History of Schleswig-Holstein - Danish, Saxon, Franks Struggle For Area of Holstein

Danish, Saxon, Franks Struggle For Area of Holstein

As Charlemagne extended his realm in the late 8th century, he met a united Danish army which successfully defended Danevirke, a fortified defensive barrier across the south of the territory western of the Schlei. A border was established at the Eider River in 811.

This strength was enabled by three factors:

• the fishing,
• the good soil giving good pasture and harvests
• in particular the tax and customs revenues from the market in Haithabu, where all trade between the Baltic Sea and Western Europe passed.

The Danevirke was built immediately south of the road where boats or goods had to be hauled for approximately 5 kilometers between a Baltic Sea bay and the small river Rheider Au (Danish, Rejde Å) connected to the North Sea. There on the narrowest part of southern Jutland was established the important transit market (Haithabu, also known as Hedeby, near modern Haddeby), which was protected by the Danevirke fortification. Hedeby was located on the river Schlei opposite to what is now the City of Schleswig.

The wealth of Schleswig, as reflected by impressive archeological finds on the site today, and the taxes from the Haithabu market, was enticing. A separate kingdom of Haithabu was established around year 900 by the Viking chieftain Olaf from Svealand. Olaf's son and successor Gnupa was however killed in battle against the Danish king, and his kingdom vanished.

The southern border was then adjusted back and forth a few times. For instance, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II occupied the region between the rivers Eider and Schlei in the years 974–983, called the March of Schleswig, and stimulating German colonisation. Later Haithabu was burned by Swedes, and first under the reign of King Sweyn Forkbeard (Svend Tveskæg) (986-1014) the situation was stabilised, although raids against Haithabu would be repeated. Haithabu was once again and ultimately destroyed by fire in 1066. As Adam of Bremen reported in 1076, the Eider River was the border between Denmark and the Saxon territories.

From the time Danes came to Schleswig from today’s eastern part of Denmark and Germans colonised Schleswig migrating from Holstein, the country north of the Elbe had been the battleground of Danes and Germans, as well as certain Slavic people. Danish scholars point to the existence of Danish placenames north for Eider and Danevirke as evidence that at least the most of Schleswig was at one time Danish; German scholars claim it, on the other hand, as essentially Germanic, due to the fact that Schleswig ever since had become an autonomous entity and a duchy since it has been populated and been dominated from the South. The Duchy of Schleswig, or Southern Jutland (Sønderjylland), had been a Danish fief, though having been more or less independent from the Kingdom of Denmark during the centuries, similarly to Holstein, that had been from the first a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, originating in the small area of Nordalbingia, in today western Holstein, inhabited then mostly by Saxons, but in 13th century expanded to the present Holstein, after winning local Danish overlord. Throughout the Middle Ages, Schleswig was a source of rivalry between Denmark and the nobility of the duchy of Holstein within the Holy Roman Empire. The Danish position can be exemplified with an inscription on a stone in the walls of the town of Rendsburg (Danish: Rendsborg) located on the border between Schleswig and Holstein: Eidora Terminus Imperii Romani ("The River Eider is the Border of the Holy Roman Empire"). A number of Holsatian nobles sought to challenge this.

The controversy in the 19th century raged round the ancient indissoluble union of the two duchies, and the inferences to be drawn from it; the Danish National Liberals claimed Schleswig as an integral part of the Danish kingdom; Germans claimed, besides Holstein, being a member state of the German Confederation, also Schleswig. The history of the relations of Schleswig and Holstein thus became of importance in the practical political question.

The area of Schleswig (Southern Jutland) was first inhabited by the mingled West Germanic tribes Cimbri, Angles and Jutes, later also by the North Germanic Danes and West Germanic Frisians. Holstein was inhabited mainly by the West Germanic Saxons, aside Wends (such as Obotrites) and other Slavic peoples in the East. The Saxons were the last of their nation to submit to Charlemagne (804), who put their country under Frankish counts, the limits of the Empire being pushed in 810 as far as the Schlei in Schleswig. In 811 the river Eider was declared as borderline between the Frankish Empire and Denmark. Then began the secular struggle between the Danish kings and the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, and in 934 the German king Henry I established the March of Schleswig (Limes Danarum) between the Eider and the Schlei as an outpost of the Empire against the Danes.

South of this raged the contest between the Empire and Slavs. The Slavs, conquered and Christianised, rose in revolt in 983, after the death of the emperor Otto II, and for a while reverted to paganism and independence. The Saxon dukes, however, continued to rule central Holstein, and when Lothair of Supplinburg became duke of Saxony (1106), on the extinction of the Billung line, he enfeoofed Lord Adolphus of Schauenburg with the County of Holstein, as a Saxon subfief, becoming Adolphus I, Count of Holstein with the Saxon, later Lower Saxon dukes as liege lords.