Naestved Museum will explore the Vikings trade center

In December 2010 the Agency of Cultural Heritage promised to provide 330.000 Danish kroner to Naestved Museum for the excavation in the Vester Egesborg village, where are some places from the late Iron Age and Viking Age have been found.

 

For the first time Vester Egesborg appeared on the archaeological map in the 60 years of 20 century. Local amateur archaeologist Bent Petersen, who was looking for traces of Stone Age settlements, found some traces, relating to the Iron Age. In 1967 there was made the first researches of the National Museum, but the first serious excavations were carried out thirty years later.

 

Between 1996 and 2001 and in 2009 he researchers examined about 25 thousand square meters on the coastal territory of Vester Egesborg, which is privately owned and has no public access. About 140 houses were found here. Approximately 85% of them are small, so-called grubehuse, and the remaining 15% - long houses. As a result of excavations revealed a large quantity of jewelry, tools and many other items dating back to the late Iron Age and Viking Age.

Vester Egesborg is the only registered coastal area of ​​early Iron Age and Viking Age. This place has great significance for understanding the relationship between the coast and inland areas, who lived at the expense of agriculture. In the vicinity of Vester Egesborg over the past 10 years by a metal detectors were found a few metal objects, including delicate decorations of late Iron Age, iron and bronze objects, coins of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In addition, there have been the existence of the settlement, which according to preliminary data goes back to the Roman Iron Age (500 BC). Thus, there is great potential for new research projects with an intensive study of these areas, as well as research development and functioning of communities of the Iron Age.