 Yes, thanks to the organizers for accepting my paper and as it says up there, I'll talk to you about the development of Danish towns in the sort of first phase of urbanization, the time between 700 and 1050. And in Denmark, since the 1960s, we have known about the elite residences of the Iron Age aristocrats, and by many researchers, these sites are called central places. The term and the associated theories by the German geographer Walter Kistaller implies that the central places should be part of some sort of system involving several levels in an interconnected hierarchy. But not very many researchers have discussed whether Kistaller's model aiming at describing networks among medieval towns with a state structure behind it is a good fit when it comes to the activities that went on at an elite residence in say fifth century southern Scandinavia. Was a state in existence and if so, what were its chances of controlling and upholding a central place system? Could it be that the central places instead were just local magnet farms with activities related to cult and feasting, but with no other system behind them, except the family or kin based relations among the aristocrats, plus a shared idea of how to express an aristocratic lifestyle. There is no doubt the central places were of a different size, but does it necessarily mean there's a system behind them? One could also ask if there's a system behind, for instance, village formation in the pre-Roman or Roman Iron Age. And if we follow the view of, let's say, Chris Wickham in Framing the Early Middle Ages or the inheritance of Rome, he sees the Danish society or the southern Scandinavian society of the Germanic Iron Age as having many indications of strong aristocracies, lots of free peasants, but no or few indications of any strong central power. So who would really be able to impose such a system on the central places? In this paper, I will look at two different models for understanding the urbanization process in early medieval Denmark, the time span between 700 and 1050. And I'll suggest there were two overall types of towns in this period. The first was the Emporium, a marine or riverine trading place with coin economies controlled by the king and a source of income for him. There were only very few Emporia, but they were quite large. And in order for them to function, there were many smaller coastal trading places of stopovers probably run by local people. And I think that supply and demand and market mechanisms actually explains quite a lot of this system. The other type of towns could be called a center town or perhaps a central place town and it is a much later phenomenon closely associated with the rise of Christian monarchy from the late 10th century. These towns were very different from the Emporia, but by the 13th century these two types of towns had merged into one, blurring the initial differences. But it is two quite different phenomena, I think. So with the appearance of Riebe around 700 AD, the Emporia phenomenon reached Scandinavia. A bit later in the 8th century, two other Emporia appeared, that is Reirich close to Wismar in present day Germany and Ohus in Scania present day Sweden. Despite being in three different countries today and therefore having been investigated from quite different angles in very different ways, these three sites share some characteristics which I think sets them apart from all other known sites in southern Scandinavia. They were huge centers for specialized crafts including glass bead production, co-making and metal casting. They were coastal or riverine, and they had controlled coin economies already in the 8th century based on the series X or the Wodan monster, Chateau. This controlled currency system was first suggested by Michael Metcalf in the 1990s but has since been supported by many later excavations. It is well-attested in Levis stratigraphy which has very good chronologies and has more than 250 Chateau finds or less single finds. In Reirich the preservation and research history is very different from Riebe and the site is plowed over today and partly lost to coastal erosion. However, in recent years more than 40 of these Chateau type coins have been found by metal detecting and this unstratified group of coins seems to fit the controlled currency system in Reirich. Also Reirich is mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals in 808 when the merchants were moved to Heiterbu by the Danish king Godfred. The entry also says that before 808 Reirich had given lots of income to the Danish king thereby suggesting Danish control over the emporium in the 8th century. Only very small parts of Ohus has been excavated or at least of early 8th century Ohus has been excavated but the activities seem to fit those of Reirich and Riebe. And also from Ohus there are three Wodan monster Chateau. And also the neighbouring village just over here actually has the name Reepa and has had that name since medieval times it's a very unusual place name also in Sweden. And I think this probably indicates that Reepa was one of the names of the emporium. If we put these three emporia on a map and apply the ethnic or cultural groupings of the time it is quite evident that there is a very good fit with the general border zone model that you can read about in Richard Hodges and many other researchers. So we can see that the emporia were placed at border zones to support international and interregional trade. So they were all about trade and connecting people with different ethnic or cultural identities. Used this way they can also outline the borders of the Danish realm of the time. At the centre of this geography we have Laira the legendary seat of the Skjölunge dynasty and also in Laira we have the largest known hall building in all of Scandinavia. So I just ask if that is a coincidence. In the course of the 9th century the emporia system changed. Heitabub was founded, Reere was moved to Heitabub and from the 830s Dorsdag the dominant emporium in the entire system was destroyed by Viking attacks. In effect Heitabub took over as the largest emporium in Northern Europe and guess what also in Heitabub there was a controlled currency in the form of the so-called KGE3 coin that you see in a very bad resolution down there. This coin is actually a copy of a Dorsdag coin, it said Karolus and Dorostadt. So there is no doubt where the coin issuer the Danish king got his inspiration from. So what happens is that we move from a system of perhaps roughly equal sized emporia in the 8th century to a more differentiated model in the 9th century with one very large emporium Heitabub but also the continued existence of Riebe and probably Ohus on a smaller scale and probably also Kaupang the small emporium in Westfold is part of this group. Some might say that Ohus was also an emporium in the 9th century and Olbo up here is another question mark but if we look at the raw facts the archaeological record Ohus seems more like a local trading place like many others nowhere near the massive times from the emporia. So the emporia system seems to seeks to monopolize trade under circumstances that can be controlled by the king. So Heitabub and its successor town, Statesby, actually kept this centralized role well into the 12th and some might say also into the 13th century. Also a lot happened in Denmark in the 10th century but we don't have time to go into that so we'll jump to the sort of next phase of urbanization and look what happened in the late 10th century when another type of town appears. And you could call this town the center town or a central place town or Administer Tiber, Ted Orto or whatever name has been used in different traditions. But these towns are actually very different from the emporia even though there are some links and to some extent many of the differences have since been blurred by the fact that these two models, the trade town and the central place town, merge in the course of the 11th to 13th century. This process created the well-known network of evenly spaced small towns all over Denmark but behind that there is these two models I think. And these new center towns are a phenomenon of the late 10th and early 11th century and they are closely related to the conversion process and a new social model, the rise of Christian monarchy. So church building and royal control went hand in hand. And if we take a closer look at the new center towns of the late 10th century like Vibor, Odense, Roskilde and Lund and we try to investigate what went on in them in the first half of the 11th century. We reach quite similar results I think. We can see that they housed a mint so the king must have been present in some way but we haven't found any real traces of where he lived or any high aristocracy really but the king must have been present. But what is really clear in the archaeological record is that they were great church centers and their archaeological record is full of church yards and really not very much else. So I think they played a very key role in the ongoing conversion process. And some might say that there are actually some trade and craft going on in Vibor but that probably has to do with this town's role as the center of the thingsite for Jotland and the market associated with that. But otherwise trade and craft really did not play a big role in these center towns. So we had these two models, the Emporia model and the center towns and they were quite different but in the course of the 12th and 13th century they mixed up and too many would appear as one model today but I think there are these two models behind it so thank you.