The taking and sale of captives was a fundamental aspect of Viking activity both within and outside of Scandinavia.
By Dr. Ben Raffield
Archaeologist and Researcher
Uppsala University
Abstract
Slaving was a prominent activity among raiding and mercantile groups operating across the early medieval world during the Viking Age (c. 750โ1050 CE). Historical sources provide explicit descriptions of widespread raiding and slave taking by Viking raiders, as well as a substantial trade in captive peoples. Archaeologists, however, have long-struggled to identify evidence for the transportation and sale of captives in the material record. In order to begin addressing this issue, this study explores the comparative archaeologies and histories of slave markets in order to examine the potential form and function of these sites, and how they might have operated as part of the wider, interconnected Viking world.
Introduction
In 821, the early-medieval Irish chronicle, The Annals of Ulster, states that โรtar was plundered by the heathens, and they carried off a great number of women into captivityโ.1 This was just one of a number of recorded attacks by Viking raiders on communities living in northern and western Europe during the eighth-eleventh centuries โ the period commonly known as the Viking Age, in which captives were taken.2 Historical sources indicate that over the course of the period, thousands of people were driven to raidersโ ships and taken away to be enslaved and subsequently exploited in various roles across Scandinavia, the Norse colonies of the North Atlantic, or among societies inhabiting lands that lay even further afield.
In light of the explicit descriptions provided by written sources, it is not surprising that the Vikings enjoy a dubious reputation as prolific slavers. While the existence of a substantial trade in captives during the Viking Age has long-been accepted by a number of scholars, many aspects of enslavement and captivity remain enigmatic.3 We have little knowledge, for example, of how captive groups were acquired and transported, where and how they were sheltered, provisioned, or what conditions they were forced to endure. There is similarly a striking lack of evidence for any kind of infrastructure that supported long-distance networks of transportation and sale. While historical sources cite the role of major settlements as slave trading hubs, evidence for a Viking-Age โslave marketโ has yet to be identified archaeologically. Rather than studying the processes by which captives were acquired and sold, scholars have largely chosen to focus more on the roles that enslaved groups may have played among Scandinavian societies themselves โ for example in various household, agricultural, and funerary contexts.4 As Stephanie Yuhl has argued, this can result in the concept of enslavement becoming โtoo easily domesticated into a discourse about paternalism, relationships, community, homes, households, and intact familiesโโฆโthe enslaved too easily become โservantsโ separated from active enslaversโ.5 The study of slave markets is crucial not only to our understanding of enslavement as an institution, but also has implications for our wider knowledge of regional and inter-regional economies, social structures, and everyday life among slaveholding societies.
In order to address these issues, this study will adopt a cross-cultural approach to the study of slave markets in the Viking world, defined here as mainland Scandinavia and those areas of northern and western Europe, the North Atlantic, the Baltic, and modern-day Eastern Europe that lay within the wider sphere of Scandinavian influence through raiding, colonisation, and trading contact. Drawing upon the comparative archaeologies and histories of slave trading, the study will explore the possible form and function of slave markets and how their operation has varied among different cultures. It is important to emphasise, however, that the aim of this study is not simply to superimpose comparative data onto Viking-Age societies. While many elements of captivity and enslavement recur cross-culturally, the application of a comparative approach allows both similarities and elements of variation in these practices to be drawn out of historical data, thereby enabling the evidence from one period to inform our knowledge of another.
Captive taking and enslavement are global phenomena that have been practiced among human societies since prehistory. Among many cultures, the acquisition of captives is intrinsically associated with deracination, violence, and dishonour.6 The violent ripping of captives from their natal kin groups and communities is often described as a form of โsocial deathโ, whereby the captive is robbed of their social identity and rendered as a โnonbeingโ in the eyes of their captors.7 In some slaving systems, this perception can be reinforced by the commodification of captives as human cargoes, who are transported and sold in the same way as livestock or objects.8 Later, the enslaved might continue to be treated as a liminal being who is marginalised by their captors as an โotherโ, an object, or a domesticated animal.9 Their status as chattel can also be enshrined in legislation designed to cement their captorโs ownership over their bodies.10
Captive taking, sale, and exploitation, however, are multi-faceted processes, and it is clear that the fate of captives has varied cross-culturally. While most if not all captives undergo a process of social death as part of their journey into enslavement, in many cases they can also experience a form of social โresurrectionโ or โrebirthโ that marks a degree of reintegration into captor society. In a recent synthetic study of captive taking among small-scale societies, Catherine Cameron has drawn attention to the variable fate of captives acquired as a result of raiding and warfare among a number of indigenous societies in contact-period North America. While some captives were enslaved, others were singled out for torture and execution, while others still were gifted, traded, sold on to new owners or captured by other groups. Some captives were even adopted into the households of their captors.11 The imposition of enslavement and the extent to which captives remained โsocially deadโ therefore varied according to specific circumstances. Thus the concept of โcaptivityโ might be considered as a transient state experienced by natally-alienated groups whose fate had not yet been fully determined.
