Nonnebakken, Viking ring fortress in Odense Municipality, Denmark.
Nonnebakken is a Viking ring fortress in Odense, Denmark, and one of the sites included in a UNESCO World Heritage designation. The circular earthen rampart and its surrounding ditch are still visible within the city, giving the structure a clear outline even today.
The fortress was built around 980 CE under King Harald Bluetooth, as one of several ring fortresses raised across Denmark during his reign. After its military use ended, a convent took over the site, which is how the place got the name it carries today.
The name Nonnebakken means roughly "hill of the nuns" in Danish, referring to a convent that was built on the site after the fortress was abandoned. Today, visitors walking through the area can still trace the circular shape of the old rampart in the ground level and in the way streets and gardens are laid out around it.
The site is located in the center of Odense and easy to reach on foot from the city. Information boards are placed around the area and help visitors understand what the original structure looked like and where its edges once stood.
Nonnebakken is the only one of the Danish Viking ring fortresses to be completely built over by a modern city, which makes it the hardest to study and the least visible of the group. Most of what is known about its layout comes from a small number of excavations carried out in gaps between existing buildings.
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