VIKING RAIDING, GIFT-EXCHANGE AND INSULAR METALWORK
IN NORWAY
John Sheehan
Introduction
The occurrence of large quantities of Insular metalwork in Viking-Age
Norway has long been a matter of scholarly attention. It is usually regarded
as archaeological evidence for the historically attested Viking raids on
Ireland and the British Isles, though the fact that little of this metalwork
has any real intrinsic value is usually not considered in any depth. Here
it is proposed that the reason the Scandinavians sought after such material may have been because of its value in a gift-exchange economy. This
paper is offfered in the hope that it may prove to be of interest to James
Graham-Campbell, whom I had the good fortune to meet for the fijirst time
in University College Galway in 1981 following a seminar of his on the
subject of the Vikings in Ireland. It was as a result of that meeting, and of
the encouragement he offfered, that I changed the direction of my postgraduate endeavours to the study of Ireland’s Viking Age. Since then I
have benefijited greatly from his advice and friendship.
Gift Exchange
Over the past four decades, some of the prevalent concepts in social and
economic anthropology have been explored and applied by many European
prehistorians in relation to the fundamentals of gift exchange. Historicperiod archaeologists, however, have generally not engaged with the tenets
of anthropology to the same extent. In the case of archaeologists dealing with
the Viking Age this reluctance has not been so marked, however, presumably
partly because references to the social use of wealth occur so frequently in the
Icelandic sagas and related sources. Thus, Viking studies have played a formative role in the application of aspects of social and economic anthropology to
early medieval archaeology, as seen, for instance, in a number of important
publications concerned with gift exchange, silver and related matters.1
1 Gurevič 1968; Sampson 1991; Gaimster 1991, 2007; Hedeager 1994; Saunders 1995; Skre
2008.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
810
john sheehan
Sampson has usefully summarised the philosophies of the two main
schools of economic anthropology, the formalists and the substantivists.2
The analysis of the formalists is essentially based on contemporary economic models and is thus not built on the mutual relationship of exchange
and social communication that is thought to have existed in many premonetary societies. Given, therefore, that the formalist approach strives
to understand pre-modern economies by reference to contemporary
phenomena, it seems inappropriate to attempt the application of this
approach to a non-monetary system, such as is featured in most VikingAge societies. The substantivist analysis, on the other hand, is based on
the tenet that economics, and particularly the exchange aspect of it, as
opposed to its trade or consumption elements, is part of a thoroughly
holistic social system in which the process of exchange is fijirmly embedded in social relations. Polanyi wrote, in this context, that ‘man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships [. . .] he does not
act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material
goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his
social assets’.3 Exchange systems may thus be seen as processes within
a system where transactions have the purpose of either developing new
social relationships or servicing and maintaining existing ones.
The substantivist analysis focuses on gift giving as a major factor in
exchange, and primarily stresses the importance of process itself rather
than the nature of the exchanged items. The emphasis is on the noneconomic aspects of gift giving and wealth that sometimes resulted in
the accumulation and redistribution of prestige goods. Mauss, whose
work formed the basis for much of Polyanyi’s analyses, proposed that the
exchange of objects between individuals and groups built relationships,
and that the giving of an object created an inherent obligation on the
recipient to reciprocate. He argued that gift giving served to adjust and
modify the mutual standing of the parties involved; the purpose of the
process could be, for example, to establish or strengthen alliances of various types, to gain political or social standing (sometimes at the expense
of the recipient), or to emphasise diffferences in status. The donor gained
power from the process, thereby enhancing his prestige.4 Mauss emphasised the competitive and strategic aspects of gift giving. By giving more
2 Sampson 1991: 88–90.
3 Polanyi 1944: 53.
4 Mauss 1923 [1967]: 37–45.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
811
than one’s peers, for instance, one laid claim to greater status than them
and acquired ‘symbolic capital’—the term coined by Bourdieu to describe
the social gain that was achieved by gift-giving.5 Under this anthropological
concept of exchange, objects, particularly prestige ones, were apparently
exchanged on a non-commercial basis, and the process of gift-exchange
was portrayed as being central to the broad system of exchange.
