What Was It Like To Be a Rich Viking?

A rich Viking wore his wealth as silver on his arms, weighed it to pay, and buried the rest. In this video: Neck rings on the Volga: how a Rus wife showed what her husband was worth Halls the length of a football pitch, from Borg to Tisso Silk from far away in the graves of Birka An arm ring that was a purse and a bank at once Scales, little weights and a knife cut to test the silver Gifts, loyalty and rich burials like Oseberg and Gokstad Where the silver came from: Arab coins and the rivers of Russia Hoards in the ground, from a Danish garden to Spillings on Gotland How land took the place of silver at the end of the Viking Age Sources: Ibn Fadlan, account of the Rus on the Volga (921-922) Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga saga, chapter 8 (about 1225), trans. Samuel Laing (1844) Havamal, trans. Henry Adams Bellows Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. (2017), A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164(4) Cathy Ostrom Peters (2002), The Silk Road Textiles at Birka: An Examination of the Tabletwoven Bands, Textile Society of America Rodney Edvinsson (2024), on the Forsa ring law, Scandinavian Economic History Review Stephen W. Merkel, Jani Oravisjarvi, Jane Kershaw (2023), Sources of early Islamic silver: lead isotope analysis of dirhams, Antiquity 97 Jane Kershaw et al. (2021), The scale of dirham imports to the Baltic in the ninth century, Fornvannen 116 Manar Hammad (2023), 500,000 Dirhams in Scandinavia, from Mobile Silver to Land Rent, in Reading Memory Sites Through Signs, Amsterdam University Press Mats Burstrom (1993), Silver as Bridewealth: An Interpretation of Viking Age Silver Hoards on Gotland, Current Swedish Archaeology 1 #Vikings #VikingHistory #VikingSilver