Dorestad & Rorik – Trade on the Lower Rhine

Vikings were not only raiders. In the Rhine-Meuse delta they sat in the very middle of the greatest trading centre of the Frankish realm – and one of them even ruled Frisia on behalf of the emperors. The other, quieter side of the Viking Age on the Lower Rhine.

Dorestad – the Gateway to the North

Dorestad (near modern Wijk bij Duurstede) was the great Frankish trading emporium in the Rhine delta, made rich through connections reaching as far as Byzantium and the Islamic world – the North Sea rival of Danish Hedeby. It was precisely this wealth that drew the Vikings: in 834, 835, 836 and several more times Dorestad was plundered, and in 863 it was finally laid waste.

The greatest trading place of the North

Dorestad, near today's Wijk bij Duurstede on the Rhine-Meuse delta, was in the 8th and early 9th century the largest trading place in north-western Europe. Along kilometre-long wooden jetties ran goods from the Frankish empire, the North Sea and Scandinavia: Rhenish pottery and wine glasses, millstones from the Eifel, woollen cloth, slaves, silver. Its own coins were struck here, and the place was the gateway through which the Frankish north traded with the Viking world.

Rorik – a Viking as governor

Precisely because Dorestad was so rich, it drew raiders. Several times in the 830s the place was attacked. The Frankish kings resorted to a pragmatic means: they gave Dorestad and the surrounding Frisia to the Danish leader Rorik as a fief – a Viking was to protect the coast against other Vikings. Thus raiders became, for a time, governors.

"The Northmen laid waste Dorestad and all the coastal places." Paraphrased after the Frankish annals of the 9th century (public domain)

Why Dorestad really declined

The decline of Dorestad is often blamed on the Vikings alone – but that is too simple. Just as important were shifts in the course of the Rhine and the silting of the waterways, which literally drained the harbour. Trade moved to younger places like Tiel and Deventer. Dorestad did not die from a single raid, but from a mixture of violence, environment and economics.

On the doorstep of the Lower Rhine

Dorestad lay downstream from us, where the Rhine opens to the sea – the same waterway on which the Northmen pushed in 881/882 as far as Aachen, Cologne and the Eifel. The history of this trading place therefore belongs directly to the history of our region.

What the excavations show

Systematic excavations of the 1960s and 1970s near Wijk bij Duurstede made Dorestad visible again: long rows of wooden landing jetties, built ever further into the water as the river retreated, together with tens of thousands of finds – pottery, glass, metal, coins. They attest a place that lived on long-distance trade over generations, and at the same time show how deeply the wandering Rhine determined the fate of the harbour. Craft waste and tools also point to comb-makers, smiths and boat-builders who worked alongside the merchants in Dorestad and made the place a true town of its time.

Rorik: the Viking as Governor

The Danish Viking Rorik of Dorestad received Dorestad and large parts of Frisia from the Franks as a fief and ruled there for roughly 841–873. The classic case of the poacher turned gamekeeper: a Viking lord who held Frisia for the realm in order to keep other Vikings out. After 882 a second „Viking duke“, the baptised Godfrid, held Frisia.

The First Rhine Voyages

As early as 862 Vikings sailed up the Rhine for the first time and plundered Cologne; in 863 they took Utrecht and Nijmegen, and in 864 they raided the old Roman town of Xanten. Yet wherever they settled, trade flourished too: their superior ships carried goods against the strong Rhine current – and linked Ireland, England, the Rus and Scandinavia.

The bigger picture is set out in our overview of the Germanic peoples, Celts & Slavs.

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