The Middle Ages in Horsens

The exhibition shows the results of the large excavations and our understanding of the development of the town at the present moment. Old finds from the town and the surrounding country supplement the exhibition in order to give an impression of the life and the people in the earliest times in Horsens.

Horsens in the Viking Age
The large excavations have changed our understanding of the history of Horsens in a number of fields. Now we are able to follow the development from the Viking Age onwards and today Horsens is one of the Danish towns, in which is has been possible to collect that much information in a very short time.
During a dig for a new sewer in Borgergade, pit-houses were found in addition to well preserved parts of the street from several periods.



The pit-houses were part of a large farm, situated north of Borgergade. Therefore there is still a chance to find the rest of the farm in this area. The finds in the houses were few and it is therefore difficult to determine whether they were part of a commercial town or a village. The finds correspond to contemporary finds in Viking villages in the western part of Jutland.
From the nearby burial site, however, it seems that the built-up area consisted of more than one farm.

The burial site
The burial site of the built-up area was found on Søndergade, only 200 m west of the pit-houses. 14 graves were excavated but traces suggest that the burial site has been much bigger and possibly bounded by a ditch to the west.
The dead were buried in coffins and according to custom several kinds of coffins were used. Plank coffins alternate with bulkister and a single timber built chamber. There was only a small amount of grave goods which is not uncommon in the Viking Age, possibly caused by the incipient Christianity.
The burial site, however, is not a Christian cemetery as two sacrificed slaves were found in one of the graves. It was two women who were killed and subsequently thrown in a hole.
The burial site dates back to the 10th century and in the following period, the 11th century, the Christian cemetery around the first parish church in Horsens was used.

Horsens in the 11th century
At the end of the Viking Age there is a change in the building pattern. The pit-houses were abandoned and a boundary ditch has been found on top of them, which shows a fixed site division in Horsens. It seems that Horsens has a controlled structure for the first time. Such land registers, divided by ditches or fences, are well-known from other contemporary built-up areas.
Until now one house has been found. It was excavated on Torvet (Market Place) in front of Vor Frelsers Kirke (Our Saviour’s Church). It is a post-built longhouse of approx. 26 metres.


Tirup – an abandoned church with cemetery
In the 11th century the parish structure was established and right from the beginning Horsens was an independent parish with its own church. The church is unknown but it may have looked like a contemporary church which, along with its cemetery, was excavated in 1984 just west of the Dyreskuepladsen (The Animal Fair Place) near Bygholm Park.

For the first time in South Scandinavia it was possible to excavate a complete cemetery. Traces of a wooden church from the end of the 11th century were found as well as the foundations of a lime stone church consisting of nave and a small choir.

West of the church there were traces of a wooden bell tower. On the cemetery, which was enclosed by a ditch, 574 burials were examined. These burials give us a unique opportunity to examine the conditions of life for the population in an ordinary rural parish in the Early Middle Ages.
The church and the cemetery were abandoned sometime in the 14th century which probably is also the case for the village nearby which is yet to be found.
Judging by an old field name, the village was called Tirup. We can only guess why the village was abandoned. Maybe it was caused by the agricultural crisis or maybe the fields of the village were placed under the royal Bygholm Castle, which was built in the beginning of the 14th century.

Horsens in the 12th century
Horsens is mentioned for the first time in written sources in the 12th century. 1138-54, while staying at the Norman court in Palermo in Sicily, the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi made a map of the known world at that time with supplementary text. Here Horsens is mentioned as “a beautiful little town”. The map was later lost, but has been reconstructed several times during the Middle Ages.
The urban area itself is extended compared with the previous period and the main built up area is still in the Borgergade area on both sides of the present Havneallé.
However, excavations on the TeaterTorvet have also shown houses from the 12th century. How this area is linked with the above main built up area is still unknown.

The king coined money in Horsens. The oldest money from Horsens was coined approx. 1150 under King Svend Grathe. His coins show the inscription HORS.
His successor, King Valdemar the Great, coined money with the inscription “Regis Horsens” which means “The King’s Horsens”. This suggests that Horsens wasn’t just under the king’s protection like many other towns, but that the king owned most of the town. Perhaps the money was coined at the king’s residence, which was placed where we now find Vor Frelsers Kirke (Our Saviour’s Church).

