomous status. Its poor burghers thought only of their local commercial interests. It is difﬁcult to give an overview of what happened on Gotland during this era. The most important change was the fall of the Catholic Church and the Reformation, that followed on the devastation of Visby in 1525. Luther’s new doctrines were everywhere in the Nordic region embraced by urban German population elements. This was also the case in Visby, where St. Hans church became their ﬁrst place of worship. When Bishop Hans Brask 1527 inspected Gotland, he drove out the Lutherans from the church, but they regained it after his departure. The city council was gained for the new faith. A general plunder of the churches’ silver treasures 264 began. Churchwardens often took them in their private custody as loans. When Henrik Rosencrantz 1530 was installed on Visborg, Gotland got a Lutheran sheriff. The Grey Friars at S:ta Karin had to leave their monastery, which was established as a hospital. It was an exception that, as in this case, there were reasonable motives for not plundering churches and monasteries. Pictures of saints were smashed in barbaric rage. Monastic libraries and archives were dispersed or destroyed, churches and monasteries’ chalices, paten and relic caches walked into the melting pot. It was tremendous cultural values that were annihilated. Posterity, however, should be grateful that the Gotlandic rural population showed a greater reverence to the sanctuary in their churches! Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 144. Visby is burning after Lübeck’s looting year 1525. The city now sunk into poverty and oblivion. Painting by Eric Olsson. The ecclesiastical treasures, which Visby burghers seized or had hidden, made the Danish crown, on behalf of Henrik Rosencrantz, claim on. However he let Visby City get all of the houses, ﬁelds and pastures, which belonged to the churches and monasteries. Solberga nunnery was, however, as the monastery in Roma, indented to the Danish crown. Ecclesiastically seen, the ﬁrst three decades after 1525 was a difﬁcult period with decline for Gotland. However, Gotland ofﬁcially remained on paper part of Linköping diocese until 1570, without its head ever had the opportunity to conduct inspections and ofﬁcial acts. The consequence was that the Gotlandic Church became more and more overgrown. Numerous documents of its priests reprehensible lifestyle, during this time of religious anarchy, has been preserved for posterity. Denmark had been shaken by the Count’s feud severe crisis (1534-36). It affected Gotland in the sense that the noble sheriff ’s position of power was in- creased. The numerous written complaints from the peasants and burghers of Visby about Otto Ruds ruthless management in the 1550s prove that he highly abused his privileged position. Apparently, he is guilty of the most lawless extortions for himself and his Danish ofﬁcials’ favor. These complaints from the people aroused the king’s attention in Copenhagen. After a six-year tenure Otto Rud was sacked in 1557 and his successor Christopher Hvitfeldt had strict instructions to devote his attention to address the island’s ills. Again it was impressed that the sheriff and his people should not engage in proprietary trading to the prejudice of the Visby burghers. The numerous deserted farms would be re-populated. Against the hitherto rampant vandalism at the Visby monuments they began to intervene. So, e.g., was Otto Rud sentenced to pay hefty ﬁnes for having pillaged S:ta Karin’s Church, for whose restoration funds were allocated. Unfortunately, however, there was 265 Tore Gannholm Fig 145. The destruction of the Danish-Lübeckian ﬂeet. After the ﬁerce naval battle at Öland, July 26th 1566 the Danish-Lübeckian ﬂeet came in calm weather to Visby to bury their dead noblemen in consecrated ground. But after the people with the dead had come ashore there was a horrible northwesterly gale. Some ships managed to cut their cables and get out to sea, but most were broken in the surf. 15 Danish and 3 Lübeckian ships sank and it is said that upwards of 5000 men died in the waves. Among them was the Lübeckian Admiral and Mayor Bartholomew Tinnapfel on the Lübeckian ship Admiral. This was a hard blow to the Danish ﬂeet and the event counts as one of the worst maritime disasters in the Baltic Sea history. Painting by Erik Olsson only ﬁtfully reform efforts and the various county ofﬁcers zeal and altruism were highly variable as was the length of their tenure. If ‘slottsloven’ (the time in ofﬁce) only covered three or four years very few positive things could be undertaken. During the Seven Years War, 1563 -1570, between Sweden and Denmark, Gotland was largely spared except for a short-term Swedish descent at Östergarn. Out on the Baltic Sea’s waters Swedish and Danish ﬂeets from time to time encountered each other with varying success. In 1566 Visby residents witnessed a terrible disaster. The Danish-Lübeckian ﬂeet, anchored in the roadstead, was surprised by a furious storm. The ships were hurled against the shore and crushed. Thousands of people lost their lives. 266 Sweden ofﬁcially renounces all claims on Gotland Not until the Peace of Stettin in 1570, after unsuccessfully have been looking for evidence that Gotland would have belonged to Sweden, did Sweden ofﬁcially give up any claims on Gotland. At the same time Gotland’s ancient connection with Linköping diocese was ofﬁcially ended. Gotland could now deﬁnitely be arranged into the Danish Lutheran state church. The newly appointed sheriff Kristoffer Walkendorff received 1571 orders that, to the University of Copenhagen forward one of Gotland’s ‘most learned and wisest provosts,’ that there would be examined. By choice the dean in Visby Morits Kristensen was chosen, who in 1572 Gotland the Pearl of the Baltic Sea Fig 146. Admiral Jakob Bagge searched battle with the Danes at Bornholm on May 30th 1563 with 19 vessels. The ﬂagship was the Elephant. On June 20th the ﬂeet returned to the Stockholm archipelago. A Danish ﬂeet under the command of Peder Skram ravaged the coast of Småland and Öland. The Danes had their naval base at Stora Karlsö. On the 28th of August, Bagge left the anchorage at Älvsnabben, and on the 30th he was at Karlsö, and burned all the empty beer barrels, which the Danes had left ashore for ﬁlling. Painting by Erik Olsson was appointed as ‘superintendent’ on Gotland. The Bishop’s title was abolished after the Reformation in Denmark. He became the ﬁrst superintendent on Gotland and had the difﬁcult task of bringing order out of the island’s ecclesiastical conditions. Not least, it was necessary to remedy the little honorable living of clergy in many places. It was his and the following 267

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Gotland the pearl of the Baltic Sea, home of the Varangians pages 166-267

Gotland the pearl of the Baltic Sea, home of the Varangians pages 166-267

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