3. Economy
Throughout the Viking Age, Denmark was an agricultural society that experienced slow growth under a stable climate, apparently in the absence of serious epidemic diseases like the plague that had ravaged Europe in the seventh century. That growth resulted in more children surviving to adulthood than was strictly necessary to maintain families, farms and village groups. This population surplus provided an opportunity to cultivate new land, as both place names and archaeobotanical research demonstrate, and also to produce things that could be sold commercially, or to build and equip sailing ships.
Family and inheritance
In many places, the population surplus must also have given rise to competition for inheritance and status at all levels, from the farming population to the royal families. Especially for young men who were not at the top of their families’ pecking order, the ethics of the warrior society would have provided a strong incentive to journey out into the world for honour and wealth. Yet the archaeology of Viking-Age Denmark does not reflect a society in fierce conflict. There were few fortresses and fortifications, and only moderate manifestations of power in the form of personal monuments, such as richly equipped graves, which are often seen in societies experiencing conflicts and changing power relations. With the exception of some examples from the turbulent years of the early and mid-tenth century, remarkably few ostentatiously equipped graves from the Viking Age have been found in Denmark.
This may reflect a society that managed to export its conflicts. Warfare abroad and settlement in other countries were the means of such exports. We see this at the top level of society when royal aspirants went on expedition, and many must have accompanied the sea kings. Thus, as long as there were lucrative objectives for the warriors, the Viking expeditions probably had a stabilising effect on the societies from which they emanated. Outbreaks of unrest in Viking-Age Denmark occurred primarily in the periods when opportunities for warfare abroad had diminished.
Population growth has often been cited as a cause of Viking raiding activity. But in the sense that resources had been exhausted, or that it was no longer possible to find suitable agricultural land in Denmark or in the rest of Scandinavia, this was not the case. That is clear from the thousands of new settlements founded after the Viking Age. But the small population growth created a demographic reserve which, from the close of the eighth century, helped to accelerate competition and the outward-facing activities of warrior societies.
The infield and outfield of the village
The people of Viking Denmark lived predominantly in single farms or in small village communities, often direct antecedents of today’s villages. The small and scattered trading towns never had populations of more than a few thousand. Excavations show that individual farms often had very large main buildings and tofts or homesteads, compared to medieval farms. Perhaps the farms’ households were larger than in later periods, with many relatives under one roof and more servants and slaves. Changes in the layout of farms may also be due to the fact that in earlier times they were based on cattle breeding, to a greater extent than was the case later. There was therefore a need for byres, which in some areas were of impressive size, and for folds and fences to separate animals from the farm’s horticulture – cabbage gardens, orchards and so on. In some villages, farms were laid out so that their fences framed a common village green or street, which may have been used to gather grazing animals.
On large farms there could also be a number of simple work cabins, sunken-featured buildings. These were often used for weaving. Specialised settlements are also known, which consisted only of sunken-featured buildings; they were typically situated at the coast or otherwise far from the grazing areas and the associated villages. It is tempting to link these cabins to the labour services that were a central part of power relations in rural communities. There were agreements between farms and a manager for the provision of a certain number of working days delivered from the farm, for harvest or for weaving, as the growing use of textiles for sails and as articles of commerce created an insatiable demand.
The landscape was divided into cultivated fields around the village – the infield – and beyond them, forests and areas used primarily for grazing – the outfield. The infield was most likely fertilised with livestock manure. This was an intensive form of cultivation, which had emerged in the Late Iron Age and replaced more scattered and changing forms of cultivation. In the densely populated Danish landscape, the outfield often formed a de facto boundary with the neighbouring village.
If there were many people in a village and enough available space, some may have been allowed to build new farms in the outfield, known as torp or outpost settlements. Many new villages thus appeared in the landscape during the Viking Age and the following centuries.
The reconstruction of a Viking-Age hall at the research and dissemination centre Land of Legends. The original was the largest royal hall from which traces have been found in Denmark. Its remains were found in 2009 close to the town of Lejre in the middle of Sjælland. The hall is just over 60 metres long and has a roof height of over 10 metres. It bears witness to the architecture and craftsmanship of the time. Photo: Land of Legends, Lejre
The motley ties
There could be great differences between the rich and the poor in Viking-Age villages, but everyone in society was bound together by diverse and intertwined ties: kinship, family histories, friendship and enmity, economic dependence, inherited duties and rights.
There was a fundamental distinction between the free and the enslaved, perceived as a natural part of the world order. But enslaved people were not without rights: they could own things, and in some cases could even have prominent duties, for example as a steward of their master’s estate. Slave status consisted in the legal condition of being unfree: one could not present cases or defend oneself at assemblies, but had to be represented as a master’s property. Enslaved status was not always permanent, however; slaves could buy themselves free or be released, like Toke Smed (Smith), who became sufficiently respectable to be able to raise a rune stone in Hørning near Skanderborg commemorating his former master, Troels, Gudmund’s son ‘who gave him gold and freedom’.
As in later centuries, there were small and large landowners among the farmers of the Viking Age. But there was not the same degree of inequality as came later. There was an entrenched notion of land as family property that could not easily be divided or disposed of. Instead, social dependence on magnates was settled in terms of taxes and labour services. In practical terms, this may seem to differ little from the land lease of later times, but in the logic of the older society these personal gifts to a leader, by the nature of the gift, created a bond and obliged the leader to reciprocate by protecting and considering the donor.
