New research into a Viking silver hoard discovered by metal detectorists in England over a decade ago has revealed surprising ties between medieval England and Islam, Ancient Origins reported.
The Bedale Hoard was originally unearthed by Stuart Campbell and Steve Caswell in Yorkshire in 2012. The 29 silver ingots and neck rings contained in the cache, as well as arm-rings of Hiberno-Scandinavian design linked to Dublin and a gold Anglo-Saxon sword pommel with Trewhiddle-style decoration, unexpectedly tied the English town to the vast Islamic Caliphate trade network. Nine of the ingots, roughly 33 percent of those uncovered, were minted from silver that was geometrically matched to the Islamic Caliphate, in particular modern-day Iraq and Iran.
“Most of us tend to think of the Vikings primarily as raiders, who looted monasteries and other wealthy places in search of wealth,” explained lead researcher Jane Kershaw, Associate Professor of Viking Age Archaeology at Oxford University. “What the analysis of the Bedale hoard shows is that this is only part of the picture. The Vikings did loot and pillage—and some of that wealth is preserved in the rings and ingots in the hoard. But they also made great profits from long-distance trade routes connecting northern Europe to the Islamic Caliphate.”
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The new research found that Islamic silver moved into Scandinavia via eastern trade routes, which were known as the Austrvegr, before they continued through Russia and Asia to England. The metalwork of Viking craftsmen was found to be exceptionally advanced, with one piece of neck jewelry having been crafted in England with a mixture of silver sourced from the east and west.
It’s likely the cache was buried sometime between the Scandinavian capture of Northumbria in 866 A.D. but before the Anglo-Saxon reconquest of York in 927 A.D. The hoard reveals the heretofore unknown blending of different cultures and trade routes in medieval England. “I love to think how Bedale—today a quintessentially English market town in north Yorkshire—was, in the Viking Age, at the heart of a much wider, Eurasian Viking economy,” Kershaw reflected. “The Vikings weren’t only extracting wealth from the local population, they were also bringing wealth with them when they raided and settled.”
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