The problem of Viking silver ingots

During the Viking period, simple cast bar ingots had a number of different functions. They had an economic role, and were a convenient way of storing, transporting and exchanging silver within a bullion system. But they also served as a store of raw material for metalworking, and for the production of coins.

When ingots are found in hoards also containing deliberately fragmented silver and foreign coin, we can be reasonably confident that they passed as bullion. But what about ingots found as metal-detector finds, without an archaeological context?  In England, over 60 silver ingots of Viking-Age form have been recorded via metal-detecting, predominantly as isolated single finds. How can we be sure of their function?

An ingot with a rough and uneven appearance, from Yorkshire
(photo: Ian Cartwright)

One approach is to consider the form of the ingot. The majority of the single finds from England have parallel sides, rounded ends and D-shaped, oval or rectangular cross-sections. Fragmented ingots usually have clean cuts, made with a chisel. They thus have what could be described as a regular or consistent appearance (see ingot in lower picture). This is typical of ingots contained in hoards, where a standardised appearance may have helped to ensure confidence in the quality of the metal. 

However, this standardisation would not be needed for ingots used in metalworking. Indeed, some ingots associated with workshop areas on settlement sites in Scandinavia are uneven in appearance, with rough breaks. Such irregular ingots (such as the find from Yorkshire, above) were probably not used as a means of payment. That said, a regular shape does not preclude the use of an ingot in manufacturing.

A smooth, 'regular' ingot with rounded ends
and test marks (PAS 'Find-ID'
SF-144CA2, photo: PAS)

A second tactic to identify ingots as a means of payment is to consider evidence of ‘nicking’: the process designed to test the quality of the metal and/ or expose forgeries (see the ‘faking it’ blog below). Since a craftsperson would be unlikely to test the quality of an ingot s/he had recently cast, having already satisfied themselves of the quality of the silver going into the crucible, it seems unlikely that ingots used in metalworking or minting were regularly nicked. 

But nicking was a quick and easy means of testing the quality of silver in situations where the source of the silver was unknown, or where you might not trust your trading partner (such as at markets). It is therefore likely that nicked ingots acquired their test marks when they traded hands in commercial transactions. This is supported by the fact that nicking is widely observed on silver within Viking-Age hoards. In England, around half of all silver ingots found singly have test marks, a factor which points to their use as bullion. Notably, none of the 'irregular' ingots shows signs of testing, although the number of such ingots is small.

I can think of several other ways that ingots used in metalworking/ minting might be distinguished from those used as bullion.  Ingots used in commercial exchange might be expected to correspond to a particular weight unit, for instance, or to have a particularly high silver content. I’ll save these thoughts for a later blog article, but if anyone has any further suggestions in the meantime, please get in touch!

Ring bling: a huge Viking gold arm-ring from Yorkshire

This massive gold arm-ring captures a number of features of the Viking bullion economy. It is now on display in Yorkshire museum, and during a recent research visit, I had a chance to study it. This post is about how the ring was made, how it functioned, and who may have owned it.

A huge gold arm-ring, now in Yorkshire Museum. The ring functioned both as an item of jewellery and a store of bullion. Photo copyright York Museums Trust (Yorkshire Museum) 

The ring is one of the most impressive pieces of Viking bullion from England, but it's construction is actually quite simple. To make it, a craftsman took two tapering gold rods and two thin twisted gold wires, and twisted them all together*. (It is thus called a twisted-rod arm-ring - other types of arm-ring could be plaited or made of just one rod). The ends were then joined in a polyhedral knob and bound on either side by gold wire.  One of the ends has been cut and the ring straightened, probably in modern times, as the ring is otherwise complete. It has, however, been tested for its gold content: there is a small nick towards the terminal on the outer angle of one of the rods.

The crescent-shaped mark seen here was made with the edge of a
knife to test the gold content of the ring
Photo copyright York Museums Trust (Yorkshire Museum)

This ring encapsulates the versatile nature of the Viking bullion economy. Not only was it clearly an impressive item of jewellery, which would have created quite an impact when worn, it was also effectively a store of wealth, and could be traded whole or in fragments for payment when necessary. The nick was designed to test the quality of the gold - a positive sign that the ring was treated as bullion at some point during its lifetime. The use of twisted rods also acted as a guarantee that the gold was real gold, and not plated base metal, because base metals (e.g. copper) would not be soft or flexible enough to twist. The tester of this ring would have been satisfied with the results. Analysis at the British Museum has shown that the ring is 95% gold.