Town plan and streets
The town plan is not known in detail, but in several cases remains of the earliest streets, for instance in Borgergade, have been found. They were paved with pepples. Along the street Fugholm was a deep, moist area, almost as a natural, water filled ditch. Above this ditch, which was filled up during the 13th century, traces of a bridge or a road made of planks were found. There were five phases of the same construction in total, all dendrochronological dated (annual rings) in the 12th century.
The houses were placed on the plot and have therefore only been affected superficially until now. However, a number of houses were established north of Borgergade.
They were all made of wood with posts. The walls were made of planks i bultektik. Most common was mud-built walls, perhaps combined with half-timbering. The roofs were made of straw.

Horsens in the 13th century
In the 13th century Horsens grows like other European towns. The extension of towns was inspired by the Hanseatic towns. Especially the nearest trading partner Lübeck was a source of inspiration to this development which started at the end of the 13th century and would unfold completely in the 14th century when Horsens developed from a marginally placed and agriculturally based village to a European market town on the same scale as its trading partners.

Horsens 1300 – 1500
Circa 1300 Horsens changes radically. The urban area is enlarged to the west and a number of streets are established with homogeneous pavement. The town was also provided with a moat and a rampart. At the same time a market place is established in the centre of the “new” town.
Perhaps King Erik Menved is behind this new town plan, inspired by the North German hanseatic area. A clearer impression of that inspiration is to be seen in the Zealand town of Køge, which was founded on a bare tidal meadow in the 1280’s.
Surprisingly the excavations show that the king’s residence in Horsens was also fortified for a short period of time. Around the area where Vor Frelsers Kirke (Our Saviour’s Church) is now to be found, a wide and deep moat was constructed. This fortification was abandoned a few years later. Perhaps it was the castle or “castrum” mentioned in 1313 in connection with the king’s victory over the peasants. After the abandonment the castle in Horsens was perhaps replaced by the castle in Bygholm.
The new town plan meant enlargement possibilities for many, many years and Horsens doesn’t break its boundaries again until the Protestant Reformation 1536.

Horsens’ development in the Late Middle Ages meant prosperity for trade and craft, which is proved by the find of more than 350 coins on Torvet (the Market Place in front of the church). The coins are the second largest find group from an excavation, only surpassed by pottery – at Torvet alone 23,000 pieces of pottery have been found.

Bygholm
An important piece in Horsens in the Middle Ages was the king’s castle in Bygholm. It was built in the beginning of the 14th century, perhaps by the peasants who have revolted against the king and who were defeated at Hatting Field.
The castle hill itself is built artificially and on the top were several brick houses. It was amateur archaeologist, Aage Simonsen, who found and excavated the remains in 1921-22.
The king’s bailiff resided at Bygholm Castle and collected the taxes that the town owed the king. The first time a bailiff resides at Bygholm Castle is in 1333.

The management of the town and the town hall
The town privilege of Horsens is known from1317 from a transcript which was lent to the town Ebeltoft. At that time Horsens presumably had a council. The oldest town hall was found in the middle of the Market Place. Since it was placed right on top of the king’s fortification moat, it soon collapsed and after a number of years it seems to have been moved. The building itself was probably a half-timbered house with an arcade, where trading took place.
Medieval town halls are not very well-known in Denmark. In Århus the medieval town hall was excavated at the west side of the cathedral in 1980 and in the town Næstved the old town hall still exists.
1585 a new town hall was built on Søndergade in Horsens and it was in use until 1855, when it was replaced by a building in Dutch Renaissance. This town hall was in use until 1986 and now houses the Tourist Information and the Town Archives.
Horsens used its seal when documents were to be valid. The oldest known seal is attached to a letter to Lübeck. It dates back to 1368 and shows a walking horse in front of a tree. The basic version resembles the present seal of Horsens Municipality.

However, Horsens couldn’t decide everything but had to have royal privileges. The oldest known royal privilege dates back to 1442, when King Erik renewed the old privileges and ensured the citizens new ones.

The moat of the town
I connection with the new town plan Horsens also got a moat in order to shield the urban area. A rampart has probably been part of the fortification. The wide moat was wet because it led the many springs down to the harbour. First and foremost the moat served as tax boundary to force the peasants and traders through the town gates to pay taxes.
The town gates were placed at the important radial roads and are found only in a few cases.
The moat crossed Søndergade at the street now called Graven (the Moat). Here was an enlargement with a dam which might have been connected to the town gate. In the 16th century the moat was filled up and the area was parcelled out.