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Jelling and the new faith

On the large rune stone at Jelling around 965 AD King Harald Bluetooth proclaimed that the Danes had a new religion: Christianity. Between the two burial mounds, the North Mound and the South Mound, he erected a wooden church, with a burial chamber under its floor. In the tomb were the remains of a man, who originally had been buried elsewhere. It may be that King Harald re-buried his father, King Gorm. If this was the case, Harald moved his father from the burial chamber in the North Mound to the church in order for him to be ‘christened’ after his death.

Jelling and the new faith
The Jelling Cup.
Jelling and the new faith
The burial chamber in the North Mound at Jelling had been emptied during the Viking Age and little was found when the mound was excavated in the 19th century.