Viking Age coin finds in the Baltic region

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Baltic Sea with today's neighboring states and islands
The typical composition of a Viking Age hoard find (here the find from 2011 from Silverdale, England): coins, silver bars, hacked silver and jewelry
Sceatta from the 8th century from a find in Ribe (Denmark)
Silver coin of King Olof Skötkonung
English coin from the time of King Aldfrith of Northumberland (7th century)
Dirham from 807 from the emirate of Cordoba
Gotland picture stone from the 8th century with the image of a Viking ship

The Viking Age coin finds in the Baltic Sea region come - apart from a few Byzantine coins - from England , the Franconian Empire and the Islamic world of that time . No coins were minted in the Baltic Sea region in the early Middle Ages . Nevertheless, sea ​​trade is documented from the 4th century. In Gudme and Sorte Muld, there is evidence of an early circulation of Roman money. Roman denarii and solidi appear in the finds, some of which were in circulation as weight money until the 8th century or later . The first coins produced in the north were minted by Olof Skötkonung , King of Sweden around 1000 AD in Sigtuna and Sven Gabelbart (King 986-1014) in Denmark. Hjalmar Stolpe (1841–1905) made one of the first coin finds in Birka. He found the silver treasure with 450 Islamic coins in 1872.

Spatial demarcation

A particular focus of Viking Age activities was the western Baltic Sea area at the connection between the inland sea and the North Sea . The strategically favorable location on the eastern straits made it possible for the Vikings not only to carry out sea trade with their ships as far as Spain, but also to start plundering trips into the North Atlantic , especially the British Isles . Particularly rich and frequent finds from Jutland show where the coins from many parts of the then known world went.

Trade connections to today's Russia, which at that time was dominated in its western parts by a Scandinavian upper class, the Varangians , could also be established via the eastern Baltic states . The navigable trade routes ran across the Dnepr and Volga rivers to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea . Via these routes traders reached Constantinople and Trieben trade with the Abbasid empire with the capital Baghdad and the emirate of the Samanids with the main towns Bukhara and Samarkand . The Mediterranean trade , which had almost come to a standstill due to the spread of Islam, was temporarily replaced by these connections. Coins from the Islamic world are particularly common on the Swedish island of Gotland . A find made by school children in 1975 near Bandelundaviken Bay contained 1,500 Arab silver coins from the 10th century alone. Since then, silver coins have been found on Gotland almost every year. The around 166,000 coins found so far come from over 400 hoards.

Time limit

The beginning of the Viking Age is often dated with the raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne , an island off the Northumberland coast . Since then, coins from England have formed an essential part of the hoard finds made in the Baltic region. Historians also concluded the Viking Age with an event in England, namely the conquest of the country by the Normans under William I in 1066. At that time, the tribute payments from England to Nordic rulers called Danegeld also ended . For the numismatic development in the Baltic Sea region, however, it is necessary to extend the period to around 1130. During this time, the weight money in the economic area of ​​the Baltic Sea was finally replaced by coin money. The first permanently operating mints came into being in Sweden after there had been short-term attempts to issue coins around the turn of the millennium. The penning eventually caught on, although it was initially only beaten in thin and easily fragile specimens.

Coins from the Franconian Empire and the German Empire

At the beginning of the Viking Age , only mints existed in the West in the Franconian Empire and in England , whose coins are the models of Nordic coins in the subsequent period, e.g. B. those from Haithabu .

The evidence of coin exports from German sources begins with the Carolingian coin found on the North Frisian island of Föhr and minted around 755 . However, up to the minting date of 800, around 60% of the coins in the Baltic Sea region consisted of Arabic coins. From 940 onwards this proportion decreases and ends between 970 and 990. The proportion of Merovingian coins is also low. The discoveries made by Föhr between 1976 and 1986 include nine Merovingian denarii and are thus the northernmost location of this money. The finds of Carolingian coins comprised 111 pieces from 48 finds in the entire Baltic Sea region until 1991. This suggests that this money remained in circulation for trade and was not deposited in large quantities like the silver coins from the high tribute payments of English kingdoms and cities.

Only from the Ottonian-Stauffish period are there larger coin finds. The mints of these coins were Mainz , Trier and Cologne , the later ecclesiastical electoral principalities . In the second half of the 11th century, Bremen and Goslar gained importance as a mint.

Coins from England

After the attack on Lindisfarne in 793 there were repeated raids and looting of the Vikings in England. In 991, Archbishop Sigeric proposed to pay Danegeld of 10,000 pounds of silver to prevent the looting. In 994 the looting increased under Olav I. Tryggvason and could only be ended after the siege of London with a payment of 16,000 pounds of silver by King Æthelred . In 1002 £ 24,000 was paid. Claims rose to £ 48,000 by 1011. The last payment in 1018 was £ 78,000 plus £ 10,500 from London. This weight money consisted not only of hacked silver such as parts of bars , jewelry and silver sheets, but also to a large extent of English coins. After Olav Tryggvason's return to Norway in 995 , which he was able to unite under his rule, the tribute payments in the form of hacked silver led to the first attempts to mint their own silver coins in Norway.

