Haithabu is presented both as a major Viking settlement and as a tangible point of connection between Schleswig’s past and its modern public embrace of Viking heritage. Its famous bog bodies are displayed at Gottorf Castle, while the Wikingertage brings visitors to a reconstructed settlement at the historic site by Haddebyer Noor.

A Viking Settlement and Its Remains

The account describes Haithabu as one of the largest Viking settlements ever and places it near Schleswig. Its presence in the town’s cultural landscape is made especially concrete by the bog bodies kept at Gottorf Castle. The narrator recalls them lying in glass cases: black, leathery mummies with blindfolded eyes, some retaining braided, fiery-red hair, along with brooches and perforated sacklike cloaks.

These remains make the Viking past more than an abstract claim of ancestry. They are a visible, preserved presence encountered by local residents and visitors at the castle’s museum collection. The narrator notes that everyone in the hometown knows the striking bodies, underscoring how Haithabu’s history has become part of the region’s shared knowledge.

The Historic Site and the Wikingertage

The Wikingertage carries that heritage from museum display into a public festival. For one week each year, Schleswig residents present a Viking-inflected version of themselves to thousands of visitors, including many from Denmark. Those committed to the festivities can go further than attending: they may move for the duration into a settlement erected at the historic site by Haddebyer Noor.

The reconstructed settlement gives the festival a physical setting at Haithabu’s historic ground. In the narrator’s account, the event is part of a wider effort by residents to search for their roots and bring attention to a structurally disadvantaged northern region. The annual gathering thus connects local identity, tourism, and the material landscape associated with the Vikings.

Heritage Between Display and Performance

Haithabu’s significance in the passage rests on two contrasting forms of representation. At Gottorf Castle, the bog bodies are preserved as remains whose details invite close attention; at the Wikingertage, contemporary residents perform a version of Viking life through costume, craft, food, and a temporary settlement. The first presents the past through objects that have survived, while the second turns heritage into a communal spectacle.

That spectacle is not presented without irony. Although the festival’s stated aim is to improve the Vikings’ reputation as uncultured brutes and restore recognition of Viking culture as a high culture, each Wikingertage ends in heavy drinking. The contrast makes the modern revival of Haithabu’s past both a source of local belonging and a sometimes unruly performance of the identity it seeks to celebrate.