So, who wore an arm-ring like this? Naturally, someone very wealthy. The ring is 325g of gold: this would have been a huge sum, probably equivalent to several hundreds of thousands of pounds today. The exact findspot of the ring is not known (it was found during construction work and only reported after the finder’s death) but it’s thought to have come from the York area. York and its surrounding region was a Viking kingdom from the late 9^th century until c. 954, and had close links with Viking Dublin. A number of early 10^th century Viking silver hoards have been found in the area, suggesting a concentration of wealth in Scandinavian hands. One of these hoards, from the Vale of York, also has a gold ring, although much lighter than this one (have a look here). A pair of twisted gold-rod arm-rings has also been found in Dublin, and these are very similar in style to the York area ring.

In the sagas, gold rings are sometimes given by kings to members of their retinue as a reward for military service. One saga also describes King Cnut giving gold rings to his court poets. My guess would be that the arm-ring from 'near York' belonged to a high-status Scandinavian (male or female) with links to York or Dublin, in the late ninth or early tenth century. But I doubt the arm-ring saw much wear. It was perhaps only worn at public events for maximum impact – at the court of the Viking kings of York, for instance, or at public feasts.

* correction: the ring is actually made of two gold rods and one, thinner, beaded wire - see comment below. 

How long did the bullion economy last in England?

Thanks to dateable hoards and site finds, we are pretty knowledgeable about the introduction of bullion in England. Current evidence suggests that bullion was being used by some of the earliest Viking raiders and settlers in England – that is, in the 870s, around the same time as bullion use was developing within Scandinavia. 

The end-date of the metal-weight economy in England is less clear, however.  The latest silver hoards from the Danelaw are found in northern England, and date to the late 920s (e.g. the Vale of York hoard, deposited c927-28). But the evidence from single finds suggests that bullion use continued for longer than the hoards alone indicate. A handful of recent discoveries of foreign and pecked coins, treated as bullion rather than as coins, suggest instead that the bullion economy continued into the 930s, and possibly beyond.

A tiny dirham fragment from Yorkshire. Photo by Ian Cartwright 

This picture shows a tiny dirham fragment, recently discovered at a site in Yorkshire (dirhams were Islamic coins minted in the Middle East, which formed an important source of silver for the Scandinavian bullion economy). Very few people are able to identify these coins, so I took the fragment to Stockholm, to be analysed by coin expert Gert Rispling. After very careful study and comparison with better preserved coins (such as the one below), Gert identified it as a mint of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, dated to c928/9. 

A better preserved dirham, similar to the
one found in Yorkshire

Estimates of the time it took dirhams of this date to travel from their source in the Middle East via Scandinavia and/or the Baltic to England vary: from one or two years to between ten and fifteen. If we take a mid-point of c5 years, the coin cannot have been lost much before the mid 930s, while its fragmentary condition hints at an even later date of loss, in the later 930s or even 940s. Although this coin fragment looks insignificant, it suggests that a fresh source of silver continued to reach the northern Danelaw sixty years or more after the first Viking settlements.

The end-date of bullion use in England is important– and not just for pedantic scholarly reasons.  Since bullion use was a distinctly Scandinavian economic and cultural practice in this period, its longevity in England provides a useful measure of the degree of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian assimilation.  In a scenario in which the Scandinavians quickly adopted local practices, we might expect the use of bullion to have been relatively short-lived –perhaps not extending beyond a generation or two. But perhaps we're now seeing opposing evidence: the Scandinavian way of doing business - or at least their means of exchange - seems to have continued in some areas for an extended period. Although we must be careful not to infer too much from a small number of finds, these coins offer hints for a continued separateness of the Scandinavian settlers and their descendants from the existing, local population. 

Viking Weights: Part 1

The lead weights with metal insets discussed below were rough and ready tools for weighing bullion in a metal-weight economy. The Vikings also had access to more regular, standardised weights in iron and copper-alloy, which were manufactured to specific weight units.

Oblate spheroid weight from Yorkshire, recorded by the PAS
(PAS 'Find-ID' YORYM-01C134). The copper-alloy shell has corroded,
revealing the weight's iron core. Image courtesy of the PAS

One type of standardised weight is known as the oblate spheroid: a spherical weight with flattened poles with an iron core and copper-alloy shell.  These weights originated in the Arab Middle East. Unlike the lead weights, they were made in accordance with the official Islamic weight standard, the mitqāl, of c 4.23g. It's for this reason, as well as the fact that they were difficult to forge, that they're often described as 'regulated' or 'standardised'.

