Gudme
| Gudme | |||||
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| Basic data | |||||
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| State : |
 Denmark
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| Region : | Syddanmark | ||||
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Municipality (since 2007) : |
Svendborg | ||||
| Coordinates : | 55 ° 9 ′ N , 10 ° 42 ′ E | ||||
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Population : (2020) |
893 | ||||
| Postal code : | 5884 | ||||
| Website: | www.gudme.dk | ||||
 Dolmen in Gudbjerglund |
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Gudme is a small town in the southeast of the Danish island of Funen, about 10 km northeast of Svendborg . The place belongs to the parish community ( Danish : Sogn ) Gudme Sogn , which originally belonged to the Harde Gudme Herred in Svendborg Office . From 1970 Gudme was the center of Gudme Municipality in Fyns Office , which was merged into Svendborg Municipality in the Syddanmark region on January 1, 2007 as part of the municipal reform . On January 1, 2020, 893 residents lived in Gudme.
history
The area around Gudme is the best-explored site from the Danish Iron Age . Gold and silver finds in particular - more than 10 kg in total - have drawn attention, but it is the overall picture that makes Gudme unique. The largest and richest settlement, the largest building, the largest cemetery ( Møllegårdsmarken ), the oldest and largest trading center ( Gammel Lundeborg ) are located here. Most theophoric place names are around Gudme and most of the reading finds were made here.
The Iron Age settlement of Gudme provided remarkable treasures. Archaeological excavations over the past 25 years have shown that many of the gold and silver treasures were originally placed in farm buildings. Discovery of waste and scrap shows that gold and silver workshops were located here. In one of the courtyards, two treasures were discovered that were buried near the wooden posts. One was an impressive treasure of bracta , the other a bundle of gold neck rings and a piece of gold spiral. Elsewhere, Roman silver coins, silver and bronze scrap, and fragments of Roman statues have been found. Contact and trade with the Roman Empire were the source of Gudme's prosperity. Of the 50 gold treasures from the late Iron Age in Denmark, several were found around Gudme.
In addition, the square drew attention to itself with a runic inscription .
On the basis of a socio-historical analysis, Gudme / Lundeborg, which had long been considered a singular place in the overall archaeological context of this time, had to be granted an area of influence that extended over about 1100 km² on Fyn.
The name means home of gods. It refers to a sanctuary and is also preserved in some other places in the north, for example on Bornholm as Gudhjem and in Sweden as Gudhem near Falköping or as Gudsø (Lake of the Gods) near Kolding . Similar meaningful names such as Albjerg (enclosed sanctuary), Galbjerg (sacrificial mountain), Gudbjerg, Gudbjerglund (Götterberghain) or Ravlunda (amber grove) indicate a spiritual center on the now largely silted up Gudme Sø (Gudmesee).
Between Gudme and Lundborg, Møllegårdsmarken, the largest burial ground in Denmark, from the "Germanic Iron Age" was discovered. It contained over 2,200 urn and incendiary graves, in which almost no weapons were found as grave goods. In contrast, there is the nearby Brudager burial ground.
The fields were tilled with barley and hemp . In 1993 the so-called “Gudme Kongehal” (King's Hall) was excavated on the southern edge of the town. It consists of two large hall structures, of which only the post holes could be located. The larger hall was 47 meters long and eight meters wide. Some posts were 50 cm thick. The positions of the posts have been marked so that the hall outlines can be clearly seen from a viewing platform. A silver mask was found in the smaller hall. With the almost simultaneous discoveries of the hall in Gudme and in the Norwegian town of Borg, the Scandinavian central square research began at the end of the 1980s . There were z. B. Halls excavated in Helgö, Slöinge and Uppåkra in Sweden, Borre and Forsand in Norway and Tissø in Denmark. This led to the investigation of verifiable “princely seats” (e.g. Old Uppsala) in the hope of being able to occupy halls there as well. While in Denmark a total of 40 indoor or central places were known in 2003, ten years earlier there were only 12.
In the area of Gudme, the first part of the Broholm gold discovery was made in 1833, the last part took place in 1991. It contained a total of around 10 kg of gold. The entire area is the center of gold discoveries in Denmark. Among other things, figurines made of sheet gold were found near Lundeborg. Small male figures and male masks are a common sight in the Gudme area.
