The Lost Fort

Roman and Mediaeval History, Illlustrated Travel Journals, Mediaeval Literature, Geology

15.6.13

Neolithic Remains, Picts and Vikings

Orkney was a veritable centre of Neolithic buildings, from the intriguing stone settings to a settlement like Skara Brae - a village older than the pyramids which has become one of the main tourist attractions.

Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement on Mainland Orkney
Stone circles are very photogenic. The Ring of Brodgar may be less impressive than Stonehenge, but it's a lot more atmospheric. Especially with those dramatic clouds - though it never rained, fortunately. There's another, smaller stone setting, the one of Stenness, which I also managed to sneak in.

Ring of Brodgar, a detail shot
An then there's Maes Howe, the large cairn we are not sure what it really was; temple, burial place, meeting room....? You can only get inside on a guided tour and photographing is officially not allowed. *wink*

Maes Howe, also on the mainland
Definitely used for burial were the chambered cairns. Several fine examples can be found on the island of Rousay. Here's the largest one. I also visited a much smaller one you need a torch and a ladder to get into.

Chambered cairn on Rousay
Cairns can be found elsewhere in the Highlands, too, like the Clava Cairns near Inverness which come complete with standing stones and all. They're about 2.5 miles walk from the battlefield of Culloden.

Clava Cairns
But Neolithic remains are not the only fun thing to be found on Orkney. There are some nice Pictish brochs, too. Well, remains of brochs; they used to be much higher. Here's the Broch of Gurness.

Broch of Gurness, Mainland Orkney
They often come attached with the remains of settlements, though the latter was much smaller around the Broch of Midhowe than in case of Gurness. A lot of those places are off the roads and bus stops so I had some walking to do. :-)

Broch of Midhowe, Rousay
I was lucky again with the tide and could put a visit to the Viking settlement on Birsay into my schedule. Orkney had been in Norse possession for centuries and they left their traces behind. I've also taken a few pics of some smaller places like the round church in Orphir.

The Viking settlement on Birsay
In one case I was out of luck: since the tourist office in Inverness gave me the wrong opening times for the Pictish museum in Rosemarkie, I missed that one. Well, the booty was large enough for two weeks.

Read more! ¶ 9:08 pm 3 comments

21.5.13

The Imperial Palatine Seat Tilleda - Fortifications

I have mentioned Tilleda a few times already since it's one of the rare examples of a Medieaval palatine seat of which more remains than some crumbled earthen walls and a sign. Werla, albeit double the size of Tilleda shows only a few of those today, Grona has become a suburb of Göttingen, in Pöhlde only some foundations remain. Of course, most of what we can see in Tilleda today has been reconstructed - earthen walls and wattle and daub houses don't preserve well - but it is the only complete complex of the sort. In Goslar, only the great hall has been restored, albeit it is a most splendid example.

Tilleda, gate of the outer bailey. The way it is drawn in between the walls enabled the defenders to throw all sorts of pointy, hot, or otherwise interesting things on attackers.
Tilleda is first mentioned as Imperial Palatine seat (imperiatoris corte) in a charte dating to 972, where it is listed among the lands Otto II gave his wife, the Byzantine princess Theophanu, as dower. But the castle on the Pfingstberg hill must have been in existence since the early 10th century.* Tilleda surely was part of the net of palatine seats in Thuringia and Saxony already at the time of King Heinrich I.

Palatine seats, sometimes also known as royal vills in England, were needed because the king had to show his presence to the people, taxes paid in food could not be transported and stored over long distances, so Mediaeval kings did a lot of traveling and wanted to stay in places of some comfort.

Outer gate seen from the inside with some wattle and daub houses in the foreground
The Pfingstberg hill lies north of the Kyffhäuser mountain ridge, a place that has become famous for the legend of the emperor Friedrich Barbarossa sleeping deep inside the mountain to return in time of great need. So far, no one has seen him, but he got a big, kitchy 19th century monument on top of the mountain. If that didn't wake him from of his sleep; I doubt anything will. *grin*

There are the remains of a 12th century castle halfway down the mountain as well, but when we got there, it turned out the restaurant at the monument hosted a major biker meeting and there were bikers everywhere in addition to the usual avalanches of tourists on a sunny day, so we decided against trying to find a parking lot only to photograph some ruins with a lot of people blocking the sights.

