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Chapter 7

SILVER HOARDS AND ECONOMIC SURPLUS

A. Changing amounts of sifaer

The hoards of silver jewcllery, coins, etc., of the Viking Age are a rich source of information about a wide rangę of phenomena, from patterns of warfare and regional and social distribution of wealth to fluctuations of the amount of silver, coinage, exchange and International connections. In this chapter we employ the finds from before 1040, the approximate end-date of the North Sea empire and the close of the Viking period soon after the death of King Knud. Most silver-hoards were found before the First World War, a fact which gives the sample a high degree of stability.¹

The hoards of the ninth century are few and light in weight, only one or two being above 500 grammes of silver; only half a dozen, at most, contain coins. Moreover almost all the artefacts contained in them are complete, and ‘hack-silver’, used for balancing exchanges and as smali change, does not amount to much. All hoards, except one, are found less than four or five kilometres from the coast (Appendix X, Fig. 35).

In the tenth century and early eleventh century the finds are pleńtiful. They are often rich, especially in some areas, and they usually contain both coins and hack-silvcr, and sometimes also silver ingots, though a number of hoards are madę up ofunbroken artefacts, often including gold (cf. PI. VI and VII). (In the following the few objects of gold are convertcd to silver value by multiplying by eight. This ratio is perhaps too smali, but at least it does not overcstimate the gold.) The later the find, however, the morę coins dominate the hack-silver (Fig. 53). Several of the hoards, especially from the last quarter of the tenth century, are from inland areas, but Coastal finds are still common (Appendices XI and XII, Fig. 36).

The change in distancc to the coast from the ninth to the tenth