The depot finds around Gudme date from the period between 200 and 550 AD. During this period, which is also known as the gold age, the third phase of Eketorp Castle on Öland existed, weapon victims were deposited in Illerup Ådal and took place in the southern half of Europe the great migration . Similar prosperous centers existed at the same time or in the near future in Helgö and Alt-Uppsala , as well as in Skåne and Gotland. According to the current state of research, Gudme / Gammel Lundeborg represents the outstanding center of power in southern Denmark in the period from the third to the sixth century, which took the place of Himlingøje with a zenith in the early third century.
Gudme from the perspective of bracteates research
According to Karl Hauck (1916–2007), by researching the golden amulets of the gods, three main theses can be put forward for the function of the Funen center of wealth in the Gudme area:
- The dominance of princes of gods in the picture tradition is ultimately explained by the role as king deity as it still existed during the migration period. In Gudme's idol amulets there are correspondences between the emblem of the highest god and those of his royal worshipers as villa regalis .
- The thematically related and model-like iconography illuminates the relationship between Gudme and Odense. The main god of the sanctuary on Lake Gudme was Odin, whose name continues in the name of the place in Central Funen with its supraregional sanctuary.
- The hegemony of the kings of Gudme was based not only on the remarkable wealth through access to important natural harbors or through their sacred function, but also on the decline of the Western Roman Empire.
Context in the south
Settlement archaeological investigations in the area of the north German coast could only show isolated references to central places and markets from the Iron Age and Migration Period. In contrast to the southern Scandinavian centers, they all break off at the beginning or in the middle of the 6th century.
See also
sons and daughters of the town
- Hilda Sehested (1858–1936), pianist and composer
- Knud Sehested (1850–1908), politician
- Thyra Sehested (1840–1923), historian
literature
- Erling Albrectsen: Fynske Jernaldergrave 4. Gravpladsen på Møllegårdsmarken ved Broholm . Odense 1971, ISBN 87-87162-00-8 (Danish).
- K. Hauck (Hrsg.): The historical horizon of the god image amulets from the transitional epoch from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-82587-0 .
- K. Hauck: For the religious-scientific evaluation of image codes and runes of the golden bracteates from the Migration Period . In: K. Düwel (Ed.): Runic inscriptions as sources of interdisciplinary research. Treatises of the 4th International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions . 1998, ISBN 3-11-015455-2 , pp. 298 ff .
- K. Hauck: Images of gods of late antique polytheism in the north on votive gold miniatures . In: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte , 57 vol., No.3, Art history and the present: 23 articles for Georg Kauffmann on his 70th birthday . 1994, p. 301-305 .
- H. Jöns, M. Wille: Gudme / Gudhem sites in the historical, onomastic and archaeological record - a summary of the workshop. In: Writings of the Archaeological State Museum. Supplementary series 6. Neumünster 2011, pp. 231–236.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Statistics Banks -> Befolkning og valg -> BY1: Folketal January 1st efter byområde, alder og køn (Danish)
- ↑ Hauke Jöns writes of Iron Age and early medieval “centers of wealth” and avoids such terms as “early royalty” as can be identified from the list of Swedish legend kings (places like Gudme also existed in Sweden at the same time) or “chiefs' seat”, of those in pre-Viking times Norway is the subject. The Danes, on the other hand, refer to the large house discovered in Gudme as the Kongehallen .
- ↑ Germanic religious history: Sources and source problems Heinrich Beck, Detlev Ellmers, Kurt Schier (ed.) S. 525 and J. Kousgård Sørensen: Gudhem, Frühmedalterliche Studien 19 (1985) S. 131–38: “A special case is the name Gudhem ( Gudhjem, Gudme, Gudum), which occurs several times in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. As John Kousgård Sørensen (1926-1999) has shown convincingly, this name is based on an identical appellative, literally home of gods ”.
- ↑ Germanic Iron Age, in Denmark from 375 to 750, in Sweden from 400 to 800, is a term used in Scandinavian archeology that, following the generally accepted Roman Empire , replaces the terms migration period and early Middle Ages used in continental Europe . In Sweden, for example , the Germanic Iron Age includes the Vendel period .