When we turn to the Viking Age, it is apparent that many aspects of captive taking and enslavement correspond with those observed elsewhere. Historical sources, for example, clearly demonstrate that these processes were intimately connected with violence and deracination. The concept of dishonour was, similarly, almost certainly associated with enslavement, particularly when applied to the status of captives taken during battle.12 There is also good evidence to suggest that captives were subjected to a process of social death, with the earliest Scandinavian law codes indicating that the enslaved were perceived as chattel.13 Textual sources, furthermore, imply that captives could be redistributed by members of the elite to favoured subordinates and retinues.14
The extent to which captives were commodified for transportation and sale, however, is less clear. Despite good historical evidence for the existence of substantial slave-trading networks, it seems apparent that not all slavers specifically sought captives for sale. In many cases, those taken during Viking raids likely found themselves transported not to slave markets but rather to the home communities of their captors, where they were exploited in many different roles. While at least some of these individuals were undoubtedly condemned to a life of manual labour or sexual abuse, Stefan Brink has argued that the enslaved were incorporated into slaveholding households through the creation of reciprocal relationships that bound captives to captor families, thereby raising the possibility of a potential degree of integration into Scandinavian society.15 Evidence from literary and legal sources similarly suggests that some captives possessed an altogether more influential status as concubines, wives, or as managers of households and farmsteads.16 It is therefore possible that any captiveโs eventual status may have varied according to the particular circumstances of their condition.
As this study is largely concerned with the study of individuals and groups that were acquired through raiding and warfare, it is important to outline the terminology that will be used in the following discussion. In recognition of the potential variability and uncertainty concerning their eventual status, the term โcaptiveโ will be used to describe individuals who were forcibly transported to and sold at markets across the Viking world. For ease of reading, however, the terms โslaverโ and โslave traderโ will be used in reference to individuals and groups who engaged in the acquisition, transportation, and trade of captives. Similarly, the expressions โslavingโ, โslave raidingโ, and โslave tradingโ will be used to describe both the violent and non-violent processes by which captives were obtained and sold. โSlave marketโ will also be retained as an umbrella term for the locales where captives were traded or sold, even if this was not the sole or primary function of any given site.
Captive Taking and Slave Trading: The Historical and Literary Evidence
The taking and sale of captives was a fundamental aspect of Viking activity both within and outside of Scandinavia, with historical sources providing a broad picture of slave raiding and trading across an area stretching from the North Atlantic to the Caspian Sea. Given that the Viking Age represents the last period of Scandinavian prehistory, it is important to recognise that the evidence for slaving derives entirely from non-Scandinavian sources. The main sources of data for the activities of Viking raiding groups are historical annals produced by Christian scribes working in the monastic institutions and royal courts of northern Europe. Accounts of Viking raids on the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa as well as Rลซs raiding in the Caspian Sea region are provided by Arabic sources, while further references to Rลซs slaving and warfare can be found in the Russian primary Chronicle. 17 Other valuable sources of information include the accounts of travellers, saintsโ lives and the biographies of churchmen who ventured into the northern lands during the Viking Age as well as later ecclesiastical histories. Also of use are Old Norse literary sources, including skaldic poems, the Icelandic family sagas, and Heimskringla โ โThe Sagas of the Norse Kingsโ.
