Wealth and Wetlands: Two Millennia of Landscape History in and around Haagerup, on the Island of Funen, Denmark

Abstract

ABSTRACT The countryside around the village Haagerup on Funen is dominated by gently rolling hills and large tracts of woodland, wetland and fields. Looking closer, the eye catches the old monastery and the castle, but under the soil is hidden a story of amazing wealth, unrest and shifting powers. Surveys with metal detectors in recent years have brought to light unexpected quantities of metal finds, revealing new heights of the economic resources and power of the area between the Roman Iron Age and the Middle Ages. Supporting research used a multi-proxy approach to combine the artefacts and landscapes of already known sites with a range of newly discovered sites, analysing them together to track the socio-economic developments through twelve centuries. This has enabled us to identify not just how the connection between landscape, monumentality and power shifted between the eras, but also how differently this connection was manifested even within the same periods in a small area. We are able to identify bog iron to be a likely source of the area’s wealth, and we can demonstrate how the shifts between local and national government led to a complete remodelling of the landscape of power during the early middle Ages.