Ribe claims to be the oldest town still standing in Denmark. It was one of a clutch of Scandinavian trading towns founded in the eighth century, and has outlasted all but a few of its peers. These trading towns boomed in the Viking age, and Ribe's location on the western shores of Jutland meant it may well have handled much of the gold plundered from Britain's monasteries.
Today, the streets and quaysides are quiet, access to the port having silted up in the late Middle Ages. The main business nowadays is tourism; Denmark's present North Sea port is at Esbjerg, twenty miles up the coast. The lack of recent development has left Ribe with a wealth of old buildings and a street pattern little altered from its earliest days.
So why does Ribe feature in The Runemaster? Well, the land upon which Ribe stands was once part of the English-speaking world. Until the sixth century, Ribe lay in the northern part of the old kingdom of Angeln. The inhabitants of Angeln were known as the English, and it is these folk, together with their Saxon, Frisian and Jutish kin, who came to Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. So many people sailed to Britain that Angeln was left all but empty, and the Danes moved in from the east to fill the void.
As a setting for an otherworldly adventure, the atmosphere couldn't be better. The town not only looks old but feels old, and it not only feels old but it feels cut off. Standing on the castle mound you really do feel you are standing on an island. The fens may have been drained, but it's easy to imagine the ships and their crews picking their way through the marshes. Aside from the cathedral (the first to be founded in Denmark), everything here is on a small scale. The buildings are quaint and low slung. Most are not more than a few hundred years old but they are built along the same lines as those they replaced. The nearest matches in Britain are towns like Sandwich and Rye. All three are well worth a visit.
It was a bewitching little town. In the fading winter light, the narrow, cobbled streets seemed to weave a web around the minster, holding it fast in the heart of the town as if afraid it might someday choose to leave. Cream-rendered and earthy, brick buildings hugged the old lanes, nestling beneath steep, pink-tiled roofs. Woodsmoke rose from the chimneys of Fishergate, hanging like mist above the rooftops and thickening the heavy, March air. On the waterfront, a pair of boats lay tethered calmly to their moorings, their battered hulls the only token of busier times.
The Runemaster, chapter seven: The Fields of Angeln
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