All of these sources possess their own limitations and biases. Many historical accounts, for example, served as pieces of political propaganda, selectively whitewashing or augmenting history in order to promote and consolidate the power of royal lineages. As such, they can be considered as providing only an incomplete and highly partial picture of Viking and Rลซs activity.18 Religious biases may have similarly prompted contemporaneous observers and the biographers of churchmen to portray Scandinavian and Rลซs societies as overly โbarbaricโ, thereby aggrandising their own or their subjectโs morality and achievements. Further uncertainties surround the use of the sagas, whose late date of composition in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries may mean that they reflect aspects of medieval rather than Viking-Age society.19
Despite this, it is possible to successfully integrate these sources into the study of the Viking Age. While individual historical chronicles or annals should not be taken as providing an exact representation of any particular series of events, the identification of similar patterns of behaviour across multiple sources can arguably provide information on general historical trends. Debates concerning the validity of Old Norse texts are long-running and divisive, but recent years have seen increasing numbers of scholars developing frameworks for their successful integration into archaeological and historical enquiries. There is now some acceptance that these sources can be taken as providing broad, analogous insights into cultural practices and social institutions as they may have existed during the Viking Age. Although it is necessary to acknowledge a measure of uncertainty regarding their use, they offer invaluable perspectives on Scandinavian societies that cannot be extrapolated from material evidence alone.20
When taken together, these sources provide a relatively comprehensive and consistent overview of slaving activity across the early medieval world. While it is important to recognise that the scale of slaving is almost certainly under-represented in historic sources given their focus on the fates of kingdoms and their rulers, insular and Continental annals as well as numerous Arabic sources provide ample evidence of both small-scale Viking raiding and what were evidently well-planned, large-scale attacks. They also reveal variability in raiding practices by indicating that some raiders targeted certain demographic groups โ namely women and children, for captivity, as was the case during attacks on รtar in 821 and Seville, Spain, in 844.21 This may provide some insights into the demands of markets and captor societies, as well as the efforts of raiders to meet these. Although men must have also been taken captive, their role as primary combatants meant that they were more likely to have been killed where raiding groups met with resistance. Those too old or infirm to have been profitably sold or exploited might have been executed.
Slaving was also a by-product of more formalised warfare and conflict, with the Annals of Fulda, for example, recording that a large number of Frankish captives were taken following their defeat in battle by a Viking force during the year 880.22 Conflict between expansionist polities and kingdoms in Scandinavia would have also provided a potential domestic source of captives who could be sold or exploited by the victors. Outside of Scandinavia, Viking groups regularly engaged in conflict with each other, either as mercenaries or in order to further their own political ambitions, while Adam of Bremen noted that pirates operating in the seas around Denmark during the eleventh century would regularly attack shipping in order to take captives.23 Given that participation in warfare and mercantile activity were primarily male occupations, the vast majority of captives taken in these circumstances would have been men. It is worth noting the work of Leรฏla Blili, who has drawn attention to French records of captives taken by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth century.24 While women represented half of the captives taken during raids on settlements, the overwhelming majority of captives taken at sea were men. During the Viking Age, the targeting of shipping lanes similarly may have yielded significant numbers of male prisoners, potentially offsetting the apparent gender imbalance in captives as suggested by accounts of attacks on settlements.
What became of captives once they had been abducted is difficult to say, but it is likely that many found themselves funnelled into the interlocking trade networks that spanned the Viking world. Given that the taking and the holding of captives make different demands on a captorโs organisational skills, time, and resources, it was probably not uncommon for them to be quickly sold on to new owners.25 This can be seen in the Life of St. Findan, in which the Irish captive Findan passes through the hands of three owners soon after being abducted by a Viking group during the ninth century.26 In รlรกfs saga Tryggvasonar, the young รlรกfr is similarly sold twice in the time immediately following his capture by Estonian pirates.27 We cannot rule out the possibility, however, that some raiders possessed a more specialised knowledge of market conditions and the expertise to sustain captives, allowing them to play a double role as slave traders.
For many of those captives taken in western Europe, especially the British Isles, their eventual destination might have been the Norse colonies of the North Atlantic. Others might have been taken to the Continent; in 1047, for example, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records a Viking raiding fleet as selling a cargo of English captives in Flanders before sailing home.28 It is also possible that captives were taken to Scandinavia in order to be sold or exploited among their captorsโ communities, as suggested by the lives of Anskar and Rimbert, which mention captives living in and being transported through the major market centres of Birka and Hedeby during the ninth century.29 In Laxdรฆla saga, we similarly find a number of women, including an Irish captive named Melkorka, being sold by a Rลซs trader at a market associated with a public assembly in the Brenno Islands.30
Evidence for the long-distance trafficking of captives along the eastern trade routes of the Viking world is provided by numerous sources, including the tenth-century Byzantine source, De Administrando Imperio, which describes Rลซs merchants transporting captives by boat along the Dniepr river.31 Also of note is the famous account of the Arabic diplomat Aแธฅmad ibn Faแธlฤn, who encountered a group of Rลซs slavers and a number of female captives on the Volga river in 922.32 Neither source provides any indication of where the captives originated, and while we cannot rule out the possibility that at least some might have been conveyed from western Europe or Scandinavia through the hands of multiple traders, it is more likely that the vast majority were taken captive during internecine warfare or Rลซs raiding in the Slavic regions of the southern and eastern Baltic.33
Archaeological Evidence for Slave Trading in the Viking World
