A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain: Trade Networks and the Importation of a Southern Scandinavian Silver Bullion Economy (Routledge Archaeologies of the Viking World)

Viking-Age trade, network theory, silver economies, kingdom formation, and the Scandinavian raiding and settlement of Ireland and Britain are all popular subjects.However, few have looked for possible connections between these phenomena, something this book suggests were closely related. By allying Blomkvist’s network-kingdoms with Sindbæk’s nodal market-networks, it is argued that the political and economic character of Viking-Age Britain and Ireland - my ‘Insular Scandinavia’ - is best understood if Dublin and Jórvík are seen as being established as nodes of a market-based network-kingdom.Based on a dataset relating to the then developing bullion economies of the central and eastern Scandinavian worlds and southern Scandinavia in particular, it is argued that war-band leaders from, or familiar with, ‘Danish’ markets like Hedeby and Kaupang transposed to Insular Scandinavia the concept of polities based on establishment of markets and the protection of routeways between them.Using thi