ABSTRACT
In the five centuries preceding the birth of Christ, a wave of settlement expansion swept over Denmark. The introduction of new types of land management created in the course of a few centuries countless changes in the old settlement pattern which had endured for almost 2000 years. This expansion trend continued up to about the middle of the first millennium AD, after which a stagnation apparently set in. Then, in the seventh and eighth centuries AD, the process again accelerated. During the last centuries of prehistory, socio-economic conditions slowly created the foundation for a development which achieved its full flowering in medieval feudal society.