While written sources provide a relative wealth of information on captive taking and sale during the Viking Age, slaving is often considered to be an archaeologically โinvisibleโ practice. As such, it is not surprising that the material record allows only fragmentary insights into this activity. Perhaps the most evocative evidence for slave trading is a corpus of what appear to be iron shackles and collars, most of which have been recovered during excavations at urban centres thought to be associated with the slave trade, such as Dublin, Birka, and Hedeby (see Figure 1). Four examples are known from Birka, six have been recovered at Hedeby, and at least one is known from Dublin. Other examples are known from sites such as Skedala, Sweden, Trelleborg on the island of Zealand, Denmark, Neu Niekรถhr near Rostock, Germany, Winchester, England, and several crannog sites in Ireland.34 A small number of shackles have also been identified in Khazaria, a region that is now part of southern Russia, where several large slave markets are known to have existed. These served primarily to facilitate the sale of captives to the Abbฤsid Caliphate and the Sฤmฤnid Emirate, both of which were major consumers of slave labour.35
These finds are ultimately ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways; it has been argued, for example, that they may have been used for restraining animals instead of humans.36 It is not unreasonable, however, to assert that some or all of these objects were suitable if not specifically intended for use on humans, and in this the utilitarian design of the Viking-Age finds conforms to one that remained relatively consistent from ancient times through to the early modern period.37 Unfortunately, details regarding the specific contexts of these objects are often lacking.38
Given the scale of slaving as described in historical sources, the paucity of shackles and restraints is striking. Several major Viking-Age trading sites, including Ribe and Kaupang, have yet to produce such finds, and they are also unknown at market centres such as Sebbsersund and Frรถjel. In this, the Viking-Age finds are unexceptional โ only a few hundred of these objects, dating broadly to the First Millennium CE, have been found across Europe to date.39 There are several explanations for this dearth of finds. Given their relative expense, metal shackles and chains may have been susceptible to being melted down for reuse when no longer needed. It is also possible that metal restraints were not primarily intended for the mass transportation of captives. In the early medieval world, the โbindingโ of hostages and captives represented a fundamental aspect of elite power.40 Numerous references to this practice are made in Irish sources, and the significance of binding as a motif is seen in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which in 942 describes the population of northern England (at this time under the control of the Scandinavian kings of York) as being in โheathenโs captive fettersโ.41 The use of metal shackles was therefore perhaps mainly reserved for certain occasions, for example to emphasise the subjugation of an adversary. A much more likely reason for the dearth of metal finds is that slavers preferentially used restraints made from organic materials such as wood or rope. If maritime raiding and piracy represented one of the primary means of obtaining captives, then the availability of shipโs cordage would have made this a cost-effective alternative to metal restraints. Indeed, recent excavations in the harbour area at Birka have yielded substantial quantities of Viking-Age rope, emphasising the ubiquity of its use in maritime contexts.42
Despite the small number of shackles, their presence in nodal trading centres such as Dublin, Birka, and Hedeby suggests that captives were inhabiting or moving through these sites. Indeed, it has been argued that the developmental trajectory of Dublin (established by Viking raiders during the 840s) was driven by slaving activity.43 Exactly where captives were held and sold in these locations is a matter of speculation. Given the importance of maritime transportation in slave-trading networks, the fact that five of the six shackles from Hedeby were recovered during excavations of the harbour might indicate that captives were sold on the wharves or directly from slaversโ ships. As archaeological investigations within major Scandinavian marketplaces have thus far failed to reveal large compounds or open spaces that might have functioned as public markets, it is also possible that captives were held and sold from private properties. During excavations at Temple Bar, Dublin, archaeologists identified a small (c. 3โรโ2.5โ m) post and wattle outhouse that seemed to have been used primarily as an animal pen during the eleventh-twelfth century. The presence of a hearth and human fleas within the structure were tentatively taken to suggest human occupation during its early stages of use, perhaps by lower-status or captive individuals.44 This raises the possibility that captives were held, transported, and sold in the same way as livestock, suggesting an overlapping function for animal pens situated at trading sites. The sale of Melkorka in Laxdรฆla saga noted above also indicates that structures associated with slave trading did not need to be substantial or even permanent, given that she was held alongside 11 other women in a tented booth at a seasonal marketplace.45
In addition to finds of shackles, silver (especially Arabic dirham coins) has often been taken as a proxy for slave trading across the Viking world.46 While silver was being used in economic transactions in the North Sea emporium of Ribe during the late eighth century, large quantities of silver in the form of Abbฤsid dirhams began to make their way into Scandinavia via eastern trade routes in the years around 800.47 The first significant influx of dirhams occurred during the early ninth century, and it is around this time that silver began to be used for payment in other major marketplaces such as Hedeby, Kaupang, and Birka.48 A more substantial influx took place during the tenth century, at which time the use of silver seems to have become more widespread.49 The economic value of these coins lay primarily in their use as bullion, which could comprise whole or chopped up pieces of jewellery, ingots, and coinage (a form of material collectively referred to as โhacksilverโ), and it is likely that large quantities of dirhams would have been melted down for this purpose. Finds of silver bullion and the weighing equipment used in transactions have been made not only at major trading centres, but also at a number of camps established by Viking fleets operating in Europe during the mid-late ninth century, indicating the use of this material among itinerant raiding and mercantile groups. Not all imported dirhams, however, were melted down as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands of coins (which must themselves represent only a tiny fraction of those in circulation) that have been recovered across the Viking world to date. That so many intact dirhams, imitations, and even forgeries have been found implies that their intrinsic value was widely recognised both as a motif and a medium of exchange.