Gift Giving in the Viking Age
The theoretical contextualisation of gift giving that has been developed by
economic anthropologists is largely based on their study of early modern
pre-monetary societies in various parts of the world. However, gift giving and reciprocity also feature in the written sources that throw light on
the social organisation of Scandinavian society in the Viking Age. Mauss
was, of course, aware of this, and in his introduction to his seminal Essai
sur le don he wrote: ‘In Scandinavian and many other civilisations contracts are fulfijilled and exchanges of goods are made by means of gifts. In
theory such gifts are voluntary but in fact they are given and repaid under
obligation’.6
The most important sources of relevance for Viking-Age gift giving are
represented by the laws, sagas and skaldic poetry of Iceland and, to a
lesser extent, Norway.7 Even though these sources are largely of later date,
it is generally accepted that they reflect the reality of some important
aspects of the Early Viking Age. The link between donors and recipients,
for instance, is a common motif in skaldic poetry, where the munifijicence
of the leaders and the loyalty of their followers, in exchange for the giving of feasts, weapons, gold and silver rings, ships and other valuables, is
extolled. In the Hávamál it is stipulated that gifts should be reciprocated—
‘A gift always calls for a gift’ (Hávamál 145)—and the same regulation is
enshrined in the Gulaþing, the earliest Norwegian law code.8
Gurevič, in his consideration of Scandinavian wealth and gift-bestowal,
became one of the fijirst scholars explicitly to propound a theoretical consideration of gift giving in Viking-Age Scandinavia and was also the fijirst
5 Bourdieu 1990: 112–121.
6 Mauss 1923 [1967]: 1.
7 Vestergaard 1991: 99.
8 Hedeager 1994: 132.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
812
john sheehan
to consider the evidence of silver hoards in relation to the practice.9 He
proposed that what was at issue in the process was not the specifijics of
the gifted object itself, but rather the social dynamics and obligations
that lay behind its transfer. Miller, on the evidence of the Icelandic laws
and sagas, provided an analysis of Scandinavian exchange systems and
their social implications. At the outset of his study he stressed the centrality of the issue, noting that any discussion of Iceland’s economy ‘can
no more ignore gift-exchange and compensation awards than the price of
vaðmál in relation to silver’.10 He observed that many of the feuds that are
detailed in the sagas arose from problems related to gift giving, and he concluded that Icelanders were ‘more likely to exchange goods and services
in the forums of dispute processing [. . .] than in a marketplace’.11 Some
recent archaeological research has indicated that gift exchange played
a fundamental role in Viking-Age Norway. Both Saunders12 and Myhre13
have argued that kin-based structures in Norway, within the context of
the social and political developments that led to centralization of power
within the hands of elites, determined access to resources and wealth and
mediated their distribution. Saunders has argued, in addition, that gift giving expressed and reinforced the growth of these elites, with ‘reciprocity being the mechanism by which a chief ’s power was simultaneously
forged and constrained.’14 Norway was generally distinct from Southern
Scandinavia, where more early towns, market places and ‘productive sites’
developed as the Viking Age progressed, and it is perhaps not surprising to
fijind that its silver hoards are diffferent in character from those found elsewhere in Scandinavia. In Southern Scandinavia they are frequently characterised by the presence of coins and hack-silver, whereas in Norway, as
Hårdh has demonstrated, particularly in its western regions, the hoards
are frequently composed of complete objects.15 The status value of these
types of objects, such as the brooches, arm- and neck-rings represented
in the hoards from Vulu, Sør Trøndelag, and Hatteberg, Hordaland, may
well indicate that they had a role to play in a gift-exchange system in this
region.
9 Gurevič 1968: 131–133.
10 Miller 1986: 19.
11 Ibid.: 50.
12 Saunders 1995: 38–40.
13 Myhre 1998: 25–28.
14 Saunders 1995: 38.
15 Hårdh 1989: 46–47.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
813
In recent years a number of scholars have scrutinised the value of the
substantivist approach within the context of the Viking-Age economies.
