Around ad900 little was left of the network that had existed 100 years earlier,
though key sites like Hedeby, Birka, Kaupang and Staraya Ladoga persisted. The most
thriving sites of this period were clearly those engaged with the eastern connections
(Ambrosiani 2002 ). These culminated in the period 930 – 70 when the influx of Arabic
silver was at its peak (Noonan 1994 ). The most distinguished economic feature of this
network was the ‘weight-money’ system, based on oriental types of scales and weights
introduced in the late ninth century (Steuer 1987 ; Gustin 2004 ). Their use as economic
instruments is reflected in the many hoards of hack-silver which are found over most of
the Viking world, but particularly in the Baltic region (Hårdh 1996 ). The great frag-
mentation in many hoards shows that ‘weight-money’ was employed for even very
trivial transactions (Figure 9. 2 ).
But a new and very different phase of focused trading networks was under way. In
England the first burhs, or fortified regional centres, were organised in the 880 s. During
the tenth century a new series of urban foundations in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea,
such as Århus, Lund and Wolin, became fortified in a similar way. Domestic coins
increasingly replaced ‘weight-money’ from the late tenth century. At the same time
the introduction of slow bulk-carrying vessels reveal a new level of security on the seas.
These developments all point to a new level of political organisation where trade, towns
and institutionalised royal protection proceeded together – a historical situation very
unlike that 200 years earlier.
A crux in discussions of Viking Age trade and exchange is the idea of ‘commercial
revolution’, variously identified with the beginning (Näsman 1991 , 2000 ; McCormick
2001 ; Hodges 2006 ) or the end of the period (Hodges 1982 ; Christophersen 1989 ;
Saunders 1995 ). Ambiguous results appear from analyses of many supposedly important
commodities like textiles, ceramics, iron, furs and other hunting products ( Jørgensen
1992 ; Roslund 2001 ; Magnusson 1995 ; Wigh 2001 ; Mikkelsen 1994 ). But the late
tenth-century changes noted above do coincide with increasing trade in at least one low-
value staple product – fish (Barrett et al. 2004 ). Market and non-market exchange
certainly coexisted throughout the Viking Age in northern Europe, their relative
Figure 9. 2 Tenth-century hoard of brass bars from Myrvälde, Gotland. The seventeen complete bars are
41 – 3 cm long and were carefully adjusted to a weight between 390 – 410 g. The standardisation shows
that the bars were prepared to function as ‘economic’ objects of exchange. (Photo: Søren M. Sindbæk.)
–– Søren Michael Sindbæk ––