Götavirke (''Geatish Dyke'') are the remains of two parallel defensive walls going from north to south between the villages of Västra Husby () and Hylinge () in

Söderköping Municipality Söderköping Municipality () is a municipality in Östergötland County in southeast Sweden. Its seat is located in the city of Söderköping. The present municipality was created in 1971-1973 when the former ''City of Söderköping'' in two ste ...

Östergötland Östergötland (; English exonym: East Gothland) is one of the traditional provinces of Sweden (''landskap'' in Swedish) in the south of Sweden. It borders Småland, Västergötland, Närke, Södermanland and the Baltic Sea. In older English li ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. The walls cover the distance between the lakes Asplången () and Lillsjön (). North of Asplången there are remains of several ancient

hill fort A hillfort is a type of fortification, fortified refuge or defended settlement located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typical of the late Bronze Age Europe, European Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, Iron Age. So ...

s that may have been part of the defensive line. South of Lake Lillsjön, the terrain is so hard to pass that it hardly needed any defences. The walls seem to be constructed to protect the

Geat The Geats ( ; ; ; ), sometimes called ''Goths'', were a large North Germanic tribe who inhabited ("land of the Geats") in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. They are one of the progenitor groups of modern Swed ...

ish heartland around today's

Linköping Linköping ( , ) is a city in southern Sweden, with around 167,000 inhabitants as of 2024. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Chu ...

from attacks from the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

. Archaeological excavations have shown that the walls were constructed ca. 800. Defence constructions were also built along the 20-kilometre narrow inlet Slätbaken that stretches from the Baltic Sea to Götavirke, and even pass it during the Viking Age when the water level was 1.5 metres higher. The measures that Geats had taken to protect the route have no match in Viking Age Sweden.Anders Högmer, Arkeologiskt kontaktseminarium, Jyllands Rømø 1994. Published in ''Marinarkeologi 1998''. Article is also availabl
online
The wall supported a wooden pale, and behind it are traces of a military road, which makes it similar to the

Danevirke The Danevirke or Danework (modern Danish language, Danish spelling: ''Dannevirke''; in Old Norse language, Old Norse: ''Danavirki'', in German language, German: ''Danewerk'', literally meaning ''Earthworks (archaeology), earthwork of the Danes'') ...

protecting the contemporary town of

Hedeby Hedeby (, Old Norse: ''Heiðabýr'', German: ''Haithabu'') was an important Danish Viking Age (8th to the 11th centuries) trading settlement near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig ...

. No Viking Age towns are however known in the vicinity of Götavirke.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gotavirke Archaeological sites in Sweden Germanic archaeological sites Fortifications in Sweden Geats Medieval history of Sweden Linear earthworks Söderköping Municipality

See also

References