As shown in the previous chapters, only a juxtaposition of the local, traditional Viking-age societies with the innovative, largely detached cosmopolitan Viking-age towns may help to resolve the seemingly incompatible scholarly views of the Scandinavians as ‘brutal Vikings and gentle traders’ (Staecker 1997). This ambivalence is not so much a question of two sides of the same coin but instead represents two very different phenomena that need to be treated separately in future Viking-age research (see also Hillerdal 2009: 253). Apart from this appeal to the research community, another frequent inaccuracy also needs to be addressed when discussing early Scandinavian urbanisation: for far too long, Viking-age towns have been perceived as monolithic entities, a perception that neglected their considerable chronological depth of up to 250 years, suggesting dynamically changing conditions rather than static idleness. In fact, a few scholars reached and shared this insight several decades ago, as they tried to tackle this very problem: Hodges (1982: 50–2) introduced development phases, which discerned between type-A (seasonal beach markets), type-B (classical emporia) and type-C emporia (regional administrative centres).