Treaty of Heiligen
treaty
The Treaty of Heiligen was a treaty of peace between the Danish King Hemming and the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. It is attested in the Royal Frankish Annals for the year 811.
The previous King of the Danes, Godofrid, had held a conference with Frankish nobles in 809 beyond the Elbe at Badenfliot, but tension between the Danes and Franks was not resolved. In 810, Godofrid led raids against Frisia and boasted that he wanted to fight Charlemagne in open battle. Before Charlemagne could respond, it was reported that Godofrid had been killed by one of his own retinue. Hemming succeeded Gudfred and offered peace to Charlemagne, but the treaty could not be ratified by exchange of oaths until the following spring, when roads re-opened after a harsh frost. Twelve magnates of each party (twelve from the Danes and twelve from the Franks) met on the River Eider at a place called Heiligen. Gifts were exchanged. The following year, Hemming died and there was a civil war among the Danes.
Some have claimed the treaty established the southern boundary of Denmark at the Eider River, but this appears not to be supported by contemporary sources.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Treaty of Heiligen” as treaty. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as treaty. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2880684. Authority coordinates are 54.374, 10.980. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Treaty of Heiligen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.