Technology and trade

CHAPTER NINE

LOCAL AND

LONG-DISTANCE EXCHANGE

Søren Michael Sindbæk

E

xchange was a delicate matter in the Viking period. Objects moved for many
reasons: gifts were exchanged to maintain personal allegiances, goods were dispersed
freely within families or organisations, treasures were robbed and trade was conducted
on strictly economic terms. The greater and more important share of exchange was
certainly conducted through the mesh of personal ties. Yet it is the impersonalised
commercial relations that have attracted the attention of modern scholars.
Viking trade has inspired bright visions and exorbitant claims: it has been identified
as a decisive vehicle for urbanisation, state formation and colonisation. Some even see a
commercial revolution that introduced market-trade in northern Europe. The search for
the origin of markets and a ‘spirit of capitalism’ has no doubt contributed unfairly to
the fame of the Vikings. But though its scope and importance have often been over-
emphasised, trade was a quintessential cultural phenomenon in Viking Age northern
Europe, and a hub of important change and innovations.

CONFLICTS AND CONJUNCTURES: A BRIEF HISTORY

The Viking Age is renowned as an era when trade and war went happily together – raids
being, so to speak, a continuation of trade by other means. When we examine the
sources more thoroughly, though, the common theme in the history of Viking trade was
that trading networks grew during relatively peaceful periods, and declined in periods of
conflict.
The first distinctive phase of growth is associated with the network of wics or emporia

• undefended port sites such as Hamwic, Dorestad, Ribe, Birka or Truso that developed
  almost simultaneously in the eighth century from Wessex in the west to the Wisła bay
  in the east. The geographical scope of the network is reflected in the distribution of
  many artefacts: the small silver coins or sceattas, and imports such as basalt quernstones
  from the Mayen region, Frankish glass beakers, textiles etc. (Gabriel 1988 ; Parkhouse
  1997 ; Näsman 2000 ). They share a centre of gravity, and probably a locus of agency, in
  the Rhine mouth, from which contacts extend down the Rhine valley, over the Channel
  to southern England, and along the Frisian coast to southern Jutland. More limited finds
  occur in Scandinavia proper, in the Baltic region and in the northern parts of Britain.