Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland (Routledge Archaeologies of the Viking World)

by Marek Jankowiak (Editor), Jonathan Shepard (Editor), Jacek Gruszczynski (Editor)

• New

  Hardcover
  2021

  $141.76

  That there was an influx of silver dirhams from the Muslim world into eastern and northern Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries is quite well-known, as is the fact that the largest concentration of finds of hoards is on the island of Gotland. Recent discoveries have shown that dirhams were reaching the British Isles in significant quantities. What has been lacking is an attempt to delineate the finds of hoards in chronological and geographical terms, and to investigate the circumstances in which hoards of dirhams were deposited. Equally lacking is an attempt to examine the processes that brought the dirhams to northern Europe. The fur-trade has been proposed as one driver for transactions, but the slave-trade offers another-quite complementary-explanation for the dirhams.

  This volume highlights the trade in slaves as an important driver of exchanges on a trans-continental scale in the Viking era. By their very nature, the nexuses of communications and transactions were complex and they have accordingly eluded modern scholarship. This volume aims to shed some light on processes and key places: the mints of Central Asia; the chronology of the inflows of dirhams to Rus and northern Europe; the reasons why silver was deposited in the ground and why so much of it ended up on Gotland; the functioning of networks; the drivers and opportunities for slave-trading in the British Isles, and the stimulus and additional networks which the Vikings brought into play.