Hedeby and the Obsession with Norse Mythology in Nazi Germany
Miko Nguyen
Abstract
This paper discusses the excavations of Hedeby, a Viking settlement in Schleswig in northern Germany, during the 1930s. The most famous excavations of the site were done by German archaeologist Herbert Jankuhn, who was part of the SS and whose work was influenced by the Nazist racial ideology at the time. Therefore, while his findings contain vital information of Hedeby, it is also useful to look back at the German Romantic Movement and primary sources that date back to the Viking Age to truly understand how Hedeby, and to an extent ancient Norse culture, was mischaracterized under a modern nationalistic lens for the sake of proving the existence of a Germanic kingdom. This paper seeks to highlight how ancient histories and archaeologies can easily be manipulated to fit a specific ideology at the expense of taking away the complexities and accuracies of the sites and their historical contexts in question.
Introduction
The romanticisation of the Vikings and their legendary sagas was a relatively new phenomenon that coincided with the rise of nationalism across Northern Europe. Yet since the Nazis took power in 1933, there was increased eagerness to prove Germany's racial connections to its Old Norse roots through archaeological means. One of its most famous excavations was in Hedeby, a former town in Schleswig in what was former Danish territory. However, there was also a volatile ideology that advocated the belief of Nordic racial superiority, which was what pushed for these excavations in the first place. As a result, the excavations at Hedeby bring out the following questions: How much did Nazist and nationalist ideology distort modern archaeological understandings of Hedeby? Did Hedeby really help realise the Nazi goal of unifying the Nordic "race"? I argue that Nazist ideology romanticized the history of Hedeby as the centre of Germanic cultural purity by projecting ideals from the Romantic and nationalist movements, yet fails its bold promise of unifying the Nordic race. I will start analysing secondary sources that are about the romanticisation of Nordic mythology and Viking culture in Germany from the Romantic Era to identify the flaws of romanticization that will resurface when Nazi Germany regained interest in Hedeby. I will then use primary accounts of Hedeby, notably Adam of Bremen, Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, and the Royal Frankish Annals that explain any reason for German archaeological interest and highlight contradictions from the ideological motives of the excavation. I will finally pull secondary sources that summarizes and translates the details of the excavations by German archaeologist Herbert Jankuhn and identify its problems that caused tensions with Danish archaeologists. An analysis on Hedeby is necessary to caution the weaponization of ancient histories to claim ancestral roots to modern concepts of the nation and racial superiority.
The Romantic Obsession with Old Norse Culture
Before investigating Hedeby, we should investigate the roots of the ideological motives behind the Nazi excavations of Hedeby and idealization of Norse culture in general. Ever since the Prose Edda was first translated into German in the mid-18th century, the Norse goddess of youth Idunn was quick to be utilized as a symbol of German cultural and literary rejuvenation. Later, Idunn became a nationalistic symbol of Old Norse literature as the predecessor of modern German literature, and the source of inspiration in mainstream German culture in the 19th century (Zarnack 161-3). In 19th-century academia, an increasing number of scholars have admired the romantic nature of the sagas that involve sympathetic outsiders as protagonists (Zarnack 171). This is part of the trend of general romanticisation of Icelandic culture as a pure Germanic one, free from the influence of Christianity and modernity from mainland Europe, as according to the sagas (Zarnack 173). The Romantic era not only marks the beginning of idealizing Norse mythology as a vehicle for Germanic cultural purity and literary renaissance, but also claiming the modern German nation as having descended from Scandinavian roots.
Even if Zarnack's article mainly focuses on the German romanticization of Iceland, the idealization of Norse mythology as a source of Germanic cultural purity and revival was a repeated theme when the Nazi Party in Germany took power and supported the dissemination of Norse mythology in educational institutions (Kamenetsky 169). What differentiated the Nazi regime's idealization of Norse mythology from its predecessors was that modification of Norse myths and philosophies were encouraged to prove Germany's links to the Norse past, while also projecting Nazist ideologies on to the myths, even if these modifications end up becoming misrepresentations. For example, German folktales involving "the Fountain of Life," are claimed to be a continuation of the myth of Odin and the Well of Mimir, even though Mimir's Well is not associated with fertility as German folklorists claimed (Kamenetsky 174). Furthermore, folklorists were encouraged to modify folktales to "cleanse" them of foreign influence to attest to the cultural and racial purity of the German nation and the Aryan race (Kamenetsky 173). As a result, Nazist attestations of Nordic mythology, history, and culture are rendered susceptible to being sanitized purposefully beyond recognition to prove to the existence of an ancient Germanic culture that is both culturally pure and idealistic in the eyes of German national socialism.
