Viking-Age hoard reveals trade between England and the Islamic World

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2025/08/viking-age-hoard-reveals-trade-between-england-and-the-islamic-world/155786

69•bookofjoe•5mo ago

Comments

southernplaces7•5mo ago

Can't stand websites that don't let you right-click on other links on their pages. Who the bloody hell are you to control my reading, clicking and ADHD habits for me, especially over some nonsensical concern about me copying your mostly mediocre content?

graemep•5mo ago

Turn of JS. The you can right click. A lot of paywalls do not work without JS either.

redrum•5mo ago

Better link might be: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-08-11-viking-silver-hoard-rev...

netsharc•5mo ago

AFAIK clicking the wheel (which used to be middle click) opens the link in a new tab on most systems and browsers, if that's your aim.

southernplaces7•5mo ago

I feel stupid now, because I never even thought of that, but yes, you're right.

nosioptar•5mo ago

Web developers that fuck with the browser's functionality deserve to spend eternity stepping on rusty legos while barefoot with James Blunt blaring in the background.

energy123•5mo ago

When I look at disciplines other than my own, I can recognize the skill and elegance that goes into it, even though I don't have those skills myself.

But when I look at the output of web development, and I see smooth scrolling, scrolljacking, excessive whitespace, artificial latency before UI popups ... I just don't get it. How can an entire field, as a default practice, intentionally make things bad?

detourdog•5mo ago

Web development merged with the advertising industry right after tripod starting showing ads.

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/ads/

cgriswald•5mo ago

There has to be more to it. Even services I pay for (the rare ones that don’t also spam my experience with ads) pull from a grab bag of bizarre user hostile quirks.

detourdog•5mo ago

I think it's that the mentality has invaded the medium of the web. Capturing users/audience is a way to demonstrate "value". Services we pay for want to show wall street how loyal their customer are.

Each auto company want's to have an app store rather than having users just directly connecting and using their phones as the car's infotainment system.

It's all misguided.

pbalau•5mo ago

On mac cmd + click opens in new tab. Afaik, it is ctrl + click on Windows.

like_any_other•5mo ago

Wow, it even blocks text selection.

Tor3•5mo ago

I have a browser extension called "Enable Right Click" installed, and that fixed the right-click issue, but not the text selection issue. I'll have to start looking. Of course the real fix is to send the one(s) responsible for web page to the deepest pits of everyone's favourite hot place.

suddenlybananas•5mo ago

How do we know this was traded? It could easily be bounty captured by the Varangian Guard in wars against Muslim powers.

DANmode•5mo ago

This reminds me of a fun multiple choice question from an educational text that I will remember until I die:

How did Mansa Musa contribute to the cultural diffusion of %region%?

mr_toad•5mo ago

Varangians in Yorkshire?

suddenlybananas•5mo ago

Yorkshire was settled by many Scandinavians at this point, who could have easily served as Varangians before settling in Yorkshire. Harald Hardrada, for example, served many years in the Varagian guard before reclaiming the throne of Norway and then invading England (he was of course, defeated at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire).

Many Anglo-Saxons also served as Varangians as well! Particularly after the Norman conquest however.

mr_toad•5mo ago

I’ll bite. Most of the Vikings that settled England came from Denmark and Norway. Harald was usually well-travelled even for a Viking, having being exiled to Rus, and then later returning. The number of Vikings from Scandinavia who went to Rus, served in the near east, then returned to Scandinavia then invaded England (carrying their loot with them all the way) can’t have been many.

My money, excuse the pun, is on trade. It’s not uncommon for coins from far flung realms to end up in coin hordes. For example Roman coins have been found in Celtic hordes than predate the Roman invasion of Britain by decades.

suddenlybananas•5mo ago

> The number of Vikings from Scandinavia who went to Rus, served in the near east, then returned to Scandinavia then invaded England (carrying their loot with them all the way) can’t have been many.

I really don't find this that unbelievable, especially when you consider that booty brought back from the Near East could be traded locally by Scandinavians. So it just takes one guy looting the Muslim world for the silver to make it to Scandinavia and then England.

