in the decades around 800. The second takes place in the last quarter of the tenth
century when Islamic dirhams disappear and are replaced with pennies of western
origin, first and foremost German and Anglo-Saxon. In the third shift, national state
coinages in Denmark and Norway replace foreign coins.
When the Viking Age commenced the greater part of all coins in the Viking world
were imported from the Abbasid and Samanid caliphates in the south-east, with smaller
numbers of dirhams from the Umayyad caliphate, and also dirham imitations struck
by the Volga Bulgars in Russia. The Islamic dirhams were introduced in the monetary
reforms carried out by the caliph Abd al-Malik in 696 and 698 (ah 77 and 79 ). As a
result of the Islamic iconoclasm dirhams were of uniform appearance with only
epigraphical design in Kufic writing, and for a long period also of stable weight and
good-quality silver. The weight started to vary significantly in the second half of the
ninth century, and the silver was debased in the second half of the tenth century when
the yield from mines in the Caliphate declined. When the caliphs in the Islamic world
went down the slippery slope of debasement, the Vikings turned their backs on their
coins. Instead an influx of silver from the west replaced the Islamic dirhams. While
coins from Francia, Germany and England had been neglible up to the second half of the
tenth century, discoveries of rich silver resources in the Harz mountains in Germany
fuelled minting in the Ottonian Empire and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, especially from
c. 975 onwards. (For a recent discussion on Islamic, German and Anglo-Saxon coins in
the Viking world, see Metcalf 1997 and 1998 .)
In the years around 995 , uniform regal coinages were issued in the name of reigning
kings: Sven Forkbeard in Denmark, Olof Skötkonung in Sweden and Olaf Tryggvason
in Norway. In parallel with the vast imports of Anglo-Saxon pennies, Scandinavian
imitations of contemporary Anglo-Saxon coins were struck on a large scale within
Danish and Swedish territory. These coinages represent the first step in a process
whereby coinage gradually adopted national features, and which in the decades around
the mid-eleventh century culminated in substantial state coinages in Denmark and
Norway. Sweden did not produce any coinage in parallel with the Danish and Nor-
wegian kingdoms in the second half of the eleventh century. Coinage in Sweden came
to a halt in the 1030 s, and even though vast numbers of foreign coins have been found
in hoards in Sweden, minting was not resumed until the 1140 s, when coinage was
produced on the island of Gotland.
The total number of coins found in Viking territory adds up to more than 800 , 000
coins, with an emphasis on the islands in the Baltic Sea, and the coastal areas of main-
land Sweden, Denmark, then Norway and Finland. The finds from Iceland are few and
far between; it is only on Greenland that Viking Age coins have yet to be found, even
though it is likely that coins were there. The late eleventh-century penny struck in the
reign of the Norwegian king Olaf Kyrre ( 1067 – 93 ) found in Newfoundland reflects the
most western distribution of coins in the Viking world. Tracking the origin and final
destination of coins provides us with evidence for a beginning and an end; the question
to be answered is what happened to the monetary economy in between in the Viking world.
FROM SILVER TO COINSIn the Viking Age economy one can observe a transition from silver objects to coins in
the large hoard material. The shift from silver to coins took place gradually, with
–– Svein H. Gullbekk––