A Viking silver hoard (or Viking hoard) is a stash of (mostly) silver coins, ingots, personal ornaments and fragmented metal left in buried deposits throughout the Viking empire between about AD 800 and 1150. There are hundreds of these stashes which have been found cached in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and northern Europe. They are still found today; the most recent was the Harrogate hoard discovered in Yorkshire in July 2007.
Amassed from plunder, trade and tributes, as well as bride-wealth and fines, the hoards represent a glimpse into the wide-ranging grasp of the Viking economy, and into the minting processes and silver metallurgy of the world at the time. About AD 995 when the Viking king Olaf I converted to Christianity, the hoards also begin to show evidence of the Viking spread of Christianity throughout the region, and their association with trade and urbanization of the European continent.
Viking Silver Hoard Contents
Viking hoards contained a range of materials, coins, bars and ingots, personal ornaments, and hack-silver (silver ornaments or other objects cut or hacked into pieces to facilitate exact weight exchanges). Archaeologists are most interested in the coins, because of the iconography stamped on them and what that represents to the period.
Hoards from different regions in the Viking empire contained coins made from Byzantine, Islamic, European and Scandinavian mints. Often the coins within the hoards are cut into pieces, or show signs of having been tested or 'pecked'. 'Pecking' a silver coin meant poking it with a knife in order to determine its quality. In the process, a little sprue of metal is raised, and oft-pecked coins are battered and bent and covered with little sprues.
Monetary Economy and Viking Silver
Coins in the hoards could be valued by either the monetary value assigned to it by the government of manufacture or by the weight of silver in them. Susan Kruse has argued that hoards containing more coins that silver pieces are more prevalent where the government is strong enough to support a robust currency-as in late Anglo-Saxon England.
The role of silver in the Viking economy was partly monetary, and partly social, and it was used for trade, gifts, and creating alliances. Together with written documentation about Viking ostentation (such as a report by the Abbasid diplomat Ahmad ibn-Fadlan or stories recorded in Viking age poetry), the silver hoards represent a rich source of information about the growing medieval economy.
Viking Silver and Archaeology
Important Viking silver hoards include Cuerdale (England), Ashdon (UK), Stamford (UK), Goldsborough and Bossall/Flaxton (Ireland), Cloghermore (Ireland), Delfzijl (Netherlands), Hare Island (Ireland), Harrogate (Yorkshire, UK), Hoen (Norway), Westerklief (Netherlands), Imbleville (France), Öland (Sweden), Steinfeld (Denmark), Trewhiddle (Cornwall), and Skaill (Orkneys).
Identified mints represented in Viking hoards include Ribe or Hedeby (Denmark), Aquitaine (France), Le Mans (Normandy), Le Talou (France), Lewes (UK), London (UK), York (UK) and Lund (Denmark).
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the Viking Age and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Vikings weren't the only hoarders: see the glossary entry on Hoards and Caches for more information.
An excellent source for information about Viking hoards and the silver economy of the Vikings is the collection of articles by James Graham-Campbell and Gareth Williams, based on a symposium called "Silver Economy in the Viking Age" held in London in 2000 and linked below.
Graham-Campbell, James and Gareth Williams, editors. 2007. Silver Economy in the Viking Age. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.
Kruse, Susan E. 1988 Ingots and Weight Units in Viking Age Silver Hoards. World Archaeology 20(2):285-301.
Thurborg, Marit 1988 Regional Economic Structures: An Analysis of the Viking Age Silver Hoards from Oland, Sweden. World Archaeology 20(2):302-324.
Ahmad ibn-Fadlan: Letters On the Vikings is a free resource detailing in English ibn-Fadlan's opinion of the "filthiest race that God ever created". Free pdf to download.