Telemakhos•5mo ago

I find it interesting that the western silver is supposed, according to the article, to have been “obtained through raids or ransom” but the eastern silver is supposed to demonstrate trade, and that the mixture of the two symbolizes “the fusion of cultures.” The Rus were raiding around the Caspian at the time, including Muslim territory, so it would be interesting to know how the archaeologists ruled out raiding as a source of the eastern silver.

suddenlybananas•5mo ago

Yeah it seems a bizarre claim, especially when we have references to Viking raids in Morocco and Seville as well!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_raid_on_Seville

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nekor

detourdog•5mo ago

Could it be that if the silver was still in coinage form it demonstrates trade. If the silver was formed into new objects it would imply raided silver. I'm assuming they use isotopes to figure out the origin of the silver.

mc32•5mo ago

History, like archeology and paleontology, often take a set of facts or evidentiary items and weave a plausible narrative around it. The narrative can be neutral but also can be stereotyped (in archelogy unknowns are assigned religious significance) or they can be influenced by contemporaneous thought --that is, the narrative is allowed to be influenced by the currents of the day. It may take a century or so for those narratives to be dispelled through the passage of time when such influence wanes.

PicassoCTs•5mo ago

Well, that area was 200 years conquered at the time- the usual decay had not set in yet? So my guess is that there where still competent military powers around and working states & organizations. So - better to trade with these then rob a powerful enemy? The vikings where traders/mercenaries when encountering formidable opponents and robbers when they did not..

suddenlybananas•5mo ago

Yeah but we know they did raid Muslim areas, and furthermore, they often worked with the Byzantines who were often at war with Muslims. It could be just payment for fighting against Muslims from the Byzantines (whether indirect as booty in war or as direct payment from the Byzantines).

flohofwoe•5mo ago

Silver coins from the Islamic world were not exactly rare in Scandinavia (e.g. https://www.medievalists.net/2023/11/nearly-500000-dirhams-w...), and trade is a much more likely explanation especially over such large distances. AFAIK trading vs raiding was often just a question of opportunity and might have been done by the same viking/trader group depending on what was more 'convenient' (or: first raid and then setup an adhoc trading point just around the corner to exchange the loot against silver coins because those are easier to carry home - or the classic: do slave raids on the way from Scandinavia to the Black Sea, and trade the captured slaves with the Greeks-slash-East-Romans and Muslims against silver).

yyyk•5mo ago

The term Viking describes a profession (pirating/raiding) than an ethnicity.

Now every robber (pirate) needs a fence, and going to the people that were pillaged is obviously suboptimal. Much better to go to others who are not well-disposed to the victims.

redrum•5mo ago

Link to the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/arcm.70031

dmos62•5mo ago

Someone might find this interesting. Viking is a term for Scandivanians in a specific time-period, and it's also a term for pirates from the wider North European area in that specific period, because, interestingly, it wasn't only the Scandinavians that raided, but people living East of the Baltic sea raided the Western Baltic too. In other words, Vikings were getting Vikinged by non-Vikings, thus making them Vikings too. To be less tongue in cheek, there were a lot of similarities between the Western and Eastern Baltic cultures: both pagan, both had runes and somesuch, built similar ships, so as to say they had more in common than the raiding.

impossiblefork•5mo ago

Sigtuna got burned down by Finnish, Karelians, Estonians or Estonian Vikings, and this was 1187...

jeltz•5mo ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Stockholm started out as an attempt to protect the cities around Lake Mälaren from raids. It is not known why the city is called Stockholm but one theory is that ot comes from logs driven into the lake to control who goes in and out of the lake.

impossiblefork•5mo ago

Yes, and I think this specific incident may have motivated it, since it was founded not that much later.

donkeybeer•5mo ago

What is 'pagan' here?