Williams, for instance, notes that it is difffijicult to interpret fragmentary
hack-silver as having any economic role which is not monetary,16 a view
that develops Hodges distinction between Dalton’s so-called ‘primitive
valuables’ and ‘primitive money’.17 Kruse has stressed the evidence for the
existence of market-based ‘neutral’ exchange in Viking-Age society but
does not exclude the role of other forms of exchange.18 Thus, there may
be two forms of exchange transactions operating: fijirstly, transactions concerned with the social order (gift giving) and, secondly, transactions within
the arena of individual competition (market trade), and Bloch and Parry
propose that in the general context there may be articulation between
both spheres.19 The most comprehensive critique of the substantivist perspective in a Viking-Age context, however, is that recently put forward by
Skre in his consideration of the economic aspects of Kaupang.20 He notes
that the broad substantivist equation, of gift exchange with traditional
societies and of market exchange with modern society, is an overly simplifijied model which is not necessarily appropriate for application to the
Viking Age, where several diffferent forms of exchange co-existed within
the contexts of regional and chronological variation. Metcalf, for instance,
has drawn attention to the growing body of evidence for the circulation of
pre-Viking-Age coinage in England and adjoining North Sea regions, and
has concluded that this represents a monetised economy based on trade,
but notes that the same picture does not apply to all parts of Britain.21
Scotland, like Ireland, does not lie within this economic zone and, clearly,
a diffferent dynamic operated there. In Skre’s view, the substantivist analysis has undervalued and even ignored the dynamic economic potential
of the production, consumption and trade elements of past economies.
This had led him to propose his ‘post-substantivist approach’, based on a
consideration of theory against the background of the archaeological evidence of eighth- and ninth-century trading sites and towns of the North
Sea region and Scandinavia. He argues against Polyanyi’s notion of the
exclusive ‘embeddedness’ of exchange within the social, as opposed to
16 Williams 2007: 179–180.
17 Hodges 1982: 116.
18 Kruse 2007: 165–166.
19 Bloch & Parry 1989: 23–28.
20 Skre 2008.
21 Metcalf 2007: 3–7, fijig. 1.1.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
814
john sheehan
the economic, sphere, and thereby suggests that the main distinction
between the formalists and the substantivists is something of an illusion.
Nonetheless, he acknowledges that economic mechanisms may be constrained by some degree of social ‘embeddedness’ of exchange, and that
this will vary according to social and cultural circumstances.22
‘Raiding’ and ‘Trading’
Both Sampson23 and Hedeager24 have set the concept of gift exchange
against the evolving background of the Viking Age, while relating these to
the phenomena of trading, raiding and silver hoarding. Essentially, they
propose that the Early Viking-Age Scandinavians who organised expeditions abroad were not actually traders per se and that, coming from the
background of an apparent gift-exchange economy, they aimed at obtaining goods in order to earn prestige in their home economies rather than
simply as items of merchandise. To some extent, this proposal fijinds
support in Müller-Boysen’s historical concept of Scandinavian ‘pillagetrading’.25 Sawyer’s arguments concerning the methods by which the
Scandinavians succeeded in obtaining such large quantities of silver from
the Arabic world, and later from Francia and Anglo-Saxon England, are
also of relevance in this regard. In a suite of papers he suggested that mercantile trade cannot satisfactorily explain the massive amounts of wealth
that the Scandinavian hoards represent, and proposed that:
The merchants who traded in Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages were
not particularly rich nor did the trade they conducted contribute much to
the accumulation of treasure in the north. It is possible that some, perhaps
many, of the German coins in Scandinavian hoards were initially used to
buy goods from the Danes, but most of the English coins were tribute or pay,
and that is probably also true of most of the Kufijic silver. Trade contributed
to the wealth of Scandinavia in the Viking Age, as it did later, by making
good quality clothing, food, wine, and many other things available, but plunder and tribute were more important as sources of gold and silver.26