Oblate spheroids first arrived in Scandinavia during the late ninth century, along with large numbers of Islamic silver coins known as dirhams. They are thus closely associated with the weighing of silver as payment: a connection supported by the fact that some silver hoards from Scandinavia contain oblate-spheroid weights.

Interestingly, these weights are also found in England. They must represent imports from Scandinavia, and are thus firmly associated with Viking activity. Yet their distribution shows some unexpected trends. Whereas we might expect the weight distribution to be correlated with that of Viking-Age silver hoards, oblate-spheroids in fact show a different geographical pattern, focused mainly in the east of England, although with some overlap with hoards in Yorkshire. A significant number of examples come from East Anglia, where there are no certain Viking hoards.

Oblate spheroid weights (clear circles) vs hoards (black dots). Copyright J Kershaw.

In this map, the black dots represent hoards (e.g. Cuerdale; the Vale of York), and the clear circles oblate-spheroid weights. This shows the 40+ examples I've recorded from England (excluding the Viking winter camp sites of Torksey, Lincolnshire, and 'A Riverine Site near York').  Others are also known from Scotland and Viking Dublin. Since oblate-spheroids vary in weight (typically from c 8 to several dozen grams), I've increased the size of the circle in line with the weight: the heavier the weight, the larger the circle. This will, I hope, give a sense of differences in the quantity of silver being exchanged across regions. The map shows that even in areas which minted coins under Viking kings (e.g. East Anglia; York), a vibrant bullion economy operated at a variety of levels.

I've found this a useful way of visualising the hundreds of single finds of bullion and bullion-related items I've now recorded a part of my project.  By combining this data with that from other artefact groups, such as silver ingots and rings, I intend to test this apparent disconnect between the distribution of hoards and single finds of bullion, and to plot the distributions against regional levels of metal-detecting activity.

Feedback on this, or other approaches, is always welcome!

Second-hand trade in Viking loot

Among recent detector-finds from England are rather odd-looking cruciform (cross-shaped) mounts. They are often broken, with various projecting arms, giving the impression of birds, as seen from above. They are decorated with interlace and triskele motifs (made of three interlocking spirals). From these designs, we can tell that they date to the eighth and early ninth centuries, and that they were probably made in Ireland, or perhaps in Irish communities in Scotland.

An Irish bridle mount recently found in Devon
(PAS 'Find-ID' CORN-29D1E2)
image courtesy of the PAS

When complete, the arms of mounts would have interlocked with the terminals from other mounts, and this is one way we can tell that they were supposed to be worn in sets. They seem to have been used as embellishments for horse bridles, specifically to cover the strap-unions.  Examples have been found in association with bridles, as well as horse skeletons, in Viking burials in Ireland and Norway. 

It's also clear, however, that mounts sometimes became separated from their set. Single mounts were often recycled to be used in other ways, for instance, as weights (see post below) or items of jewellery. The mount seen here from Devon occupies an intermediary position: it has been separated from its set, but not yet adapted for alternative use. These isolated mounts were clearly very popular among the Vikings: numerous examples have been found in the Scandinavian homelands, as well as in regions associated with Viking activity in Britain. 

Why they were so popular, when they couldn't be used for their original purpose, is an interesting question. Since the mounts were made in Ireland, it's likely that many items were seized as loot during Viking raids on Ireland the west coast of Scotland in the eighth and ninth centuries. Although they are not made of precious metal, they are highly decorative. They probably held symbolic value, serving to associate their owners with the prestige and wealth gained through raiding activity in the West. 

Irish mounts and other artefacts recovered from the River Blackwater.
Copyright Ulster Museum

Connections with raiding activity (if that's what they did symbolise) didn't have to be earned: they could also be bought. The widespread distribution of these finds, in both Britain and Scandinavia, suggests that such pieces were widely available, and this hints at an intensive second-hand trade in looted material. This is supported by the discovery of such loot at prominent Scandinavian market sites, including Kaupang, Norway, and Birka, Sweden, as well as by the fragmentary metalwork and offcuts, including enamels and bridle mounts, found along with Scandinavian-type silver in the River Blackwater at Shanmullagh, Ireland. This assemblage may have been the spoil of a Viking raid on the nearby Armagh monastery in 895. It has been interpreted as the ‘stock-in-trade’ of a Hiberno-Viking metal-worker or merchant, perhaps en route to a market place in Scandinavia or the Danelaw when it was lost or deposited.