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1,100-year-old Viking hoard reveals raiding wealthy only ‘part of the picture’ — they traded with the Middle East too

4 weeks ago

A Viking hoard unearthed in England contains silver traded from the Islamic world, as well as plenty of silver looted in Europe, a new study reveals.

The 1,100-year-old Bedale hoard offers a glimpse into the substantial wealth that the Vikings had in England during the Viking Age, and includes a gold sword pommel, silver jewelry and 29 silver ingots. The hoard was first discovered in 2012, but archaeologists have only just discovered that some of its riches were acquired through long-distance trade networks that stretched deep into the Middle East.

Following their analysis, published Monday (Aug. 11) in the journal Archaeometry, the researchers concluded that most of the hoard’s silver came from western Europe, likely from looted Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian coins. However, a good chunk came from Islamic silver coinage.

The researchers’ findings reinforce the Vikings’ connections to the Islamic world and highlight that they didn’t just loot their way to wealth.

“Most of us tend to think of the Vikings primarily as raiders, who looted monasteries and other wealthy places in search of wealth,” study lead author Jane Kershaw, an associate professor of Viking Age archaeology at Oxford University in the U.K., said in a statement. “What the analysis of the Bedale hoard shows is that that is only part of the picture.”

Related: Hornelund Brooches: Viking age gold ornaments mysteriously buried in Denmark 1,000 years ago

The Vikings were a diverse and successful people who originated in Scandinavia. They are famous for their sea-borne raiders and explorers, who travelled to diverse lands across at least four continents, including North America, between the 8th and 11th centuries.

The Bedale hoard was discovered by metal detectorists Stuart Campbell and Steve Caswell near the town of Bedale in northern England, which the hoard was named after. In 2014, BBC News reported that the hoard was valued at a little over $70,000 (£51,636) in today’s money.

For the new study, researchers used geochemical analysis to identify the original source of the silver used to make the hoard’s ingots and jewelry. This analysis revealed that the silver was made from melted-down western European coinage and Islamic dirhams.

A third of the hoard’s ingots matched silver minted in the Middle East, mainly from the Abbasid Caliphate, the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammed that spanned a vast territory encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, much of North Africa, and modern-day Iran and Iraq.

The hoard’s silver would have reached the Vikings via eastern trade routes called the Austrvegr, according to the statement. To obtain the coveted dirhams, the Vikings exchanged fur, amber, swords and slaves, according to the accounts of Arab chroniclers. The Vikings would have then taken this Islamic silver with them when they settled in England.

“I love to think how Bedale – today a quintessentially English market town in north Yorkshire – was, in the Viking Age, at the heart of a much wider, Eurasian Viking economy,” Kershaw said. “The Vikings weren’t only extracting wealth from the local population, they were also bringing wealth with them when they raided and settled.”