The Archaeology of Lejre

With Healfdene Beowulf comes into contact with what is in effect the Danish myth of national origin, parts of which are told in at least eleven Scandinavian documents, the longest and most complete accounts being that of Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote his Gesta Danorum in Latin ca. 1200, and the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, written in Old Icelandic ca. 1400—both of them hundreds of years later than any possible date for Beowulf. Other texts in the tradition include king-lists, Latin chronicles, and a Latin summary of the lost Saga of the Skjöldungs (that is, the Scyldings).

It has to be said right away that these are incredibly confused and contradictory. Nevertheless there is one point where the whole Scandinavian tradition, the “legend of Lejre,” is in solid agreement. Many texts declare that the power-centre of the Danish Skjöldung kings, the Scyldingas of Beowulf, was a place called Hleiðargarðr, or Lethra, or Hledro, or one of a number of other spellings: and this was early identified as the village of Gammel Lejre, “Old Lejre,” about thirty miles west of Copenhagen.

Till recently—just like the historicity of Beowulf—the tale was regularly dismissed as mere legend, Lejre being in modern times not much more than a hamlet. Hilda Ellis Davidson, editing the modern translation of Saxo, remarked that “there is no reason to suppose” Lejre was of any importance at the time the Skjöldungs were supposed to have lived, while Gwyn Jones's History of the Vikings, discussing the site, says regretfully, “It is sad to think of those high lords without a roof to their heads, but in respect of Lejre that is the case, and likely to remain so.”

Jones and Davidson guessed wrong. In the late 1980s the Lejre site was re-investigated, and to their considerable surprise the archaeologists have since found the remains of not one but a number of massive halls, built and rebuilt and inhabited for five or more centuries in succession from about 500 ce, and surrounded by other smaller buildings.