Coins from the Islamic world

In the period from 800 to 970 AD, coins from the Arab and Islamic world were predominant in the Baltic Sea region. Series-produced scales and standard weight sets ensured a uniform evaluation of weight money in the entire trading area of ​​the Baltic Sea from approx. 870 AD. Trust was given to the constant fineness of the coins that came from Baghdad and Tehran up to the beginning of the 9th century . After that, Tashkent and Samarkand were added as other minting locations , whose coins made up the majority of the finds from 870 onwards.

The Khazar Empire played a key role in trade between Asia and the Orient with Russia and Northern Europe . The route from the Varangians to the Greeks led through their area on the Dnepr , Volga and in the Caucasus , mostly via waterways, the connection between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea . Was over the Black Sea Konstantin Opel be achieved on ships on the Caspian Sea , the Emirate of Bukhara under the rule of the Samanids and the kingdom of the caliphs of the House of the Abbasids .

The silver coins were often melted down in the countries of the Baltic Sea region and used to make jewelry. This shows an analysis of many silver finds from the collection of the Research Center for Islamic Numismatics Tübingen by the Bernoullianum in Basel . By means of X-ray fluorescence analysis , tiny amounts of contamination of the silver with bismuth , lead , copper , gold , arsenic and other chemical elements could be detected. The proportion of such elements gives an indication of the place of origin of the metal. Jewelery from Sweden, Schleswig-Holstein , the Oder region and the trading metropolis Haithabu have the same composition as the coins that were minted in Samarkand or Tashkent. From the year 840 AD, the coin imports from the Islamic world into the Baltic Sea area decreased and came to a complete standstill between 860 and 870. The reason for this was the falling silver content of the coins, to which more and more copper and lead to balance the weight were added.

Possible causes for the coin deterioration could have been the drying up of the mines in the Hindu Kush or unrest in the Emirate of Nasr II . In fact, there were riots there in 843 AD because the army was not receiving pay. This could easily be remedied by deteriorating the coins, since in a coinage economy the coins retain their face value. However, this was not possible in the weight economy of the Baltic Sea region. However, the rapid end of silver imports from this area could have been triggered by the disruptions in trade routes caused by attacks on the Khazar Empire in the late 860s. In the 11th century, the strengthening of the Roman-German Empire and early mining in the Harz Mountains , the Black Forest and the Vosges resulted in an increased circulation of German coins throughout the Baltic Sea region.

Coin finds from the 8th to the 12th century

According to Cecilia von Heijne and Hendrik Mäkeler, the following amounts of coins are documented from finds in Norway and the Baltic Sea region, they date from around 800 AD to 1130 AD:

region islamic coins Franconian and German coins English coins total
Norway 400 3300 3300 10700
Sweden with Öland 16700 17000 6000 48000
Gotland 65500 65200 26500 165900
Old Denmark 7400 21700 15100 70000
Poland and Polabia 30000 150000 4500 250000
Russia 100,000 50000 3500 155000
Finland 1700 3800 1000 7000
Estonia 5000 10500 2000 17500
Latvia 2200 2100 200 5200
TOTAL 228900 329000 62100 729300

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerald Görmer: Money economy and silver burial during the 9th to 13th century in the Baltic Sea region. In: Monetary History News. 41, 2006, pp. 165-167, p. 165.
  2. ↑ History of Gotland. ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (German)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gotmus.i.se
  3. ↑ Gotland: Viking treasure discovered in the field. In: Spiegel Online Wissenschaft. October 31, 2006.
  4. ^ Money in Sweden - from Gustav Wasa to today. at: Moneymuseum.com (German)
  5. ↑ Gert Hatz: The coin find from Goting-Kliff / Föhr. With a contribution by Ernst Pernicka. Numismatic Studies 14, Museum for Hamburg History, Hamburg 2001
  6. ↑ Marion Benz: How the Vikings got their silver jewelry. In: Basler Zeitung . July 19, 2001.
  7. ↑ Cecilia von Heijne: Särpräglat: Vikingatida och tidigmedeltida myntfynd från Danmark, Skåne, Blekinge och Halland (approx. 800-1130). In: Stockholm studies in archeology. 31, 2004.
  8. ↑ Hendrik Mäkeler: Viking Age money circulation in the Baltic Sea area. In: Quaestiones Medii Aevi. 10, 2005, pp. 121–149, p. 124 full text (PDF, German; 2.1 MB)

literature

  • Gert Hatz: Trade and traffic between the German Empire and Sweden in the late Viking Age. The German coins of the 10th and 11th centuries in Sweden. Scandinavian Economic History Review 25, 1, pp. 93-95, December 2011
  • Philip Grierson : Coins of Medieval Europe. Seaby, 1991
  • John Haywood: Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age. Thames & Hudson, 2000
  • Graham-Campbell et al. (Ed.): Cultural Atlas of the Viking Age. Andromeda, 1994

Web links