22 Skre 2008: 333–334.
23 Sampson 1991.
24 Hedeager 1994.
25 Müller-Boysen 1987: 249–260.
26 Sawyer 1990: 286–287.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
815
On their expeditions, the Vikings could obtain what they sought through
plundering and raiding, or indeed by trading on what they had plundered
elsewhere for more convenient forms of wealth. In this context, Lieber
referred to the Scandinavian’s modus operandi in terms of Goethe’s ‘nondivisible trinity’ of war, trade and piracy.27 Thus, the distinction between
trader and raider was not a clearly defijined one, and in this context the
term ‘mercantile warrior elite’, recently coined by Montgomery to describe
the early-tenth-century Rūs traders on the Volga,28 appears pertinent.
Sampson suggests that before ‘mercantile trading developed, the distinction between trading and raiding cannot easily be made.’29 However, he
difffers from Sawyer in that he sees much of the wealth that the raiders/
traders sought abroad as destined for entry into the body of material that
circulated within the gift-exchange system. Clearly, within such a system,
the generation of commercial profijit—theoretically the raison d’etre of the
merchant—was not a motivating factor. The picture of Svein Asleifarson
that is presented in Orkneyinga Saga is used by Sampson to illustrate this
point:30
This was how Svein used to live. Winter he would spend at home on Gairsay,
where he entertained some eighty men at his own expense. His drinking
hall was so big, there was nothing in Orkney to compare with it. In the
spring he had more than enough to occupy him, with a great deal of seed
to sow which he saw to carefully himself. Then when that job was done, he
would go offf plundering in the Hebrides and in Ireland on what he called his
‘spring-trip’, then back home just after mid-summer, where he stayed till the
cornfijields had been reaped and the grain was safely in. After that he would
go offf raiding again, and never came back till the fijirst month of winter was
ended. This he used to call his ‘autumn-trip’.
Clearly, it was the proceeds of his raiding expeditions that allowed Svein
to maintain his position and status in society, as well as to entertain his
band of men each winter. There is no reason to believe that this twelfthcentury picture of a member of Orkney’s warrior aristocracy difffers in any
meaningful way from those who raided in the Irish Sea area during earlier
centuries.
27 Lieber 1990: 211.
28 Montgomery 2000: 24.
29 Sampson 1991: 129.
30 Sampson 1991: 126.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
816
john sheehan
The East
On their ‘trading’ expeditions, according to the models proposed by
Sawyer, Sampson and Hedeager, the Vikings could obtain what they
sought through plundering and raiding or, in some cases, by trading on
what they had earlier plundered elsewhere for more sought-after forms
of wealth. The latter form of expedition may have, for example, been
characteristic of the Southern Scandinavians who sailed towards the silver-rich Islamic world around the Black and Caspian Seas. Undoubtedly,
some of these must have been regular trading trips, supplying furs, amber
and ivory to the merchants of the Arab caliphates in Russia, and Noonan
believes, on the basis of the numismatic evidence, that there was an active
trade here.31 However, Hedeager argues that many of these tradable commodities, along with slaves, were plundered or extorted from the Baltic
and Slavic populations en route, thus inextricably linking raiding and
trading.32 Certainly, accounts of raids on the Baltic countries feature in a
small number of the sagas, as well as in Vita Ansgarii and the writings of
Saxo Grammaticus, and Staraja Ladoga was raided several times.33 It may,
therefore, be the case that, far from being commercial trading ventures,
these voyages into Russia were essentially ‘Viking’ expeditions where the
ultimate success of their trading with the Arabs relied on the success or
otherwise of the preceding stages of extortion and raiding. Hedeager has
summed up the situation thus: ‘Gold and silver were the real objects of
the Viking expeditions [. . .] whether we call them trading expeditions,
military service, extortion, or looting. The picture of the Vikings as peaceful but rather exotic and peculiar traders that the Arab sources present
derives from the great markets of the south-east where, purely temporarily, they behaved themselves.’34
The ultimate aim of these expeditions was almost certainly to secure
Arabic silver coins. Enormous amounts of dirhams came back to Southern
Scandinavia in this way, accounting for the great majority of the surviving
coins that reached there during the ninth and tenth centuries. As well as
coins, some of the ninth-century hoards from this region contain nonnumismatic silver from Russia, particularly the so-called ‘Permian’ rings.35