Hedeby was no exception when it comes to its history being sanitized by Nazi documentations. The lost city was looked up by the Nazis as the centre of an ancient "Nordic kingdom" as the last stronghold of the Germanic way of life before the advent of Charlemagne's Christian influence that tainted it (Hare, Excavating Nations 126-7). Based on this statement, the antagonisation of Christian influence onto a purely Germanic lifestyle reflects the desire for Germanic cultural purity since the 19th century and an even stronger desire to reject Christianity for a pure Germanic lifestyle capable of civilization in the 20th century. The claim that Hedeby was a Germanic Troy where all Germanic peoples unified to fight off the encroaching Christians from the south also seem to argue for an ancient root of Germanic unity that should continue in the modern German nation to fight off against any foreign influences threatening to taint it (Hare, Excavating Nations 133-4). However, these claims and idealizations failed to realize the complexities of Hedeby itself, as according to written primary attestations of the former city.
Primary Sources Regarding Hedeby
We will look at written accounts of Hedeby from Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, and the Royal Frankish Annals to explain any reason for German archaeological interest and highlight contradictions from the ideological motives of subsequent Nazi excavations.
The pre-Christian pagan presence of Hedeby is present in Ibrahim ibn Yaqub's account:
“They [the inhabitants of Schleswig] gather together for a religious festival to honor the gods, at which they eat and drink. Those that intend to sacrifice an animal set up a pole in front of their house from which they suspend a piece of the animal whose sacrifice they are offering: beef, mutton, goat or pig.”
(Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, 163).
The presence of ritualistic animal sacrifice was prevalent in Norse religion and similar to Adam of Bremen's documentation of the temple at Uppsala in his Gesta Hammaburgensis. Therefore, the Nazist fascination of Hedeby makes sense due to the nationalist significance of a Germanic pagan religion untouched by Christian influence. Furthermore, a Saxon colony was earlier established by King Henry the Fowler in Hedeby, which also explains modern German interest in the site as proof of an ancient Germanic settlement linked to Viking civilization (Adam of Bremen, 50).
What is debatable, though, is how exactly Christian influence got into Hedeby. As stated earlier, the Nazis described Hedeby as a Germanic city resistant to encroaching Christian influence from the south. The most relevant primary account would be Adam of Bremen's narrative of a battle between the Saxons and the Danes recounts a different narrative:
“Harold met him [Otto] at Schleswig and offered battle. In this conflict, manfully contested on both sides, the Saxons gained the victory, and the vanquished Danes retreated to their ships. When conditions were at length favorable for peace, Harold submitted to Otto and, on getting back his kingdom from the latter, promised to receive Christianity into Denmark."
(Adam of Bremen, 56).
Based on Adam's account, it seems like Saxons and Danes have fought over the influence of Hedeby as two rivaling kingdoms, with the latter submitting to Christian influence after losing a battle, rather than resisting it. While Adam of Bremen confirmed Germanic presence in Hedeby, his account also contradict claims of Charlemagne's "foreign" influence as the main suspect of bringing in Christianity, when it is actually the Saxons, a Germanic people, who brought Christianity to Hedeby, and Denmark in general, after warfare with the Danes. Therefore, the narrative of a united Germanic kingdom that is purely pagan fell flat considering the disunited status of Germanic tribes and their ability to embrace Christianity more than the Nazis might claim centuries later.
Additionally, the Royal Frankish Annals detail the famed Dannevirke as a fortification system built by Danes to defend themselves against their Saxon rivals, further disproving Nazi claims of Hedeby as the center of a united German kingdom:
“Transferring the merchants from Reric he [Godofrid, King of the Danes] weighed anchor and came with his whole army to the harbor of Schleswig. There he remained for a few days and decided to fortify the border of his kingdom against Saxony with a rampart, so that a protective bulwark would stretch from the eastern bay..."
(Royal Frankish Annals, 88-9)
As a result, the rampant warfare in Schleswig was less about the Christian religion and more about regional rivalries amongst multiple Germanic peoples, and Hedeby served as the foreground of these conflicts, instead of serving as the centre of a unified Germanic kingdom. Even despite these conflicts, Hedeby was also described to be a dynamic hub where trade networks connected as close to Sweden to as far as Slavic territory and even Greece (Adam of Bremen, 187). Therefore, it can be implied that Hedeby, in Adam of Bremen's time, was a hub for different kinds of cultures, and so was fought between different kingdoms. As a result, Hedeby has a more complex identity as both a battlefield fought by Germanic peoples and a major trading hub that connected Northern Europe across the rest of Europe.
Of course, these primary accounts are imperfect due to personal biases against Old Norse religion and the use of secondary sources by their authors, but they still paint a more complex history of Hedeby than the idealistic vision of the "Germanic Troy" rooted in the romantic and nationalist movements of the mid 19th century. While there was a pagan and Germanic presence in Hedeby, that does not necessarily mean that tribes unified to fight against a common Christian enemy, nor was warfare the only way to describe international relations in the ancient city. By looking at a few accounts of Hedeby can we understand how romanticized and nationalized Viking Age history was disseminated under the Nazi regime, even at the expense of historical accuracy.
