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Charlemagne's Saxon wars established the Elbe as marking the northern frontier-zone of the Carolingian realm. With the Saxons to the south, the Frisians to the West, the Danes to the North and Slavs to the East, 'Nordalbingia' or 'Transalbingia' was a border-zone on which all of these peoples left their mark.

Charlemagne supposedly took the initiative in fixing these borders, by removing the Saxons north of the Elbe and giving the territory to the Abodrites:

This did not suit the Danish king Godofrid, however, who a few years later attacked the Abodrites with the aid of another Slavic people or confederation called the Wilzi:

Godofrid's own kingdom probably centred on the south of Jutland, and he relocated a trading-port called Reric in Abodrite territory to his own kingdom, on the southern border at Schleswig/Hedeby (here marked with the southernmost dot on in the Danish kingdom:

By the middle of the tenth century, the landscape had shifted: the Saxons were no longer a recently subdued part of the Frankish empire, but, since the rise of the Ottonian dynasty to the kingship, had been the driving power of the East Frankish realm. Henry I subdued the Danes and the Abodrites and was reported to have had their kings baptised:

The Slavs were primarily the concern of the Billung Dukes of Saxony, however. The Abodrites had their own rulers, whom Widukind calls subreguli (sub-kings), while Adam of Bremen calls them principes (princes), which gives a vaguer idea of their place in the power-structure. While the Saxons clearly wanted to see them as under their authority, in the tenth century at least it was more a matter of overlordship than direct control.

The Saxons' attitude towards the Abodrites was criticised by Adam of Bremen, who blamed their greed for making the Slavs hostile to Christianity, which they might otherwise have taken up earlier.

(AB passage)

Beyond the Abodrites lived a number of peoples who are frequently grouped together as the Wilzi in earlier sources and Liutizi in later ones. Unlike the Abodrites, they had no individual ruler. They were portrayed as fierce, ungovernable, hostile and resolutely pagan, and eager to export their paganism and hostility to authority to other peoples in their region.