31 Noonan 1991: 202.
32 Hedeager 1994: 135.
33 Sawyer 1985: 168.
34 Hedeager 1994: 135.
35 Hårdh 2007: 139–141.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
817
Frequently, the hoards from Southern Scandinavia are interpreted in
formalist terms as representing a ‘trade balance’ resulting from the supposed mercantile activities of the Scandinavians in the east. Sawyer, however, has argued, that the basis for much of this massive inflow of silver
was not trade or commerce with the Arabs, but rather ‘violence, or the
threat of violence’ in Russia, where large amounts of Arabic silver had
accumulated by the beginnings of the tenth century.36 While he acknowledges that there is only limited historical evidence for this type of raiding
and extortion, given the lack of contemporary sources, he observes that
this was exactly the type of strategy that is recorded as having been used
by the Scandinavians in England and Francia from the second half of the
tenth century onwards, from when massive quantities of Western coins
are found in the Scandinavian hoards. It seems likely that, in many cases,
the silver in these hoards was actually the object, rather than the medium,
of exchange, and this helps explain why much of it was consigned to the
melting pot and subsequently circulated as ornaments and ingots. It may
well be that many of these hoards functioned within the Scandinavian
gift-exchange system rather than any signifijicant form of commercial
economy. If the concept of bride wealth is viewed as an aspect of gift
exchange, then Burström’s interpretation of the many hoards on Gotland
as possibly being representative of bride wealth is especially interesting.37
The West
How then, may these avenues of approach be applied to Viking-Age
Britain and Ireland? The nature of Viking raiding in Ireland and Scotland,
or at least its outcome, was essentially diffferent from the Russian experience. Firstly, the Scandinavians involved in Irish and Scottish afffairs were
predominantly from Norway, not Sweden and Southern Scandinavia, and,
secondly, silver was not available in the West in anything remotely like
the quantities in which it circulated in the East. Therefore the opportunity
to apply the Eastern model of activity to Ireland, that is, the trading on of
plundered or extorted goods for this precious commodity, simply did not
exist. If one of the aims of the Western raids was to obtain goods for use
in the Scandinavian gift-exchange system, then the Scandinavians had to
adapt their tastes to whatever prestige goods were actually available in
36 Sawyer 1985: 168.
37 Burström 1993.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
818
john sheehan
the West. It is proposed here that the decorative metalwork, such a distinctive feature of early medieval Ireland, became the objects of desire.
A very large amount of metalwork from Ireland, and to a lesser extent
Britain, has been recorded from Viking-Age Norway,38 where most of the
material has been found in graves dating to the ninth and early tenth
centuries. Numbering well over 500 individual fijinds, the material largely
comprises high-quality items ranging from brooches and other forms of
jewellery to ornamented harness mounts, hanging bowls, shrines, croziers
and reliquaries. Most of the material ultimately derives from ecclesiastical
contexts. In many cases, it survives as carefully cut-up fragments that were
altered or reworked into various brooch or pendant forms. Presumably
this was carried out in Norway, though the discovery of a cache of similar material, consisting of about 100 fragments of high-quality ecclesiastical metalwork, along with some pieces of Scandinavian-type hack-silver,
weights and the pan of a balance scales, in the River Blackwater at
Shanmullagh, Co. Armagh (Figure 1),39 demonstrates that the processing of such material also took place in Ireland, as do some fijinds from
the longphort-related sites at Kilmainham-Islandbridge, Co. Dublin, and
Woodstown, Co. Waterford.
