EAA2021: Abstract

The fieldwork of 2018 in the ruins of the gatehouse of Virtsu castle (Estonia) revealed a puzzling built element. It appeared that in its final building stage its drawbridge was not located in front of the gatehouse, above the moat, but inside the gatehouse, above a trap pit. This very rare solution among the castles of Europe could be ignored as a random caprice of the owner. However, the written history offers events, which enable to interpret it as a calculated choice. According to written sources, during the Feud of Saare-Lääne (1532–1536), the owner of the castle was on the losing side. Eventually, the winning landlord returned him the land estate with the castle site, but only after it had been demolished, ‘razed to the ground’, and a ban was imposed to build it up again.
There was no legal act to regulate the licence to fortify in medieval Livonia, but the respective chapters of Sachsenspiegel were probably known. The expression ‘razed to the ground’ was obviously an exaggeration as the ruin still stands 1½ storeys high. Combining the material and written evidence, it can be assumed, that Virtsu castle was only stripped of its obvious defensive elements. However, the owner did not overtly cross the ban, but probably tried to compensate the effect by circumventing it in a formal way, by concealing one of the defensive capacities inside the building.
Deception and concealment play an important part in warfare. In case of castles, there has been a lot of discussion of apparently defensive elements with limited or even decorative capacities. This rare case offers an opportunity to discuss the possibilities to identify and interpret the evidence about the opposite – concealment of functional defensive capacities, not so much to deceive the attacking army but rather to fool the landlord.

castles, medieval Livonia, gatehouses, medieval warfare

 Abstract (PDF)

Villu Kadakas¹