importance changing by conjunctures rather than by revolution (Verhulst 2002 : 135 ).
But if an episode of more radical change must be identified, it occurred from the late
tenth century.
ROUTES AND NETWORKSThe ‘routes of the Viking’ are celebrated in countless historical maps. These mostly
reflect accounts of spectacular, individual journeys, and certainly not regular trade
routes. In a preliterate society, ‘routes’ are journeys taken on a regular basis. They are
defined by the knowledge of travellers, established through previous journeys or verbal
exchange.
An early synthesis of Viking trade, still alive in many contemporary works, pictured
a limited number of trading stations positioned along a few great trunk routes
(e.g. Arbman 1937 ; Jankuhn 1953 ). This model, which reflects the diffusionist outlook
of traditional historical archaeology, is related to the long-lived idea of Viking trade as
a link that united the Carolingian Empire with the Abbasid Caliphate (Bolin 1953
( 1939 ); Hodges and Whitehouse 1983 ; McCormick 2001 ).
Some recent reconstructions rather envisage a dense scatter of sites, suggesting that
each would have acted as ‘central place’ to a region (Carlsson 1991 ; Näsman 1991 ;
Callmer 1994 ; Ulriksen 1998 ). The implied view is that urban milieus evolved on a
Figure 9. 3 The distribution of the eighth–ninth-century Badorf-type ceramics from the middle Rhine
area shows a characteristic pattern. In south-east Denmark and northern Germany the ceramics are found
occasionally in rural sites (small symbols: less than five sherds). In the rest of Scandinavia and the Baltic
Sea areas, they occur regularly in emporia, but were never received beyond them. Apparently this ware
was not brought for trade, but for use by the traders, presumably Frisians. The map shows the ports that
received foreigners from the Rhine area in early Viking Age Scandinavia. (Map: Søren M. Sindbæk, data
according to Brather 2001 and Sindbæk 2005 .)
–– chapter 9 : Local and long-distance exchange––