It is important to stress that this type of material is generally of little intrinsic economic value, as the bullion worth of Irish metalwork of
the time was rather small, ‘gold being only used in microscopic quantities [. . .] and silver not a great deal more lavishly, while the overwhelming proportion of the weight of the items consisted of bronze.’40 It is,
therefore, erroneous to regard the acquisition of this type of material by
the Scandinavians as resulting from effforts to increase their ‘income’ or
‘wealth’ in the economic sense, as has been suggested by Myhre.41 Lucas,
in his study of raiding on Irish ecclesiastical sites, concluded that the
acquisition of fijine metalwork was not the prime motivating factor behind
the raids42 and more recent commentators have debated the merits of
slave-taking as the over-riding motive.43
If the Insular metalwork has little intrinsic or bullion worth, this may
have been compensated for by its great artistic value. It was generally of
38 Wamers 1985; 1998. For an updated distribution map of this material see Henriksen
2003: fijig. 11.
39 Bourke 1993: 24–39.
40 Lucas 1967: 212.
41 Myhre 1998: 27.
42 Lucas 1966: 212–213.
43 Holm 1986; Etchingham 1996: 35–47.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
819
Figure 1. Cut-up bronze mounts with enamel and millefijiori inlay. Portion of the
assemblage from Shanmullagh, Co. Armagh. Courtesy: Ulster Museum, Belfast.
a much higher quality than most contemporary Scandinavian ornamenttypes and this is what may well have made it of value in the Norse giftexchange system, as well as its exotic nature. It presumably became, in
Norse hands, imbued with a prestige value, replacing its ritual value in the
Christian system from which it derived. The fijind context of the Melhus
shrine—an Insular reliquary-shrine of seventh-century date—in a highstatus ninth-century boat burial of a well-equipped warrior and a woman,
and of many other related pieces of Insular metalwork, supports this conclusion. Much of this Insular material, such as the Bergøy brooch, from
Rogaland,44 would have been eminently suitable, as highly decorative and
exotic items, for use in the gift-exchange process. Other pieces were often
cut down, reworked into smaller pieces of jewellery and provided with a
pin, as is the case with two of the harness mounts from Soma, Rogaland45
and the recent fijind of a reliquary mount from Vindinge, Funen (Figure 2).46
44 Shetelig 1940: 42–44, fijig. 43a.
45 Ó Floinn 1989: 118.
46 Henriksen 2003: 14–19.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
820
john sheehan
Figure 2. Front and rear views of an Insular mount, probably derived from a
reliquary shrine, re-used as a brooch. From Vindinge, Funen. Courtesy: Odense
Bys Museer, Denmark.
Such pieces are often interpreted, rather simplistically, as ‘souvenirs’ for
the Vikings’ womenfolk.
It is proposed here that one of the motives for the Viking raids in the
West, especially Ireland, may have been to plunder Insular metalwork
specifijically for use in the Scandinavian system of gift exchange, rather
than for any trading purpose. Blindheim’s suggestions that this type of
material could have been traded47 should be tempered by Wamer’s conclusion, made primarily on the basis of its fijind-contexts and distribution,
that this type of material ‘seems primarily to reflect military activities and
only to a small degree Viking Age trade.’48 Wamers’s view is in keeping
with what is being proposed here, though it may be refijined if one accepts
the arguments, outlined above, that there may have been no fundamental diffference between Scandinavian traders and raiders at this stage of
the Viking Age. The theory that the plunder of Insular metalwork was for
use in the Scandinavian system of gift exchange is not inconsistent with
Barrett’s recent ‘marriage imperative’ suggestion, in which he proposes
that the earliest Scandinavian raids in the West were motivated to acquire
material for use as bride wealth by a surplus male population.49 In this
47 Blindheim 1978: 173–176.
48 Wamers 1998: 47.
49 Barrett 2008: 676–677.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
821
regard, the fact that so much of the Insular material derives from women’s
rather than men’s graves is pertinent.