The great men of the Viking Age had to think carefully before they ignored this logic. The most basic duty of male subjects was to follow their master in military service and in defence, and these farmer-soldiers were still a focal point of Viking-Age warfare. A chieftain’s life could stand or fall on whether his followers were prepared to put their own lives at stake on the battlefield, rather than to play it safe. This put a damper on the level of unilateral taxes and work duties that could be imposed.
This logic changed in the twelfth century at the latest, as warfare increasingly came to be dominated by heavily armed and trained elite warriors. Unlike in the earlier period, these warriors required their dependents to fund their subsistence, rather than to fight with them. Thereafter, land increasingly became a commodity – one that could be accumulated in large estates and rented out for a price. As in later societal upheavals, many probably experienced this change as a negative force that, in the words of later times, tore asunder the motley ties that bound man to his superiors.
Network economy
Some of the most important resources in the Viking-Age economy did not come from the fields or livestock of the village. Goods such as tar, iron, rope, beeswax, fur and down for pillows were in high demand in the burgeoning trade of the market towns. What these goods had in common was that they originated from uncultivated land – forests, mountains and other outlying areas. The outskirts of cultivated land therefore became, like the distant shores, an economic zone of expansion for the maritime society.
The use of sailing ships with large cargo capacity made the transport of such goods profitable and created new incentives for exchange. It was no longer only the richest who could obtain metals or luxury goods. A farmer who could collect beeswax or wood tar could gain access to valuable things in the market towns. The trade in outfield resources thus gave rise to far-reaching networks of contact and development. This is seen, for example, in finds of Norwegian whetstones or soapstone cooking-pots, which from the late eighth century found their way in large numbers from mountain areas in the north to settlements in Denmark, which lacked rock.
Some of the items that were traded may have been extracted or harvested on the initiative of small farmers, but many were probably collected as taxes and labour services for chieftains, who thus gained a new engine of economic power that, like the looting expeditions, was linked to shipping. In this way, the Viking-Age trade in outfield goods on a small scale preceded the medieval sea trade in foods such as grain, butter, salted food and stockfish – goods that were not yet appearing in any significant quantities in the cargo of Viking ships.
Trade and towns
The trading towns or emporia that grew up from the beginning of the eighth century were small compared to many medieval towns, and initially there were only a few of them. Only two in present-day Denmark qualify without discussion: Ribe and Aarhus. These were not primarily centres for trade in local agricultural goods, but hubs for long-distance trade in outfield goods, craft products and exotic imports. They were surrounded by boundary ditches, and characterised by a special building pattern in which houses were set close together, often wall to wall, facing a central street. There was minimal space for cultivation or animal husbandry on the plots of these towns.
The plots and ditches were probably an expression of a judicial provision separating townspeople from others. In a society governed by customary law, travellers from far afield brought together by trade posed a legal problem. The town plots seem to have been part of the solution: strangers were tolerated if they stuck to the towns and, presumably, paid an annual fee to the local authorities. Such a tax is mentioned in the deed of gift given by Cnut the Holy to Lund Cathedral in 1085.
In economic terms, however, the trading towns were more advanced than their small size might suggest. They housed a wide variety of artisans: blacksmiths, non-ferrous metalworkers, bone carvers and comb makers, cobblers, potters and more. They attracted long-distance trade that for goods such as fur or glass might reach from the Middle East to the Arctic Circle. And they were urban communities that established trade norms and commercial law, and used regulated means of payment.
The First Trading Towns
Watch this film in which Søren Sindbæk describes the establishment of Ribe as a trading town in the early 700s, as well as what the last ten years of archaeological work have revealed about the city's development and activities. The film is in Danish with English subtitles, and lasts about 11 minutes. Click 'CC' and choose 'English' or 'Danish' for subtitles.
Coins and power
Coins were minted in Ribe and Hedeby – in Ribe as early as the eighth century and well into the ninth, and in Hedeby continuously throughout the Viking Age. Coins circulated as a regular means of payment in the trading towns. In these towns they were not cut up by weight or used as jewellery, as they often were in other regions.
Outside the towns, another trade practice developed in the ninth century. Silver of all kinds was used as a medium of exchange by weight: cut jewellery and coins and ingots were weighed with scales and weights. This was in some ways a more flexible system, and one that did not rely on an issuer’s guarantee. Large amounts of weights have been found with metal detectors. Together with hacksilver hoards, they demonstrate that there was extensive commercial exchange in the Viking Age long before coins became widespread.
Coins were not only a means of trade, but also, and perhaps even more, a medium for taxation and for the payment of soldiers. During Harald Bluetooth’s reign, his coins became widespread outside the trading towns. This may have happened partly because Harald’s military activities and building projects required large payments to warriors and others at a time when access to new silver was limited – the flow of Islamic silver coins into Scandinavia ceased around 970. However, the use of hacksilver revived after Sven Forkbeard’s England expeditions.
The Danish kings of the first half of the eleventh century struck many coins, but the hoards show that no attempt was made to regulate their use: Danish coins were included among the silver that was cut up for payment. The coins must have been minted for a reason – either for use in the trading towns or for the kings to give fair and equal payments when salaries were paid to the warriors. It was not until after the Viking Age, under Sven Estridsen (1047–1074/1076), that a controlled coin economy with exclusively Danish coins was gradually introduced.
Overview map of Northern Europe in the Viking Age with names of towns, monasteries, burial grounds and ring fortresses in Denmark. © danmarkshistorien.dk