The use of silver in slave trading is logical not only because of its portability and durability but also due to it being a mutually recognisable and trusted form of payment. It may be for this reason that we find silver first being used for transactions in major, permanent marketplaces โ those inter-regional trading nodes through which captives are most likely to have passed.50 Despite this, the vast majority of dirhams known from Scandinavia (some 67,000 coins) have not been recovered from major marketplaces but rather on the Baltic island of Gotland, where numerous Viking-Age hoards have been found. The largest of these alone โ that from Spillings (see Figure 2), deposited some time after 870/1, contained over 66โ kg of silver including more than 14,000 dirhams. Why so much silver was amassed on Gotland is a matter of debate, but Dagfinn Skre has recently suggested that the Gotlanders were quick to take advantage of the eastern silver routes that opened up in the early years of the Viking Age by establishing themselves as important intermediaries within long-distance slave-trading networks.51 Thus far, no direct evidence for slave trading has been identified on Gotland, and it is possible that the island functioned primarily as a base (and financial repository) for merchants who plied their trade in foreign markets.
Although silver could be used as a means of exchange in any transaction, there is some written evidence to suggest its specific use in the purchase of captives. In Laxdรฆla saga, Hoskuldr purchases Melkorka for three marks of silver (although the merchant also has a number of other captive women for sale at one mark each), and an enslaved man named Thrand is purchased for the same amount in Egils Saga.52 In early medieval Ireland, a female captive functioned as a unit of value โ the cumal, which equated to around three ounces of silver, eight to ten cows, and a unit of land.53 It is worth emphasising, however, that captives could have been exchanged for many other forms of payment, some of which are unlikely to have survived in the archaeological record. In รlรกfs saga Tryggvasonar, for example, รlรกfr and his foster-brother are traded for โa rather good goatโ, and รlรกfr is later exchanged for a cloak.54 Other objects may have been used in more systematic trading. According to the Jewish emissary Ibrฤhฤซm ibn Yaโqลซb al-Tartushi, the main currency used in Prague (a major slave market) during the mid-tenth century was squares of embroidered cloth that were valued at one-tenth of a silver qinshฤr.55 A tenth-century peace treaty between the Byzantines and the Rลซs stipulated that Rลซs merchants whose captives escaped while in Byzantine territory were to be recompensed with a predetermined quantity of silk per head.56 While few Byzantine coins are known from northern lands in contrast with the huge number of dirhams, silk is widely found in high-status burial contexts across Viking-Age Scandinavia, possibly indicating that Rลซs merchants sought silk (perhaps in addition to other goods, such as glassware or wine) in exchange for captives.57 Another important commodity was salt, something that has been noted as being traded alongside and in exchange for captives in other early medieval contexts.58 Stephen Lewis has argued that Viking raids on Noirmoutier in Brittany during the ninth century may have been motivated by the desire to obtain both captives and the salt that was a major product of the region.59 Tentative evidence for an association between salt, silver, and perhaps slave trading can be found in context of the Spillings hoard, part of which had been buried in a bag that had probably once contained salt.60
Comparative Archaeologies and Histories of Slave Markets
Recent decades have witnessed significant advances in the study of enslaved peoples, as seen in the increasingly nuanced examination of unfree labour and exploitation, the agency of enslaved groups, and the diverse lives of captives in various contexts. Archaeological studies of slave markets, however, are demonstrably lacking. Although a number of putative sites in Roman Italy, North Africa, and Anatolia have been discussed by Elizabeth Fentress and her colleagues, their findings were heavily critiqued by Monika Trรผmper, whose repudiation of the concept of purpose-built slave markets led her to conclude that Graeco-Roman slave markets are an โarchaeological fictionโ.61 While Trรผmperโs conclusion was perhaps overly negative, her work nonetheless highlights the inherent difficulties associated with the study of these sites. These difficulties are further illustrated in a survey of nineteenth-century slave trading in northern Ghana by Benjamin Kankpeyeng, who noted that the only surviving evidence for the slave market at Salaga (the largest and most important in the region) comprises the mud roof of a warehouse where captives were apparently held during inclement weather. The only other known evidence for slave trading in Salaga are the iron shackles that can still be found within many of the former merchant homes, attesting to the human cargoes that once moved through the town.62