In addition to deriving wealth through plunder and slaving, the raids
on the West offfered opportunities to those organising them to amass the
material goods necessary to fulfijil or initiate the obligations involved in
gift-exchange processes. Those who would have been most involved in
this type of activity, which Ó Corráin has appropriately termed ‘aristocratic free enterprise’,50 were members of, or at least aspired to belong
to, the upper levels of Scandinavian society. In this regard, it is interesting to note Wamers’ observation that concentrations of Insular loot tend
to occur in those parts of Norway—Trøndelag, Møre og Romsdal, Sogn
og Fjordane, Rogaland and Vestfold—that were important economic
and political centres in the Viking Age,51 as these represent exactly the
social contexts where the practice of gift exchange may have been most
prevalent.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Maria Baastrup, National Museum of Copenhagen,
Denmark, for informing me of the fijinds from Vindinge, Funen; Cormac
Bourke, Ulster Museum, Belfast, for supplying Figure 1; and Jørgen Nielsen,
Odense Bys Museer, Denmark, for supplying Figure 2.
50 Ó Corráin 1998: 425.
51 Wamers 1998: 47–48.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
822
john sheehan
Bibliography
Barrett, J.H., 2008. What caused the Viking Age?, Antiquity 82, 671–685.
Blindheim, C., 1978. Trade problems in the Viking Age: some reflections on Insular metalwork found in Norwegian graves of the Viking Age, in T. Andersson & K.I. Sandred (eds.),
The Vikings: Proceedings of the Symposium of the Faculty of Arts of Uppsala University
June 6–9, 1977 (Stockholm), 166–178.
Bloch M. & J. Parry, 1989. Introduction, in J. Parry & M. Bloch (eds.), Money and the Morality
of Exchange, Cambridge, 1–32.
Bourdieu, P., 1990. The Logic of Practice, Oxford.
Bourke, C., 1993. Patrick: The Archaeology of a Saint, Belfast.
Burström, M., 1993. Silver as bridewealth: an interpretation of Viking Age silver hoards on
Gotland, Sweden, Current Swedish Archaeology 1, 33–37.
Etchingham, C., 1996. Viking Raids on Irish Church Settlements in the Ninth Century
(Maynooth Monographs, Series Minor, 1), Maynooth.
Gaimster, M., 1991. Money and media in Viking Age Scandinavia, in R. Sampson (ed.),
Social Approaches to Viking Studies, 113–122, Glasgow.
——, 2007. Viking economies: evidence from the silver hoards, in J. Graham-Campbell &
G. Williams (eds.), Silver Economy in the Viking Age, 123–133, London.
Gurevič, A.Y., 1968. Wealth and gift-bestowal among the ancient Scandinavians,
Scandinavica, 7, 126–138.
Hedeager, L., 1994. Warrior economy and trading economy in Viking Age Scandinavia’,
Journal of European Archaeology, 2/1, 130–147.
Henriksen, M.B., 2003. På vejen til Nyborg—nye fund af vikingetidsbopladser ved Vindinge
og Avnslev, Nyborg—Før og Nu 2003, 7–26.
Hodges, R., 1982. Dark Age Economics: the Origins of Towns and Trade AD 600–1000,
London.
Holm, P., 1986. The slave trade of Dublin, ninth to twelfth centuries, Peritia, 5, 317–345.
Hårdh, B., 1989. The function of silver in the Viking Age: discussion of methods and results,
in H. Clarke & E. Schia (eds.), Coins and Archaeology. Medieval Archaeology Research
Group: Proceedings of the First Meeting at Isegran, Norway, 1988, British Archaeological
Reports International Series 556, 43–51, Oxford.
——, 2007. Oriental-Scandinavian contacts on the Volga, as manifested by silver rings
and weight systems, in J. Graham-Campbell & G. Williams (eds.), Silver Economy in the
Viking Age, 135–147, Walnut Creek.
Kruse, S., 2007. Trade and exchange across frontiers, in J. Graham-Campbell & G. Williams
(eds.), Silver Economy in the Viking Age, 163–176, Walnut Creek.
