About the Project

The Viking Age is widely recognised as a pivotal episode of cultural expansion in Eurasia. Yet despite decades of debate, the early development of the period is poorly characterised. Several core outstanding questions remain, including:

• Where was early Viking activity concentrated? The Viking expansion has conventionally been viewed as a Westward expansion into Christian Europe. Yet archaeological evidence from Eastern Europe indicates that, by the time of the western expansion, Viking movement into the Baltic was already well established. Unlike raids in the West, the Eastern expansion was based largely on trade: the Vikings exchanging slaves, furs and amber for Islamic silver coins, dirhams, in Russian markets. Has narrow focus on the western raids obscured the importance of Viking movement and market activity in the East?
• What caused the Viking Age? It is widely agreed that one of the main aims of the Viking expansion was to acquire silver, either in the form of coins or objects. But why was silver so highly desired by the Scandinavians? Surprisingly, given the existence of the data, the silver itself has never been analysed to reveal its function - was it used as monetary currency, or as a form of social display?
• When was the Viking expansion? Written sources indicate that Viking attacks in the West began ‘weakly’ in c. 800 AD, escalating only in the mid ninth century. But this post-dates by a century the earliest archaeological evidence for Viking expansion in the East. Were the expansions chronologically distinct, or were there causal links and ongoing synergies between the two movements?

As one of the most tangible remnants from the Viking expansion, silver is a vital source for addressing these questions. Its origins can tell us where Viking activity was located; its form can tell us why the Vikings desired silver so much they were prepared to risk their lives acquiring it, and its date can tell us when the Viking Age began.

Yet because archaeological collections of silver are, at present, poorly characterised, and because silver has rarely been analysed from a scientific perspective, it remains vastly under-utilised as a historical resource. Our project aims to change this.

Using state-of-the-art methods in archaeological and numismatic analysis, and pioneering archaeometric methods for the provenancing of ancient silver, the overall aim of this project is to transform understanding of the early development of the Viking Age. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary study of ninth-century silver from the heart of the Viking world: Viking-Age Denmark, comprising modern-day Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Southern Sweden and Southern Norway. This region is ideal for analysis: it has an exceptional silver record, comprising finds from different archaeological contexts, and a geographically central location making it well-placed to receive silver from both East and West.

We will:

1. Identify the silver record of ninth-century Southern Scandinavia, examining first hand over 1,500 individual objects and coins.

2. Analyse a selection of the silver using archaeometric methods, to distinguish between Western European (Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian) and Islamic silver sources.

3. Assess the form of silver, to determine how it was actually used.

4. Establish the chronological relationship between Eastern and Western silver at the start of the Viking Age.

This project will build an entirely new dataset of the ninth-century ‘silver record’ of southern Scandinavia from a combination of access to museum collections and fresh artefact and coin identifications made by the project team We will analyse this material in new ways. First-hand archaeological and numismatic study will be combined with pioneering methods in archaeometric analysis.

Fresh coin and artefact identifications and datings

We are carrying out detailed, first-hand surveys of ninth-century silver, recording information such as find association and context, evidence for manufacture or subsequent adjustment to established weight units, degree of fragmentation and signs of physical treatment (e.g. piercing, bending, testing via ‘nicks’ or ‘pecks’). This information will tell us how silver is being used (as ornament, or as money?).

We will establish the chronology of coins from the Islamic area and Western Europe reaching Scandinavia to work out the timings of the Viking expansion - did reductions in the availability of dirhams from the East lead to Viking raiding in the West? A particular focus is the identification and dating of Islamic coins (dirhams). They entered Scandinavian in huge numbers from c. 800 AD, but the identification of their mint date, location and dynasty requires study by an oriental coin specialist (Jani).

Archaeometric analysis

In cases where imported coins and objects were melted down into Scandinavian artefact forms such as ingots and rings, the only means of investigating silver sources is through archaeometric analyses. Our preliminary work shows that a combination of trace element and lead isotope analysis can establish a unique ‘fingerprint’ for each silver item, which can be used to distinguish between the two potential contributing sources of silver: coin from Western Europe and coin from the Abbasid Empire (Britain/ France vs. Abbasid areas of Iran/ Iraq).

In the past, these approaches were limited because of the need to sample material destructively. We are pioneering laser ablation methods for silver objects. This approach has high accuracy trace-element/lead isotope capabilities and low detection limits. But because of the small size of the ablation spot, it leaves no visible traces on the surface of the coin/ artefact.

We are building a complete record of silver from ninth-century southern Scandinavia. This includes over 1,500 artefacts and coins. Our archaeometric analysis will include over 1000 individual analyses, from museums and collections across Scandinavia, Britain and the Netherlands.

The construction of an extensive archaeometric database is critical to Project Silver. It will be posted here at a later stage of the project.

Our official project partners include:

• The National Museum of Scotland
• IRAMAT-Centre Ernest Babelon, CNRS-Université d'Orléans
• The British Museum
• The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
• The National Museum of Denmark
• Statens Historiska Museet, Stockholm
• Viking Information Centre, Den Oever