Precious metals have captivated humanity since prehistoric times. Gold, platinum, rhodium, palladium and, of course, silver have attracted the attention of jewelers throughout the ages for their great resistance to acids, corrosive agents and even atmospheric oxidation.
The bloodthirsty Vikings, those hordes of savage bearded warriors who terrorized northern Europe more than 1,000 years ago, had a special predilection for silver. Hundreds of treasures discovered throughout the continent attest to the predilection that the Scandinavian people felt for this noble metal.
"They clearly loved the material," says Dr Jane Kershaw, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford. "It is one of the few tangible things that survives from that time," adds she, the researcher, who leads the EU-funded Silver project aimed at evaluating the role of silver in the lives of the Vikings.
"We have found little evidence that Scandinavian peoples acquired loot through violent raids on the West," Kershaw said. "On the other hand, the search for Islamic silver was the great driver of the Viking era," adds the specialist in an article published in Horizon magazine.
Silver was already considered a precious metal when the Viking Age began, approximately in the year 750 AD. This material was more valued than gold in ancient Egypt in the 4th millennium BC. and it was already used by the Lydians, inhabitants of western Asia Minor, to make coins in the 6th century BC.
The Vikings, the archaeologist points out, were strongly influenced by the Golden Age of Islam, which also began in the 8th century AD. Based on their discoveries analyzing trace metals in coins collected in museums, the team of experts questions the traditional representation of Scandinavian warriors simply as fearsome invaders in Western Europe.
It has been widely believed that the Viking Age began with an attack in 793 AD. against the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, located in northern Britain, and who did not develop commercial links with the Islamic caliphates until the 10th century.
But a large proportion of Islamic silver found in the hoards studied by Kershaw and his team suggests that the Vikings may have headed east much earlier, around 750 AD. They then formed extensive global trade routes to the east and south as they expanded across Western Europe.
"These trade networks go from North Africa to Baghdad, across the Caspian Sea, through Ukraine and Russia, to the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia," said the Oxford University archaeologist. "That's a vast arc of silver flowing in one direction and goods and people flowing in the other direction as early as the 9th century," she notes.
This information, experts explain, also reveals that the Vikings were "cultural chameleons." "I hope these discoveries will make people re-evaluate the early stages of the Viking raids in Europe," he adds.
The Silver project, which will end in 2024 after six and a half years of study, has not only analyzed the Scandinavian peoples, but also the ancient empires of the Mediterranean region - including Greece, Persia and Rome - to shed light on the history of money and commerce.
After analyzing isotopes of lead and silver, Professor Francis Albarède, a geochemist at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, argues that the minting of coins in the Mediterranean area paved the way for the formation of democracies in the 5th century BC. "I think money was crucial in the invention of democracy because it helped people be heard and understood," he says.
His research shows that the Achaemenid Empire of Persia (550 BC -330 BC) used silver coins to hire large armies of Greek foot soldiers as mercenaries. When these “hoplites” returned home with plenty of money, they formed an ambitious middle class that helped the spread of democracy.
The mercenaries also redistributed the silver throughout the Mediterranean. According to Albarède, that is the only way to explain the excesses of the metal in the non-silver-producing states around the Aegean Sea and the coastal areas of southern Italy colonized by the ancient Greeks.
"You can see that silver was lubricating long-distance exchange," he said. His team also discovered that ancient mining areas were more widespread than previously thought. Around 480 BC, the silver mines of Lavrion, near Athens, helped this city become the main power of Greece and contributed to its role as the monetary center of the eastern Mediterranean.
Specialists found a way to trace the origins of the metal using isotopes of silver, in addition to those of lead. That combination allowed us to get a “better idea” of the sources where these minerals came from, which include the Halikidi region in northern Greece and the islands of Thassos, Sifnos and Evia.
