The idea of 'Danegeld' is particularly associated today with the reign of Ethelred II (978-1016), whose policy of paying off the Vikings rather than fighting them was famously unsuccessful, and led to the conquest of England by Svein Forkbeard and Cnut. These were apparently of very little interest to Viking raiders.īoth in England and on the Continent, native rulers regularly paid Viking raiders to leave them in peace. Northumbria also had a coinage, but unusually this was mostly made up of copper and bronze coins with a much lower value. East Anglia, Kent, Mercia and Wessex all had silver coinage, although the Kentish coinage disappeared after the kingdom was swallowed up by Wessex in the 820s. The main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms each had their own coinage, and the wealth of Anglo-Saxon England was probably one of the main causes of the Viking expansion.

Although the Empire was divided after 840, the tradition of strong silver coinage continued in the various smaller kingdoms that replaced it.

The Frankish Empire had a strong centralised coinage, which had been introduced by Charlemagne around the time of the first recorded raid. The Viking raids of the ninth century brought the raiders into regular contact with the monetary economies of western Europe. Viking coin-weight from Wareham, with inset silver penny of Ethelred I of Wessex The show of wealth was more important than the idea of a coin-based economy. In other cases, coins were even mounted as jewellery. In many cases, imported coins were melted down as the raw material for arm-rings, neck-rings or brooches. Like many peoples throughout history, the Vikings demonstrated their wealth and status by wearing beautiful jewellery, or by having expensively ornamented weapons, which were their equivalents of the Armani suit or the Rolex watch of today. Precious metals were also a symbol of wealth and power. Traders carried small scales which could measure weight very accurately, so it was possible to have a very precise system of trade and exchange even without a regular coinage. Imported coins and fragments of coins were also used for the same purpose. Large pieces of jewellery were often chopped up into smaller pieces known as 'hack-silver' to make up the exact weight of silver required. Silver circulated in the form of bars, or ingots, as well as in the form of jewellery and ornaments. Far and away the most common metal in the economy was silver, although gold was also used. This is what is known as a bullion economy, in which the weight and the purity of the precious metal are what is important, not what form the metal takes.

Viking conquest making money