Lieber, A.E., 1990. Did a ‘silver crisis’ in Central Asia afffect the flow of Islamic coins
into Scandinavia and Eastern Europe?, in K. Jonsson & B. Malmer (eds.), Sigtuna
Papers: Proceedings of the Sigtuna Symposium on Viking-Age Coinage, 1–4 June, 1989,
Commentationes De Nummis Saeculorum IX–XI, Suecia Repertis, n. s., 6, 207–212,
Stockholm.
Lucas, A.T., 1967. The plundering and burning of churches in Ireland, 7th to 16th Century,
in E. Rynne (ed.), North Munster Studies: essays in commemoration of Monsignor Michael
Moloney, 172–229, Limerick.
Mauss, M., 1923 [1967]. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies
[trans. by I. Cunnison, Essai sur le don], New York.
Metcalf, D.M., 2007. Regions around the North Sea with a monetised economy in the preViking and Viking Ages, in J. Graham-Campbell & G. Williams (eds.), Silver Economy in
the Viking Age, 1–11, London.
Miller, W.I., 1986. Gift, sale, payment, raid: case studies in the negotiation and classifijication
of exchange in Medieval Iceland, Speculum 61: 1, 18–50.
Montgomery, J.E., 2000. Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
3, 1–25.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8
viking raiding, gift-exchange and insular metalwork
823
Müller-Boyson, C., 1987. Stundum i Viking, en stundum i kaupferðum: die rolle der Wikinger
im wirtschaftsleben des mittelalterlichen Europa, Offfa 44, 249–260.
Myhre, B., 1998. The archaeology of the Early Viking Age in Norway, in H.B. Clarke, M. Ní
Mhaonaigh & R. Ó Floinn (eds.), Scandinavia and Ireland in the Early Viking Age, 3–36,
Dublin.
Noonan, T.S., 1991. The Vikings and Russia: some new directions and approaches to an old
problem, in R. Samson (ed.), Social Approaches to Viking Studies, 201–206, Glasgow.
Ó Floinn, R., 1989. Secular metalwork in the eighth and ninth centuries, in S. Youngs (ed.),
The Work of Angels: Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th–9th centuries AD, London.
Polanyi, K., 1944. The Great Transformation, New York.
Saunders, T., 1995. Trade, towns and states: a reconsideration of early medieval economies,
Norwegian Archaeological Review 28: 1, 31–53.
Sawyer, P., 1985. Birka, the Baltic and beyond, in S.O. Lindqvist (ed.), Society and Trade in
the Baltic during the Viking Age, 165–170, Visby.
——, 1990. Coins and commerce, in K. Jonsson & B. Malmer (eds.), Sigtuna Papers: Proceedings
of the Sigtuna Symposium on Viking-Age Coinage, 1–4 June, 1989, Commentationes De
Nummis Saeculorum IX–XI, Suecia Repertis, n. s., 6, 283–288, Stockholm.
Shetelig, H., 1940. Viking Antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland II—Viking Antiquities in
Scotland, Oslo.
Skre, D., 2008. Post-substantivist towns and trade, ad 600–1000, in D. Skre (ed.), Means of
Exchange: Dealing with Silver in the Viking Age, Kaupang Excavation Project Publication
Series, 2, Norske Oldfunn XXIII, 327–340, Aarhus.
Vestergaard, E., 1991. Gift-giving, hoarding, and outdoings, in R. Samson (ed.), Social
Approaches to Viking Studies, 97–104, Glasgow.
Wamers, E., 1985. Insularer Metallschmuck in wikingerzeitlichen Gräbern Nordeuropas.
Untersuchungen zur skandinavischen Westexpansion, Offfa-Bücher, 56, Neumünster.
——, 1998. Insular fijinds in Viking Age Scandinavia and the state formation of Norway, in
H.B. Clarke, M. Ní Mhaonaigh & R. Ó Floinn (eds.), Scandinavia and Ireland in the Early
Viking Age, 37–72, Dublin.
Williams, G., 2007. Kingship, Christianity and coinage: monetary and political perspectives
on silver economy in the Viking Age, in J. Graham-Campbell & G. Williams (eds.), Silver
Economy in the Viking Age, 177–214, London.
© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-23503-8