The situation regarding the identification of slave markets is slightly more favourable in early modern, Western contexts, where it is possible to obtain historical documentation testifying to their existence and operation. Perhaps the most well-known slave markets are those of the antebellum American South, located in slave-trading entrepรดts such as Richmond, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. Even in instances where the location of these sites is known, identifying archaeological evidence for slave trading itself remains a challenging task. Recent excavations at the nineteenth-century Lumpkinโs Jail site in Richmond, for example, identified several areas of the slave-trading complex, including a cobbled courtyard, brick drain features, a kitchen and two other buildings spread across two terraces as well as over 16,000 finds dating from the 1830s to the twentieth century. While remnants of the jail building and an enclosing compound wall were identified, these interpretations were heavily dependent on intensive documentary research and nineteenth-century photographic evidence, with heavy disturbance preventing the artefactual evidence from providing detailed insights into daily life and slave trading within the site.63
When we turn to the historical record, however, it seems that specialised slave-trading sites like Lumpkinโs Jail may be exceptional. In many cases, captives were often sold alongside a variety of commodities in multi-functional market sites, reflecting the likelihood that few merchants in history would have dealt only in captives.64 Wakฤlat al-ฤallฤba, the most prominent slave market in sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Cairo, for example, was used for the sale of various goods in addition to captives destined for general sale, while more valuable captives were kept and sold in merchantsโ houses. The market was presided over by a sheikh who was responsible both for its management and for ensuring that merchants paid their sales taxes.65 In nineteenth-century Moroccan cities such as Marrakesh, Fez, and Rabat, market squares were given over to the sale of captives for certain periods of time, several days a week, while the market space at Salaga was used for the sale of foodstuffs in the morning and for captives later in the day.66 The allotment of specific times for slave trading may again suggest that the operation of these sites was overseen by external parties who monitored and taxed the sale of goods. The transient presence of captives within such sites means that these groups would leave little to no trace in the archaeological record, and for those scholars who cannot rely on detailed oral narratives or documented histories of slave trading, the challenges associated with identifying slave markets are greatly magnified. Are slave markets as Trรผmper argues, however, an โarchaeological fictionโ?67 While Trรผmper is surely correct in highlighting the pitfalls associated with the identification of slave markets, her findings are determined to some extent by her very definition of these sites as โall squares, buildings, and structures where slaves could be soldโ.68 Trรผmperโs focus on the use of a discrete place may be overly-categorical and to more fully understand the nature of slave trading, we should look beyond the use of specific spaces and places for the sale of captives and consider other contexts within which this activity took place.
In circumstances where slave traders were transporting captives by sea, slave sales might have taken place not at formal marketplaces but rather at the harbourside or even from ships themselves. In colonial Charleston, the sale of enslaved Africans as part of the transatlantic trade often took place within merchantsโ yards, warehouses, and on wharves.69 In early nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, captives were similarly kept in and sold from houses on Valongo Street, located in the immediate vicinity of the wharf that was the disembarkation point for newly arrived slave ships.70 Not all marketplaces, however, would have been located in major coastal ports, nor would they have been used permanently or even regularly. In colonial South Carolina, from 1723 four-day fairs held at the hinterland settlements of Dorchester, Ashley Ferry Town, and Childsbury provided opportunities for buyers to purchase both captives and other merchandise.71 During the nineteenth century, Balangingi slavers operating in the โSulu Zoneโ would similarly sell their captive cargoes at seasonal markets and trading posts in addition to major, permanent marketplaces. In other cases, captives were sold directly from the raidersโ ships, usually to creditors who provided supplies for raiding voyages.72
When considering the potential morphology of slave market sites, it is important to note that, in many contexts, the number of captives purchased at any one time was usually small. Citing sale lists for the slave ship Hare, Kenneth Morgan has shown that the majority of captives purchased during two sales in Charleston, in March 1755 and July 1756 were sold singly or in pairs. In regions where slave trading was less-centralised, such as the Chesapeake, the number of single sales was even higher, with more than a third of captives being purchased singly by the early eighteenth century.73 Zephyr Frank and his colleagues have similarly highlighted the polyfocal and small-scale nature of slave trading in Rio de Janeiro through an analysis of 408 slave sales made during February-May 1869. They found that rather than being confined to a formal marketplace, sales of individual captives took place across every neighbourhood in the city.74 The decentralised nature of slave trading indicates that the concept of the โslave marketโ, in many cases, might be expanded to encompass the entire urban fabric of a town or city.
