Sammendrag
In 1993 Erik Schia uncovered the remains of a large ditch (Schia 1993). This was the start of an investigation which would culminate in the discovery of the fragmented remains of a moat, 25 meter east of Kongsgården’s walls (Derrick 2018; Hegdal forthcoming 2022). This suggested that the defensive landscape around Kongsgården was likely to have been much more complex than previously thought. In this article I will attempt to reconnect Kongsgården with the medieval town based upon the discovery of the moat. I will present and discuss the fragmented remains and explore the theory that it was indeed part of a larger system of defences around Kongsgården. I will show that it is possible to detect the original footprint of the moat by reassessing earlier archaeological evidence and combining this with the new evidence found by NIKU. I intend to show that the moat was part of a final phase of defensive rebuilding around Kongsgården in the mid-13th century and that it was abandoned in the late 13th-century as the defences of Oslo were shifted from Kongsgården to Akershus, the king’s newly constructed fortress. By comparing Kongsgården’s defences with other Norwegian parallels I hope to show that Oslo’s defences followed a blueprint already in place in other towns and that geography dictated how these defences were constructed. In addition, I will show that there was a shift in land use after the moat’s abandonment sometime during the early to mid 14th century.
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