Just north of Aarhus, you will come to the beautiful Egå Marina, which gives you a golden opportunity to wander through the everyday life of the Viking society.
Getting ashore and exploring the area, you will find that right where Egå Gymnasium is placed, is where the old Viking village used to be, and if you follow the Egå River inland, you walk on top of a Viking burial-site, where one of the most unique Rune-stones in all of East-Jutland was found, the famous Egå-stone.
The text on the stone reads. ”Alfkell and his sons raised this stone in memory of Manne, their kinsman, who was Ketill the Norwegian's estate-foreman”.
Manne must have been an important landowner and judging from excavations in the area, it seems that Manne and his village, raised livestock and horses, in order to supply the fortress of Aros with meat, milk and horses. He did this in service of a man named Ketill the Norwegian, and Ketill could easily have been a member of the king’s personal guard, the Thanes. It is also her in Egå that the winds of change first settle and the new christian faith take hold.
Egå lay next to the main road to Aros, and many travelers past by, bringing new ideas and thoughts. While the military status of Aros kept the furious heathen war-gods alive, the farming village of Egå became a better place to settle among other christians and live in peace.
Today you can come ashore and walk in the footsteps of Manne, Alfkell and the other christian Vikings of Egå.
By historian Casper Clemmensen.
Go to this link for more exciting information about the vikings in the East Jutland sea
Photo: Iga Kuriata