Given that many Viking-Age captives were acquired through raiding and warfare, it is finally necessary to explore slave trading during conflict. Perhaps the most obvious comparative context for this is the Classical world, especially the extensive trade in captives that resulted from the consolidation and expansion of the Roman Republic and early Empire. The enslavement of defeated enemies during military campaigns provided a major source of captives for the Roman state, and the legions were often accompanied by merchants (mercatores) who would purchase prisoners from the army following battles.75 The mercatores operated outside of the militaryโs control and, with few exceptions, were not afforded any protection while in the field, but their symbiotic relationship with the army is clear. While the mercatores provided the soldiery with a rapid source of extra income and the opportunity to unburden themselves of large numbers of captives, the taking of large numbers of prisoners would have created favourable conditions for merchants who could purchase them at low prices.76 Given the lucrative potential for expansionist warfare to generate quantities of prisoners who might be sold into captivity, both temporary camps and more permanent fortifications occupied by armed groups might have served as epicentres for slave trading in numerous ancient and historical contexts.
Viking-Age Slave Markets in Cross-Cultural Perspective
This discussion has focused on the nature and scale of slave trading as it has varied cross-culturally and through time, and there are several trends that might be applied to the study of the Viking Age. First, given the balance of the evidence explored here, it seems that sites associated with historic slave trading were rarely self-contained or dedicated solely to this purpose. In many cases, the spaces used for selling captives were also used for selling an array of commodities. The sites of slave markets, furthermore, might have been used for this purpose only periodically or sporadically. Second, the evidence suggests that slave market sites varied in scale, ranging from large public forums to private properties. As such, slave trading could have been ingrained into the very fabric of any settlement, with the sale of captives potentially taking place in stores or merchantโs yards, in private properties, or even on the streets. Lastly, it is important to consider that slave markets were not necessarily permanent or even terrestrial sites. The use of temporary or seasonal markets for slave trading implies that the sale of captives in many contexts did not require the establishment of any permanent infrastructure. In circumstances where ships or other vessels were used in slave taking and transportation, the sale of captives might have taken place on wharves or even aboard ship. We also should not rule out the possibility that captives could be sold from one ship to another while at sea.
Given the general dearth of archaeological evidence for slave markets, it is perhaps not unreasonable to question whether we should realistically expect to identify these sites based on the study of material evidence at all. Rather than actively attempting to locate the sites of slave markets themselves, archaeologists might do better to instead focus on โproxiesโ for slave trading within broader mercantile contexts, which can in turn provide information on systems of captive exchange and sale. In light of the evidence presented here, it is clear that the developing urban centres of the Viking world must be considered as focal points within slave-trading networks. Archaeological evidence indicates that these sites attracted merchants from far and wide, providing access to distant markets. Bringing captive cargoes to these locations may have offered traders significant financial benefits. In addition to centralising the slave trade and allowing merchants to become familiar with market conditions and the demands of buyers, the monitoring of these sites by elites may have served as a stabilising influence that facilitated commerce. A number of major Viking-Age port towns, including Hedeby, Birka, and Kaupang, seem to have been associated with royal estates located a short distance from the settlements themselves.77 The ninth-century Vita Anskarii also describes Birka as being administered by a royal bailiff, who lived in close proximity to the town and who was probably responsible for both the defence and economic administration of the port.78 While this might have led to the imposition of taxes on merchants wishing to do business, these costs would presumably have been offset by the prospect of a more regulated trading environment, making these sites attractive as trading locales.
It is important to stress that we should not expect to find purpose-built slave markets at these locations. While major settlements such as Dublin, Birka, or Hedeby might well have possessed spaces that functioned as public marketplaces, these probably would not have been used solely for slave trading. This in part reflects the likelihood that most Viking-Age merchants would not have invested their entire capital in captives; as noted by ibn Faแธlฤn, the Rลซs slavers that he encountered on the Volga river brought with them not only captives but also a cargo of furs and other goods.79 It is also possible that captives were held in the properties of merchants. If we again turn to the account of ibn Faแธlฤn, we see that the captives accompanying the Rลซs merchants lived alongside their captors and were sold from the houses that they built for themselves on reaching their destination.80 Though open to interpretation, the evidence from Dublin might similarly suggest that animal pens could have been used to temporarily house captives. Of further note are the shackles from Hedeby, recovered during excavations of the harbour complex. Sven Kalmring has suggested that Hedebyโs wharves functioned as the townโs major marketplace, and these finds could imply that captive cargoes were held and sold on wharves or directly from ships in a manner similar to that seen in colonial South Carolina and the Sulu Zone.81 If so, then private properties, harboursides, and ships themselves might be understood as performing the function of slave markets.
