The buildings and chamber burial beneath the stone church

Situated only around 10m south of the foot of the North Mound, Jelling Church occupies a central position within the monument complex and the enclosure; a position which resembles that of the great halls and main buildings of numerous Viking-Age farmsteads and manors recorded across southern Scandinavia. Excavations in the 1940s and 1970s in the standing church from around AD 1100 have revealed traces of several, successive wooden buildings and a chamber burial that is roughly contemporary with the burial in the North Mound. Yet, despite the immense interest in the first building phase and the chamber burial, the architecture of each phase and the stratigraphy beneath the church have only been briefly presented in earlier publications. Based on a re-evaluation of the original Jelling documentation and, in the light of the current, much improved knowledge of the architecture of the period, it is now possible to suggest alternative interpretations of the wooden buildings beneath the church at Jelling.