ANCIENT ARABIC COINS OFFER A RICH REWARD TO VIKING EXPERTS
Fragments of silver found in Norway reveal details about trade with the Muslim world
Fragments of Arabic silver coins unearthed in a Norwegian field have shed new light on the price of livestock in the Viking era.
The seven coin pieces were discovered by detectorist Pawel Bednarski alongside jewellery and silver wire.
Archaeologists believe the coins would have been used for trade and represented about 60 per cent of the price of a cow at the time.
Prof Birgit Maixner, head of the archaeological and cultural historical collections at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Museum in Trondheim, said using silver was easier than bartering.
“In the barter economy, for example, you had to have a fair number of sheep if you wanted to exchange them for a cow,” she said.
“Weighed silver, on the other hand, was easy to handle and transport and you could buy the goods you wanted when it worked for you.”
The artefacts were unearthed in December 2021, but have only now been examined by experts at the museum.
Several of the coin fragments, which are marked with Arabic script, have been dated to the eighth century.
That means they are far older than other coins from the region found in Norway.
The silver weighs 42g and would have been valuable in Scandinavia during the eighth and ninth centuries because pure silver from the Muslim world was rare.
The Gulating Law Code, the oldest collection of laws in Nordic countries, offers clues to their real value of the haul.
“A bit of figuring based on that law suggests this treasure trove was worth about six tenths of a cow,” Prof Maixner said.
“That treasure amount was worth quite a lot in its time, especially for one individual – and also when you realise it wasn’t that long ago that medium-sized farms with five cows became common.”
Coins would not be minted in Norway until about the 10th century, so the value of the Arabic money lay in the silver it was made from.
Vikings in Scandinavia had contact with communities in the Middle East and Asia by travelling along rivers.
The ancient trade routes included the Volga and Don rivers in modern Russia.
In the 10th century, Muslim traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who served the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, wrote in his journal about an encounter with Volga Vikings. “I have never seen bodies as nearly perfect as theirs,” he said.
“As tall as palm trees, fair and reddish, they wear neither tunics nor kaftans.
“Every man wears a cloak with which he covers half of his body, so that one arm is uncovered. They carry axes, swords, daggers and always have them to hand. They use Frankish swords with broad, ridged blades.”
The trove of silver may have been buried in Norway as an offering to the gods or simply for safekeeping.
The jewellery follows the Danish style of the time and archaeologists believe the area where the haul was found was probably a trading post.
Prof Maixner has called it an “exceptional” discovery.
Arabic coins and artefacts from 1,000 years ago have been found across Europe.
Experts have said the Viking Age began in Europe in 793 AD with a raid on the island of Lindisfarne, off north-east England.
Viking attacks were recorded in France and Muslim Spain.
In the ninth century, Viking chief Bjorn Ironside led a fleet of longships to the Mediterranean, with Arab sources describing a raid on Nakur in present-day Morocco.
Vikings mostly traded with communities farther east and sought silver, the most valuable precious metal at the time.
Coins made from silver were largely minted in Central Asian Muslim provinces and the cities of Samarkand and Tashkent in modern Uzbekistan.
Hundreds of thousands of coins were taken to Europe and are prized today by archaeologists and historians.
The coins bear the year they were minted, allowing experts to date the sites where they were found more accurately.
By the 10th century, coins were being made in western Europe and largely replaced coins from Arab regions.
Archaeologists believe the coins would have been used for trade and represented about 60 per cent of the price of a cow