By Steen Wulff Andersen

The excavations of the early summer have produced new knowledge about the impressive wooden palisade, which surrounded Jelling’s Viking monuments. However, the work in mapping the course of the nearly 1½ km long enclosure and finding out how it was built is long from finished. In May/June we turned the focus upon the north-eastern part of the palisade and a longer stretch of the southern side at Gormsgade. Now the north-western part of the palisade will be looked at.

On Wednesday July 21 with the kind permission of OK-fonden, the owner of Jelling Kro, we started a new excavation in the so-called "marketplace", north of the inn. The aim is to investigate parts of the western end of the northern side of the palisade and, if possible, locate the enclosure’s north-west corner.

As early as the morning of the July 21 the investigations began to produce results. Firstly a short length of the palisade’s northern foundation trench was found in an area to the rear of the inn. Shortly after this the corner appeared in the driveway of the property at 8A Herningvej, belonging to Hans Ove Mathiesen. The location of this corner means that the palisade’s course can be plotted with even greater accuracy and the research into the large enclosure of Viking Age Jelling has thus come an important step further. The newly found remains will now be recorded and further analysed.