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The main building was an imposing late Iron Age hall – an aristocratic residence whose inhabitants drank from Roman glasses and ate from Roman bowls.
    The adjacent coastal trading site at Lundeborg acted as the port of trade. Gudme also had some cult function; the place name means literally ‘home of the gods’. Although it declined from the 6th century, its trading and manufacturing functions continued into the Viking Age.
    A similar site existed at Uppåkra in Skåne. This also developed as a central place in the Iron Age, but maintained trading, manufacturing, and religious functions until c .1000, when it was superseded by the town of Lund, 5 kilometres to the north. Metal objects have been found over a 40-hectare area, including Arabic and Carolingian coins, tiny gold foil votive mounts or guldgubber , dies for their manufacture, and miniature amulets.
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    The site at Næs was occupied from the late 7th to 9th centuries.
    There were over 20 timber halls, but also some 70 workshops which must have been used as spinning and weaving sheds as each contained loom weights and spindle whorls. In a low-lying part of the site there were also 57 wicker-lined pits, used for retting flax. A 150-metre long channel had been dug to facilitate changing the water. Antlers were also found in several of the pits where they were being soaked prior to being worked. At Sebbersund there is evidence for a zoned trading and manufacturing centre comprising over 300 workshops, where weaving and ferrous and non-ferrous metal-working took place.
    Vorbasse, in Jutland, was the first site where a sufficiently large area was examined to demonstrate a process of localized settlement movement, culminating in the establishment of a permanent village Chan towards the end of the Viking Age. From 1974–92 over 260,000
    ges in th
    square metres were excavated, revealing at least eight separate settlement shifts between the 1st century bc and the 11th century e countr
    ad, as part of a process of local migration and rebuilding to make the most of the agricultural land. By the 8th century there were yside
    seven enclosed farms of roughly equal size, either side of a roadway.
    Each farm had a main hall, partitioned into rooms, and frequently with byres at one end. The halls were surrounded by workshops; some had wells, and one had a smithy.
    The fact that the number of farms at Vorbasse did not change for 300 years has been taken as evidence that the inhabitants were not free and independent landowners but must have been tenants of a magnate farmer or local lord who regulated the farms directly or through a steward. In the late 10th or early 11th centuries there was a major change in building style and the main buildings were replaced by large bow-sided halls, of the type seen at the Trelleborg forts. Separate cattle byres were constructed – the largest farm had five byres with room for at least 100 cattle, as well as a forge and a bronze foundry. In the 11th century the settlement moved for the last time, to the site of the present village.
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    Although the excavations have been smaller in scale, a similar situation – including the appearance of bow-sided halls – has been observed at other sites in Jutland, such as Sædding, Trabjerg, and Omgård, and in Skåne, at Filborna, where several generations of aisled longhouses were succeeded by ‘trelleborg’-style houses in the 11th century. At Lindholm Høje, in northern Jutland, the bow-sided halls of the 11th-century village were built upon windblown sand which had covered the cemetery of the older settlement. In turn they were themselves covered by sand by the 12th century.
    This process of mobile settlements being replaced by permanent villages was repeated throughout northern Europe at the onset of the Middle Ages. Various reasons have been proposed, including population pressure limiting settlement movement and leading to the demarcation of territorial boundaries. The development of villages