fact that locally produced coins mixed with foreign coins only a short period of time
after being struck, suggests that this was taking place within and not outside the Viking
world. Only in exceptional cases do hoards contain coins from one region only, either
Germany or England.
Regional variations exist not so much in the sense that some coins occur only in one
region, and not others, but rather that German coins make up a relatively larger part than
Anglo-Saxon coins in the hoards found in southern and eastern parts of Scandinavia, and
vice versa in the Norwegian material. The regional differences in the composition of
hoards, for instance the relatively large proportion of Anglo-Saxon coins in Norway, do
include larger numbers of coins from the Danelaw, for example minted at York and
Lincoln, while, on the other hand, hoards in Scania contain more coins from southern
England, minted at London and Winchester ( Jonsson 1993 : 205 – 32 ; von Heijne 2004 :
98 – 167 ). This reflects different points of contact and trade routes where the distance
between the Danelaw in England was closer to Norway than other parts of Scandinavia.
The age structure of Scandinavian hoards is generally longer than what is usual for
hoards from Germany and England. Many coins found in Scandinavia must have been in
circulation for a considerable time after they were made obsolete in their respective home
markets. That coins of different origins and different points of arrival in Scandinavia, at
different times, ended up mixed in Scandinavian hoards suggests that they were used,
and used intensively within Viking society. The degree of fragmentation of dirhams in
tenth-century hoards suggests that they were used in Scandinavia, which is also
supported by the fact that the metal-detectorists have unearthed more Islamic dirhams
as stray finds than any coinage from the eleventh century. The many stray finds suggest
that they were used in small-scale exchange and trade. This is also indicated by the
testing of the silver quality which is described in documentary sources from Iceland.
The many test marks on coins found within the Viking world proves that these coins
were used outside the monetised areas in Germany and England, and tested by members
of Viking society.
The size of coinages within the Viking world is difficult to establish, and without
any documentary evidence estimates have to be made from the number of surviving
dies used to strike coins, as recorded from the coins available for study. The numbers
of dies in different coinages vary a great deal. It must be admitted that there are
methodological concerns with this technique even though general conclusions may be
drawn from this material. For instance, the survival rate of dies in the coinages struck in
the name of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian kings around the millennium can only be
seen as experimental in an economic sense. After state coinages were established in the
mid-eleventh century, the number of dies in use for creating coinage in Denmark and
Norway was much greater. Estimates consider Danish issues to have been in the range of
millions, and Norwegian ones in the hundreds of thousands, presumably even millions
(Suchodolski 1971 : 20 – 37 ; Jensen 1983 : 19 – 26 ; Gullbekk 2005 : 551 – 72 ). These must
be seen as evidence for the importance of state coinage and the use of coins within late
Viking society.
The records of thousands of locally struck imitations of Anglo-Saxon pennies, mainly
from Lund and Sigtuna, raise important questions about the use of coins in the decades
around the millennium. The traditional view is that coins and coinage formed part of
a universal weight economy (geldwirtschaft). Without natural resources of silver on any
scale, the source for precious metal to issue these large series of coinages in Lund and
–– Svein H. Gullbekk––