Nazist Excavations at Hedeby
Finally, we will look at Nazist excavations at Hedeby, including excavations led by Herbert Jankuhn, to demonstrate how ideological aspirations have affected archaeological documentation of Hedeby and how it failed to fulfill the promise of unifying the Nordic race, as seen with German attempts to collaborate with Danish archaeologists.
Herbert Jankuhn was one of the most influential German archaeologists of his time and his documentation of Hedeby remains one of the best about the site (Steinel 153, 162). Unfortunately, as part of the SS, it is not surprising that the Nazist ideology of the time influenced Jankuhn's archaeological works (Steinel 155). For example, Jankuhn excavated in the 1930s strap-ends of Anglo-Saxon origin that solidified Hedeby's trading relations with Anglo-Saxon England (Hilberg 100). Furthermore, Jankuhn's documentation in 1939 referred to Hedeby as the centre of a "Norse Empire" as a predecessor to Hanseatic towns across Northern Germany (Jankuhn 103). Jankuhn also seemed to have cited the construction of the Dannevirke by King Godofrid in the Frankish Chronicles, but not its original intent to guard the site's Saxon borders or other primary accounts of competing Danish, German, and Swedish interests that resulted in wars over ownership of Hedeby (Jankuhn 103; Hilberg 83-4). Furthermore, Jankuhn was also silent of Hedeby's contacts outside of the Germanic world, even when coins and luxuries from the Byzantine Empire and Islamic Caliphates attest so (Hilberg 92). What Jankuhn did in his excavations was prioritize Germanic connections to Hedeby, and even then fell in the trap of visualizing Hedeby as the centre of a unified Germanic empire, which is an idealization greatly influenced by modern German nationalism. What makes Jankuhn's excavations questionable was not that he purposefully falsified evidence, but that his interpretations give an incomplete history using cherry-picked evidence.
Jankuhn's lectures throughout the 1930s about the migration of North Germanic peoples across Southern and Eastern Europe, which included Hedeby playing a part in expanding Germanic influence eastward, further render Jankuhn susceptible to endorsing German expansionist policies that distort historical accuracy (Hare, "Nazi Archaeology Abroad" 15-6). As a result, Danish scholars were skeptical to collaborate with their German counterparts because of the Nazist ideology's impact on the quality of their work to be heavily favorable to German narratives (Hare, "Nazi Archaeology Abroad" 14). The irony is that stronger relations with Scandinavian scholars were encouraged, based on the romanticized idea of Germans sharing a common Germanic ancestry with Scandinavians (Gasche 149). Jankuhn had this mentality when he recruited Nordic scholars, including Danish ones, to excavate at Hedeby (Gasche 148). However, most Danes who continued to work with German scholars to preserve historical sites do so, not due to sharing their Nazist ideology of a unified Germanic identity, but out of patriotism for Denmark (Hare, "Nazi Archaeology Abroad" 20). Indeed, the Danish-German Wars and the German Occupation of Denmark fueled Danish nationalism around the same time German nationalism was on the rise, especially in the field of archaeology and history (Hare, "Nazi Archaeology Abroad" 8, 20). Even German scholars had to convince their Danish counterparts that their research was free from political biases, despite the reality being contradictory, and this included excavations in Hedeby (Gasche 153; Hare, "Nazi Archaeology Abroad" 109). Therefore, the same romantic and nationalist elements that idealized Hedeby as the centre of a unified Germanic empire are the same that pushed most Danes away from collaborating with their counterparts from Nazi Germany.
Conclusion
Nazi interpretations of Hedeby heavily nationalized and romanticized the site's history to the point of emphasizing the site as the centre of Germanic cultural purity and unity, but these ideological biases failed to relate with the Danish scholars the Germans wanted to collaborate at Hedeby. In fact, the Nazist idea of a shared ancient root between Germany and Scandinavia pushed most Scandinavian scholars to disassociate Germany with the rest of Scandinavia in terms of interpreting Norse history, and they continued to do so in the postwar era (Gasche 161). While the few written accounts of Hedeby confirm reasoning for modern German interest in the site, they can also contradict arguments that serve the ideology of a superior Nordic race. As Steinel warned that increased state involvement would result in archaeology becoming increasingly intertwined with political agenda, the colonial intent of archaeology is still relevant and the ethics of archaeological excavations should be monitored to understand its systematic harms (163). While Jankuhn's excavations continue to provide invaluable information of Hedeby, they should rightfully be questioned when given the historical background of their interpretations.
Works Cited
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Miko Nguyen is a UBC undergraduate student, double-majoring in history and anthropology. She was also an editor for the UBC Journal of Historic Studies and contributed to the 2025-26 edition. This essay was written for a summer abroad course on Norse Mythology by DIS Abroad in Copenhagen in 2025. Her current academic interests lie in museums and heritage interpretation, though she has written other works focusing on related topics such as archaeology, mythology, and fieldwork.
Picture: “Yggdrasill, the Mundane Tree”, 1859, Finnur Magnússon. From rawpixel. This image is in the public domain.
