Famous Viking treasure contains silver from over 3,000 miles away

Despite their well documented reputation for pillaging and conquest, life during the Viking Age was a bit more sophisticated—financially speaking. Vikings had to pay fines and the intricacies of their financial system was even documented on silver rings. Their extraordinary wealth also had an even further reach than scholars once thought. 

A portion of the silver from a Viking Age cache discovered over a decade ago in North Yorkshire, England, did not come from local raids. Instead, some of the metal made it to England from long-distance trade networks that stretched over 3,000 miles reaching as far as  present day Iraq and Iran. The findings are detailed in a new study published on August 11 in the journal Archeometry and add to a growing body of research on the complexities of the Viking economy.

What is the Bedale hoard?

In May 2012, a group of metal detector enthusiasts found 29 silver ingots (or bars), several elaborate neckrings, an Anglo Saxon sword pommel, and more in North Yorkshire. They were brought to the Yorkshire Museum in York, England, and date back to the late ninth or early 10th century during the Viking Age.

While military campaigns and raids brought great wealth to Scandinavian raiders, physical dominance was likely only one part of the Viking’s broader economic strategy. This strategy likely involved commercial exchange, melting down imported coins, and then recasting that silver into standardized coins and jewellery for circulation within the Scandinavian bullion economy, where worth was based on a metal’s weight. The Bedale hoard demonstrates this intricate economy at work—where hiding your precious metals was just good banking.

An economy under the microscope

For this new study, the team used a new geochemical analysis. Most of the silver comes from western European sources, probably Anglo Saxon and Carolingian coinage acquired through raiding or ransom. However, a substantial portion originated from Islamic silver coinage called dirhams. These dirhams were likely transported to present day England through Scandinavian trade routes. 

The team says the Bedale hoard shows how different cultures and economies mixed in England during the island’s Viking Age between 800 and 1150. The analysis also confirms that looting wasn’t the only way Vikings acquired wealth. They also participated in far-reaching commercial networks, stretching thousands of miles across Europe and into the Middle East and Central Asia.

“Most of us tend to think of the Vikings primarily as raiders, who looted monasteries and other wealthy places in search of wealth. What the analysis of the Bedale hoard shows is that that is only part of the picture,” Jane Kershaw, a study co-author and University of Oxford archeologist who specialized in Vikings, said in a statement. “The Vikings did loot and pillage—and some of that wealth is preserved in the rings and ingots in the hoard. But they also made great profits from long-distance trade routes connecting northern Europe to the Islamic Caliphate. We can now see that they brought large quantities of this Islamic silver with them when they established settlements in England.”

[ Related: Viking mouths were a painful mess. ]

Sourcing the metal

The team used a combination of lead isotope and trace element analyses to pinpoint three principal sources of silver within the Bedale hoard: western European coinage, Islamic dirhams, and mixed sources reflecting a blend of both sources. Nine of the ingots, or nearly a third of the hoard’s silver, were geochemically matched to silver that was minted in the Islamic Caliphate (an area that roughly corresponds to modern day Iran and Iraq). This Middle Eastern silver likely reached Scandinavia through eastern trade routes known as the  Austrvegr before eventually making its way to England. 

The findings also indicate that Viking metalworkers in both Scandinavia and England refined some of the Bedale hoard silver with locally available lead. Some of the lead may have come from the North Pennines, a range of hills that runs through northern England, suggesting both sophisticated metalworking practices and local production. A large neck-ring from the hoard formed from multiple twisted rods, was likely cast using a blend of eastern and western silver, possibly in northern England. 

“I love to think how Bedale—today a quintessentially English market town in north Yorkshire—was, in the Viking Age, at the heart of a much wider, Eurasian Viking economy,” added Kershaw. “The Vikings weren’t only extracting wealth from the local population, they were also bringing wealth with them when they raided and settled.”

 

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