Departure; we take another warm shower, ask the harbour master to be sure about the upcoming lock passage into the inland water (today’s Lake Mälaren) to the island of Björkö, and say goodbye. Soon we reach the lock, and we realise that our harbour master’s information unfortunately does not correspond to the facts: The lock costs something (only for foreigners) and we learn that the next lock, a little further south, back to the sea, is being revised and is therefore closed – which means nothing other than that we have to return here and take a huge diversion on our way south. So we have less time to visit Birka (because we don’t want to stay and spend time there in this weather).
Birka – what is it and why do I really want to come here? – Birka was a settlement that must have had great importance as a trading centre about 1,000 years ago. Specifically, it was THE northern trading centre from around 790 AD and THE address for all those who wanted to get to the north via the Baltic Sea.
The settlement of Birka was home to around one thousand inhabitants, which was a large settlement for the area at that time, a real city, so to speak. My attention was drawn to Birka last year during my visit in Haithabu (Blog 009) – quite obviously there were close trade relations between the two settlements and they belonged to the same cultural area. It is also known that a Benedictine monk and missionary named Ansgar travelled from Hamburg to Haithabu and on to Birka (actually, he travelled here twice in his life) to preach the Gospel and to persuade the population to believe in one God (with rather modest success).
Excavations have shown that spices as well as silver coins from the Arab region (!) were traded in Birka (the coins were melted here and recast into jewellery). The trade with slaves was also a lucrative business; healthy labour was in demand up here! – Money, however, was not yet known or worth more than their silver content, and trade was carried out in exchange for other goods, such as iron ore or furs from the region. There were basically only two ways to get wealth: barter or rob. Or the other way round: first rob and then barter. (So you had to be energetic or tricky, preferably both – we remember the events in Viveiro/Blog 034. So in this respect not much has changed until today).
Birka is called the ‘first town’ in Sweden – people lived widely spread outside Birka, were self-sufficient, lived close to the water and avoided the inaccessible forests. Therefore, the sea route was preferred for transports… We must not forget that the water level today is about five metres lower than it was then, so that Birka was directly accessible from the Baltic Sea in a network of fjords, and at the same time protected from the influences of the stormy sea. (The fact that after Birka’s fall, nearby Stockholm became the capital of Sweden is therefore no coincidence).
Our walk through the former settlement area is unspectacular; everything has long since fallen into disrepair and dissolved into the earth. Life here is in no way comparable to the city states of antiquity, which had completely different climatic conditions and built monuments, even homes, and even entire cities out of stone two thousand years earlier, and whose evidence can still be seen and marvelled at today.
The Birka museum is excellently done and, together with the replicas, offers a sympathetic insight into life in those days – but I prefer to linger on the hill of the former fortress, let my view wander, let the wind and the raindrops pass by, breathe in the air deeply, and try to understand the drive of those people who, in the face of the rather ‘harsh’ influences of nature, had to do everything, really everything, to secure a good life for themselves and their loved ones.
But now it is time to return to the ArgoFram, to sail back to Stockholm, to lock again in order to enter the Baltic Sea, and to curve southwards through the island world. We moor in Trosa and cook ourselves a simple evening meal. With images in my head of life back then, without running water, without electricity, without central heating, without a shop, without draught- and waterproof houses, without Goretex clothing, without aluminium boats with powerful outboard motors and without means of communication in my pocket, without… I soon fall asleep. And just think: our ancestors also laughed and loved and celebrated parties.