Everything before abrahamic religions is pagan or something more specific?

baq•5mo ago

by definition, yes

krapp•5mo ago

Yes, from the context of Abrahamic religion and the cultures descended from it, all religions and cultures which are not Abrahamic are by definition pagan.

tshanmu•5mo ago

this sounds about right - the same yardstick was used by the British to define Hindus in India - people who are neither christian nor muslim.

inglor_cz•5mo ago

In the context of European Antiquity and Middle Ages - this means the original polytheist religions of the Romans, the Greeks, the Slavs, the Celts, the Germanic people...

dmos62•5mo ago

That's a somewhat sad question, because we hardly know. Not enough written record exists and "paganism" was increasingly outlawed during the past millenia to the point where we're out of people that had it handed down to them. The missionaries doing most of the recording were also the ones actively suppressing its survival. I'm aware of at least one revival movement that was active during the last 50 years, but the main instigator seems to have died without leaving a meaningful succession, and thus the preservation may very well have failed. Unless someone invents a time-machine a la Assassin Creed.

octopoc•5mo ago

The etymology of the word 'pagan' originally meant hillbillies / dumb country people. It was a slur because the towns and cities adopted Christianity before the country people did. So, 'pagan' typically means the pre-Christian religions of Europe.

jeltz•5mo ago

Viking just meant raider/pirate.

> both pagan, both had runes and somesuch, built similar ships, so as to say they had more in common than the raiding.

No, they did not have runes. The runes were only used by various Germanic peoples. As far as I know the Baltic and Finnic pagans lacked a written language.

dmos62•5mo ago

I've seen archaelogical artefacts from East Baltic graves with runes. The commentary in the exhibition stated that runes and rune-related shamanic practices were imported across the Baltic sea. I'm not a historian, I'm only conveying what I've been told by enthusiasts or casually ran into.

jeltz•5mo ago

I suspect it might be neopagan wishful thinking. There is no knowledge of any such practices among the Norse at least. There is some weak connection between runes and magic through Odin but from what we know runes were used for every day stuff like accounting, who owns an object, contracts and personal letters. And of course the mostly Swedish practice of praising the exploits of your relatives on rune stones.

dmos62•5mo ago

By the way, Viking is a historian term, as far as I know. It was not used in the period or at least not as it is used now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, surely you wouldn't call (now or then) Mediterranean-born pirates Vikings.

jeltz•5mo ago

Not an expert on the matter, just a Swede but it was used about pirates in general from any country in medieval Swedish and I think Icelandic. And it was used in period English and Frisian sources too, though there it might not have been about all pirates. It is also on a couple of rune stones but on the one I know of it is used to refer to the activity of going raiding.

hearsathought•5mo ago

> Viking is a term for Scandivanians in a specific time-period

Perhaps but culturally it's more widely used as a term for scandivanians "pirates/invaders" of said era. It is a well known term. Hell, we even have a football team named in their honor.

> it wasn't only the Scandinavians that raided

Did anyone say it was only the scandinavians who raided? Pretty much everyone raided. But the Vikings were just the most successful of the bunch and hence historically significant enough to remember.

adapteva•5mo ago

Weird title, makes it seem like a reveleation. There have been numerous Viking treasures discovered in Sweden with traces from the the Islamic world and it's well known that they were all over England as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spillings_Hoard

kelipso•5mo ago

There was even a movie with Antonio Banderas about it! (The 13th Warrior)

create-username•5mo ago

In the TV series Vikings they reach the Muslim kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula

jnurmine•5mo ago

There is an interesting book about Viking trade connections, "River Kings" by Cat Jarman.

flobosg•5mo ago

This brings to my mind the rune graffitis found on the Hagia Sophia mosque: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_inscriptions_in_Hagia_So...

wood_spirit•5mo ago

At the time the graffiti was carved, it was a church and the carver was likely a Viking mercenary in the Varangian Guard.

Seeing it a few years ago was a very strange feeling. It is both small and inconsequential as a thing, yet making me feel deeply moved and making me think about and connect somehow with history in a way that a statue of an emperor does not.

notavalleyman•5mo ago

When King Offa of England's Mercia decided to mint some coins, the coins which came to everyone's minds were the islamic dinars.

That's why his coins were identical to Dinars, with OFFA REX next to the islamic shahada.

https://artofthemiddleages.com/files/original/e5a8cb4eadae18...

https://www.islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/coins/dinar1

pqtyw•5mo ago

Gold coins pretty much disappeared from Western Europe in the early middles ages, the Byzantine Empire and the the Islamic states were pretty much the only significant source of gold for a time so that makes sense in a way.

Interestingly enough the first coins minted in the Islamic Caliphate and based on the Roman Solidus actually had portraits (they just removed the Christian symbols) on them for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_Umayyad_gold_dinar,...

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Viking-Age hoard reveals trade between England and the Islamic World

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