Silver Economies, Monetisation and Society in Scandinavia, AD 800-1100

The role of silver in Viking-age society and economy has developed into a most exciting interdisciplinary topic for research. Until recently, the use of silver in Scandinavia in the period c. 800-1100 was regularly characterized as a linear process: from the use of precious metal as a medium for social display, to a 'bullion' economy in which silver assumed functions as a medium of exchange, leading eventually to the adoption of 'proper' coinage. As new evidence has proliferated from private and professional metal-detecting, from the discovery and analysis of remarkable new hoards, and from targeted investigations of both 'central-places' and more ordinary settlement sites, this model has proved itself to be inadequate - and new ones are called for. This book has brought together an international group of archaeologists, historians and numismatists to draw a balance sheet of current research on the developing silver economies in Viking-age Scandinavia.