PAST CRIMESwarlords were trying to seize Anglesey. The records say that 1,000 were
murdered, and 2,000 taken away as slaves, during a raid in 987. The
settlement where the bodies were found was an important defended place that
the Vikings would have used as a base for their raids. The unfortunate people
whose bodies were dumped so unceremoniously had possibly been enslaved
by the Norse raiders and slain by them during their occupation.
Loot from raids and battles has been found in many places in Britain and
Europe. The famous Staffordshire hoard of gold and decorations from
weapons and armour, the West Yorkshire hoard, the Cuerdale and Silverdale
hoards of Viking‘hack silver’(silver objects literally hacked in pieces for their
bullion value), the Vale of York hoard and many others less well known attest
to the amount of loot collected by various raiders during .the AngloSaxon
period. The Cuerdale hoard included over 8,600 pieces, with jewellery, ingots
and many coins. The coins came from the Viking kingdoms in eastern
England and from Scandinavia, but also from Byzantium, Islamic countries,
the Papal States, northern Italy, France and Wessex. This collection was buried
around 903─910, in the Ribble Valley, and discovered in 1840. There have
been several theories about how and why it was buried, but the dates coincide
with the period when the Vikings were expelled from Dublin. The Vale of
York hoard was buried in a silvergilt decorated bowl and consisted of 617
coins, pieces of jewellery and hack silver. Some of the coins came from as far
away as Samarkand, and they date the hoard to 927─928. The bowl may have
been intended for use in a French church or monastery and been stolen during
a raid. In 927 King Athelstan, who was uniting England under his rule, had
taken York from the Vikings and seized its wealth, which he shared out among
his men. Perhaps one of the York Vikings managed to smuggle his loot out of
the city before Athelstan could take it and buried it for safety, but was never
able to come back to retrieve it.
Hoards are regularly found in Sweden and Denmark, but others have turned
up in the Netherlands, France and Norway. French, Irish and British coins and
jewellery appear in the Swedish hoards. The massive hoard found at
Roermond on the River Maas dates from the ninth century. There were 1,134
coins and more than twentysix other silver objects, all discovered during
gravel extraction works. It was probably buried in some sort of container, as
the finds were fairly close together, and not scattered by the river, although
other deposits of the same date have turned up in the vicinity before. Most of
the coins were French in origin, but one came from Mercia in England. The
other objects included mounts and buckles from sword belts and harness, and
a spur. They would have belonged to a wealthy warrior. It is possible that the