During
the ninth century, Vikings launched sustained raids on the Continent. Their aim
was to acquire portable wealth: gold and, especially, silver. By all accounts, they were remarkably successful. So why does so little Viking loot survive in the archaeological record?
The
sums raised by the Vikings through bribery, theft and extortion were enormous,
especially when raiding intensified in the mid ninth century. Surviving documentary
sources tell us that Vikings on the Somme extracted 5,000 lbs. of silver in 860. Two years later, another group on the Loire gained
6,000 lbs. Exact sums are not always mentioned, but a reasonable estimate is that raids on the Continent earned the Vikings a total of 7 million Carolingian pennies (or c. 30,000 lbs of silver). In today’s money,
that’s somewhere between 85 and 170 million British £ (maths courtesy of a 10th
century Anglo-Saxon law code, and reckoning on the, rather variable, modern
price of sheep).
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| A Carolingian coin of Lois the Pious, minted at Melle, western France between 822 and 840. It was found in Louth, Lincolnshire - one of a growing number of single finds of Carolingian coins from England. PAS 'Find-ID' F6C6E1 |
Despite
this, only around 200 Carolingian coins are recorded within Scandinavia. Even more incredibly, these coins date mainly to the 820s and 830s, indicating that they arrived
in Scandinavia before the high point
of raiding in the middle of the ninth century. Carolingian coins are also found in England
and Ireland, both as single finds and in Viking-Age hoards. But even here they
are not especially numerous, even in hoards deposited soon after the main
events, in the ninth century. The recently-discovered Watlington (Oxfordshire) hoard,
deposited in the late 870s, contains only 2 Frankish pennies out of a total of
c. 200 coins. We’re talking a trickle, rather than a flood.
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So,
what happened to all the Continental coins? Even if we accept that the Vikings sometimes received other goods (cattle, grain, wine) in place of silver, and spent a portion of this wealth (on land, for instance), we would still expect a
significant proportion of coins to end up back in Scandinavia or in other areas
settled by Viking groups in the ninth century. Do the written sources
exaggerate the amount of European wealth that ended up in Viking hands? Or did
the Vikings simply melt down most of the coins to make silver ingots and rings
(which were, after all, easier to transport)?
Because
the act of melting down the silver effectively masks its origins, the only way
to answer this question is through metallurgical analysis. This has only rarely
been undertaken for Viking silver. But I recently had the opportunity to
analyse the silver objects (ingots, rings and a brooch) and contained in the
Bedale, Yorkshire hoard, probably deposited around c. 900 AD. Together with
Jane Evans at the British Geological Survey, I sampled all 37 silver artefacts
from the hoard, obtaining lead isotope data for each item. This data gives an
isotopic signature of the small amount of lead that is present in the silver.
It can be compared with the isotopic ratios of lead in Carolingian pennies, and
other likely source coinages, to identify relationships between the coins and
the silver artefacts. It has the potential to reveal where the silver used to
make ingots and rings originally came from.
This
is work in progress (you can see a short video about it here, and at the Vikings: Rediscover the Legend exhibition,
currently on at Southport Atkinson centre). I'm going to write future blog articles about how the analysis as a whole sheds new light on the question of where Viking loot ended up. But here I wanted to share one, particularly exciting result.
The two Hiberno-Scandinavian (ie. Irish-Viking) objects in the Bedale hoard seem to have lead isotope ratios that match closely those of coins produced at Melle in western France: a major Carolingian mint in the ninth century. The results would seem to suggest that they were made by melting down Carolingian coinage, perhaps coinage that was brought to Dublin in the years before c. 900. This is interesting, because the Cuerdale hoard, deposited c. 905-10 in Lancashire, north-west England, contains an unusually large number of Carolingian coins (about 1000), many of which come from western France and may be the result of a Viking raid on Aquitaine in 898. Much of the Cuerdale hoard silver came from Ireland - what we may be seeing is an influx of Carolingian coins into Dublin or the Irish Sea region shortly before the turn of the tenth century.
The two Hiberno-Scandinavian (ie. Irish-Viking) objects in the Bedale hoard seem to have lead isotope ratios that match closely those of coins produced at Melle in western France: a major Carolingian mint in the ninth century. The results would seem to suggest that they were made by melting down Carolingian coinage, perhaps coinage that was brought to Dublin in the years before c. 900. This is interesting, because the Cuerdale hoard, deposited c. 905-10 in Lancashire, north-west England, contains an unusually large number of Carolingian coins (about 1000), many of which come from western France and may be the result of a Viking raid on Aquitaine in 898. Much of the Cuerdale hoard silver came from Ireland - what we may be seeing is an influx of Carolingian coins into Dublin or the Irish Sea region shortly before the turn of the tenth century.
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| A Hiberno-Scandinavian broad band arm-ring from the Bedale hoard. Its lead isotope ratio is consistent with that of coins produced at Melle in western France, suggesting it was made from melted-down Carolingian pennies. Photo copyright Yorkshire Museums. |
In this case, then, it seems likely that silver coins obtained by the Vikings on the Continent were taken to Britain or Ireland where they were either preserved as coins or melted down into ingots and rings that the Vikings could store, trade and/ or wear as appropriate. We are beginning to unravel the history of Carolingian coins once they passed into Viking hands. Would silver rings and ingots from Scandinavia reveal the same link with Melle?
