A study published this week in the journal Archaeometry used lead-isotope and trace-element analyses to trace Viking-era silver from the Bedale hoard, mapping an exchange network that ran from Anglo-Saxon England to the Abbasid Caliphate.
“Most of us tend to think of the Vikings primarily as raiders … that is only part of the picture,” said Jane Kershaw, an associate professor of Viking Age archaeology at Oxford University and the study’s lead author, according to Live Science. She added that Islamic bullion found in an English field shows the breadth of Viking commerce: “The Vikings weren't only extracting wealth from the local population, they were also bringing wealth with them when they raided and settled.”
Metal-detectorists Stuart Campbell and Steve Caswell discovered the hoard in May 2012 near Bedale in North Yorkshire and promptly alerted authorities. Transferred to the Yorkshire Museum, the 1,100-year-old trove - appraised at about $70,000 - contains necklaces, arm-bands, a gold sword pommel, silver jewelry, and 29 silver ingots. A large twisted-rod neck-ring appears to have been cast in northern England from a mix of eastern and western silver.
Geochemical data showed that nine ingots—roughly one-third of the cache—originated from Islamic silver struck mainly under the Abbasid Caliphate. Arab chroniclers reported that Viking merchants obtained dirhams with fur, amber, swords, and enslaved people. The metal likely moved along eastern river routes such as the Austrvegr before crossing the North Sea with settlers bound for England.
Other pieces derived from Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian coins that had been melted and recast. Viking transactions valued silver by weight rather than minting authority, so foreign coins often became bullion. Researchers also detected lead consistent with ore from the North Pennines, indicating local refining and a willingness to blend resources from different regions.
Imagining Bedale as part of a network linking Yorkshire to Baghdad challenges the one-dimensional raider stereotype. “The finding reinforces the idea that Viking-Age England was integrated into a Eurasian economic space where precious metals circulated, were melted and remelted, and finally buried—sometimes as a hedge against uncertain times,” Kershaw said in the study.
The authors concluded that Scandinavian groups combined military and commercial strategies, relying on silver’s weight as the standard of value regardless of whether the metal came from Western Europe or the Islamic world.
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