View from the gate to some houses, with the Kyffhäuser in the background
The seat of Tilleda has a trapezoid shape and covers an area of 5.6 hectares (about 350x250 metres). The part of the hill where the main castle is situated has steep slopes that fall down 25 metres on three sides, on it were additional fortifications in form of a trench and wall, partly of stone, partly timber palisades. Only to the west the land is flatter (but still some 10 metres above the surrounding terrain); there the outer bailey lies, once protected by walls of mortared ashlar (see below). Another, second outer bailey on the southern terrace near the river Wolwede has been excavated but not reconstructed.

The ground of the hill is sandstone on a layer of Zechstein gypsum which led to a rockfall probably in the early 11th century which destroyed part of the main hall in the northeast corner of the castle.

Interior of the outer gate, with my father looking out for enemies
The castle with the main hall, church and living quarters for the nobles - several of them with hypocaust heating - is separated from the outer bailey by a system of walls and trenches. Most of the buildings in the main castle were made of stone, or at least had stone foundations, though the hall was rebuilt as pillared longhouse after the rockfall. I will get back to the remains of those in another post.

The main wall with the palisades and the gate - in its second, stone version with timber upper storey - have been reconstructed, as well as one of the trenches.

Inner gate, seen from the outer bailey
The area between the main castle and the outer bailey had during Ottonian times served as some sort of middle castle with a granary and the living quarters of the chatellain / administator, but later, the fortifications were considerably strengthened. Maybe the defense purpose of the place became more important during quarrels between kings and nobles. King Lothar of Süpplingenburg destroyed the castle on the Kyffhäuser in 1118, for example.

We can trace a sojourn of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa in Tilleda in 1174, and in 1194, Heinrich VI received the exiled Heinrich the Lion in reconciliatory meeting. Considering the symbolic element inherent to such actions in the Middle Ages, it proves that Tilleda was an important place; such meetings didn't take place in some backwater village.

Inner gate seem from the remains of the church
The outer bailey, encompassing about 60% of the entire site, is the most typical feature of the palatine seats of itinerant rulers. This large outer bailey was protected by a wall of mortared ashlar, both of local origins (some of the gypsum pits have been excavated). These walls have later been used as quarry and were only partly reconstructed; the rest of the layout is marked by a low earthen wall. The original height of the ashlar wall is unknown.

There were a lot of houses, mostly of the wattle and daub type, but also some timbered ones, and a number of pit houses. They served as workplaces, storage huts, and living quarters for the people involved in producing pottery, weavings and iron products on which this particular seat obviously specialised.

Rampart with access from the inner bailey
The fact that the reconstruction concentrated on those parts of the castle may be due to Tilleda having been a site in the former GDR where the interest in the working classes was much greater than in the kings. I don't know if there are plans to rebuild the royal hall as well though it would be nice.

The palatine seat has been abandoned by most of its inhabitants in the 13th century. Its purpose as housing for itinerant kings became useless when those prefered to live in the better fortified hilltop castles, and the various industries moved down to the Golden Valley (Goldene Aue) where the conditions obviously were more favourable.

View from the inner gate to the Kyffhäuser, with a pit house in the foreground
I'll get back to that unique place and show you some of the buildings next time. Some of them house Medieaval tools (looms and such) and give some glimpse of life in the 10th/11th centuries.

* Chartes issued in specific places and the mention of sites in chartes only give very incomplete information about those sites since much depends on chance of both historical events and preservation.

Sources:
Hans Eberhard, Paul Grimm. Die Pfalz Tilleda am Kyffhäuser - Ein Führer durch die Geschichte und Ausgrabungen. Halle/Saale, 2001

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