The manufacture of melted glass was probably not a skill that Scandinavian
craftspeople were capable of, nor was the making of glass vessels. The handling of glass
was primarily limited to the production of beads. The raw material was imported in the
shape of cubic glass pieces that were melted and manufactured into beads for the
Scandinavian taste. In the Viking period beads were also made of carnelian or rock
crystal, highly valued by the Scandinavians. These beads, arriving via Russia, were
previously thought to be imported as finished products. However, new evidence from
Gotland has revealed that in some degree they were shaped in Scandinavia. The
manufacture of beads has been found on most of the trading centres but traces can also
occur on rural sites.
Pieces of amber often turn up on the trading centres and are evidence for the pro-
duction of beads and other small objects. Amber is a raw material that is common in the
southern Baltic and from here was exported to other parts of Europe.
THE PLACES FOR SPECIAL MANUFACTUREKnowledge about Viking Age crafts has increased a great deal since the 1970 s. A
number of excavations have been made in both previously known and recently found
towns and trading centres. Especially in Denmark and Sweden a dramatically increased
number of rural excavations have revealed a lot of information, not least regarding crafts,
that previously was almost only represented in the towns.
The largest number of traces of crafts come from towns where Scandinavians had
big interests, such as York, Dublin, Hedeby, Birka, Kaupang and Staraya Ladoga. In
these cities a number of craftspeople dwelt, such as bronze forgers, comb-makers and
pottery-makers. These were probably the most prominent places for crafts. But it is far
from certain that all craftspeople stayed here for the whole year, or that the production
was on a large scale. It is not very common that traces of large-scale production reveal
themselves. This indicates that many craftspeople stayed only temporarily in the cities.
Perhaps they dwelt there only when the towns were busy.
In recent years new places with traces of specialised crafts have turned up on average
every second year. The problem is that it is very difficult to define and categorise these
sites.
What many of these places have in common is that they can be connected to people
belonging to the upper strata of society. Some places have been connected to Danish and
Swedish kings, such as Lejre and the Trelleborg forts in Denmark or Old Uppsala in
Sweden. But not only kings gathered craftspeople around them. It almost seems to be a
significant feature for a Viking Age chieftain to have specialised crafts such as moulding
on his estate. This means that the chieftain was not completely dependent upon special
crafts in towns such as Birka, where other chieftains, who were perhaps competitors in
power, had control of the place and the production. We do not know whether the
craftspeople stayed permanently on these estates. The traces of the production are
however mostly quite small, which indicates that it was sporadic.
Some of the other sites can be interpreted as trading centres like the above-mentioned
towns, though smaller and perhaps not permanently inhabited. Other sites, whether
placed by the coast or inland, seem to be a magnate’s estate or a village with an estate,
where some production has taken place. The intention behind the specialised crafts
seems to have varied a lot. Some craftspeople dwelt at the magnate’s estate and produced
–– John Ljungkvist––