Vadas Ferenc (szerk.): A Wosinszky Mór Múzeum Évkönyve 15. (Szekszárd, 1990)

Handelsbeziehungen - Thomas S. Noonan: Scandinavian-Russian-Islamic trade in the ninth century

How do we explain the export of comparatively large numbers of dirhams to north Germany and Poland during the first-half of the ninth century? One school argues that they were the product of the direct trade ties linking the Baltic Slavs with northwestern Russia in the Viking Age. A second school sees these dirhams as the consequence of a lively Viking trade with the Baltic Slavs, i.e., they were brought to Poland and north Germany by the Vikings from European Russia via Sweden. Unfortunately, this problem is often neglected in studies on the Vikings where it is assumed too readily that all the trade of the Baltic in the Viking Age was in the hands of the Vikings. While this problem has not yet been satisfactorily resolved, it is clear that the Slavic peoples of the southern Baltic played a major role in the so-called „Viking" commerce, especially during the first-half of the ninth century. An analysis of the dirham hoards also demonstrates that Russia's ninthcentury Scandinavian commerce was overwhelmingly a trade with Sweden, i.e., with the Swedish-speaking peoples of the Swedish mainland as well as those from the islands of Gotland and Aland. No ninth-century dirham hoards are known from the Finnish mainland or Norway while only one hoard of 97 dirhams has been reported from Denmark. Furthermore, only five ninth-century dirham hoards are reported from the southeastern Baltic (modern Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). The merchants who sailed between Old Ladoga and the Baltic Slavic and/or Swedish ports apparently bypassed the southeastern Baltic as much as possible (NOONAN, in the press B). Numismatics thus helps to clarify the participants in the ninth-century Baltic trade with European Russia. Peter Sawyer has argued that the dirhams found in Scandinavia were the fruits of Viking raids in Russia rather than commerce (SAWYER 1982,124-126). An examination of the archaeological and written data suggests, on the contrary, that most dirhams reached the Baltic from European Russia due to trade. Scandinavian/Baltic merchants brought products such as amber, sword blades, and glass beads to Russia to exchange for dirhams. In northern Russia, the glass beads in particular were traded with various Finnic peoples for furs. Slaves were no doubt captured directly in Russia, obtained in local slave markets, or acquired by bartering with native chieftans. Thus, the Rus merchants who apparently controlled the ninth-century Scandinavian-Russian-Islamic trade brought various Baltic goods such as amber and sword blades to Ladoga. The recent discovery of a ninth century workshop in Ladoga where imported raw glass was fashioned into beads (RIABININ & CHERNYKH

1988,87-89) suggests that even at that time most of the glass beads bartered with the Finnic tribes for furs may have been made in Ladoga. Raw amber imported to Ladoga from the Baltic was also turned into various finished products in the town's workshops as early as the ninth century (RIABININ & CHERNYKH 1988, 87-89). Part of the goods imported to Ladoga or reworked there were then exchanged with the indigenous Finnic peoples of northern Russia for furs and slaves. These products as well as glass beads, amber, and sword blades were then taken south to the Byzantine, Khazar, and Islamic markets by the Rus merchants (NOONAN, in the press B^Using archeological and written evidence it is thus possible to reconstruct how Rus merchants from the Baltic already in the early ninth century had established a system in northern Russia which provided them with the products desired by the Byzantine, Khazar, and especially Islamic markets of the south. 58