Ninth Century Coin
These pieces are of an Islamic dirham commonly found amongst Viking possessions through trade or spoil. In the Islamic world, coinage was the standard monetary system. The Norse world however, did not take part in this. In many instances Islamic coins were melted down and made into other tradable objects or into wearable status symbols such as jewelry.[2] In this instance the cutting of the coin qualifies it as hack silver. Gold and silver objects were purposefully fragmented (like in the picture above) so that each piece would weigh a desired weight. This amount usually corresponded to a standard weight set by traders for that region. This allowed dirhams to be converted into hack silver thus transforming one monetary system into the gift giving system the Norse used.
The using and creation of hack silver gives insight into Vikings as traders. The creation of hack silver allowed Scandinavians to standardize coins from various regions that would otherwise have varying values. The ability to do this speaks to the high level of economic sophistication the Norse had as they had to know enough about economics of foreign countries’ trade to be able to convert foreign coins into their domestic weighted system. This specific system used the weight of the precious metals used such as gold and silver, to determine the coin’s worth rather than the form of the coin.[3]