It is also necessary to look beyond nodal port settlements if we are to identify the multiplicity of locations where slave trading might have taken place. The evidence indicates that seasonal or temporary marketplaces and fairs were important sites within interconnected slave-trading networks. This is especially relevant within the context of the Viking Age, given that only a very small percentage of the Scandinavian population lived in large, urban centres. Slave markets might have emerged, even temporarily, in littoral or riverine contexts where itinerant merchants could beach their ships, with the arrival of the merchants themselves perhaps serving as a catalyst for the establishment of a short-term marketplace.82 Regular public assemblies and fairs, furthermore, provided important opportunities for rural communities to gather in order to settle legal issues, socialise, and to establish temporary marketplaces in order to trade.83 Possible evidence for trading activity within the context of an assembly site has recently come to light in the Roma district of Gotland, location of the Gotlandic public assembly, where metal weights of the kind used in bullion transactions and fragments of dirham coins have been found.84 Given the potential for trade in urban environments to have been regulated by elites, it might not be unreasonable to expect slave trading at markets associated with major assembly sites, and it is once again worth noting that the sale of Melkorka in Laxdรฆla saga took place at an assembly attended by members of the aristocracy and rulers.85 If assembly sites did indeed serve as slave markets, then this argument also has significant implications for the sale of captives in the North Atlantic colonies such as Iceland, where a lack of nucleated settlements meant that regular assemblies provided an impetus for dispersed populations to come together and trade.
The brief consideration of the relationship between slave traders and the armies of the Roman Republic and Empire also has implications for another potential type of slave market. Historical sources indicate that large, migratory Viking fleets operating in northern and western Europe often established temporary bases from which to raid, and there are numerous instances where Viking groups operating out of such locations are recorded as taking captives.86 While these captives may have been taken in order to provide various services within the camps themselves, it is also possible these sites served as central slave trading nodes.87 As noted above, potential evidence for trade in the form of silver and weighing equipment has been found at or in the vicinity of a number of known and purported Viking camps that were established in Ireland and England from the mid-ninth century.88 Many of the sites established by Viking groups operating on the coast and inland waterways of Ireland โ described in contemporaneous sources as longphuirt (sing. longphort, or โship-baseโ) โ were established only as temporary encampments, but some such as that at Dublin evolved to become major towns. Questions relating to the subsistence of large Viking fleets have been raised by a number of scholars, given that at least some of these are now thought to have comprised hundreds of ships and thousands of individuals.89 Could a trade in captives, gathered by Viking groups engaging in raiding and mercenary activity, coercion, or trade, have contributed to this? The location of encampments and longphuirt would have been widely known, and their situation on major riverine routes and the coast would have provided numerous opportunities to engage in mercantile activity. Like the later West African โslave castlesโ of the transatlantic slave trade, emergent markets such as that at Dublin might have functioned as places where captives and other goods could be concentrated and sold to merchants for transportation elsewhere.90 This could have allowed large Viking forces to contribute to their own subsistence while in the field.
Conclusion
This study has explored the comparative archaeology and history of Viking-Age slave markets. The discussion was intended to shed light on the means by which captives were distributed through extensive slave-trading networks in order to fulfil the demands of the markets that are known to have existed across the early medieval world. Given that slave markets are an essential feature of many slaving systems, the study of these sites has important implications for our understanding of the processes associated with the acquisition, transportation, and sale of captives as well as of the institution of enslavement itself.
The study explored the evidence for slave trading and slave markets in a number of comparative contexts. From this, it is clear that slave markets and slave trading practices have varied across time and space. While in some contexts slave dealers constructed purpose-built compounds and structures to facilitate the sale of captives, the selling of captives in most cases required no formal infrastructure to support it. Indeed, in many societies, it seems that almost any public space, marketplace, private dwelling, or place of business might have served as a slave trading locale. This potentially opens up the concept of the Viking-Age slave market to include not only the marketplaces of major trading settlements but also individual farmsteads and halls, the booths of traders who frequented public assemblies, harbours, wharves, beach markets, ships, and the camps established by Viking groups operating in the field. The archaeological ephemerality of slave trading, however, means that captive groups are unlikely to be well-represented in the material record. The evidence for slave trading may therefore often lie unnoticed amongst the โnoiseโ of archaeological data, especially in contexts where this took place on a relatively small scale alongside other commercial activities.
Given that relatively little detailed research into Viking-Age slaving practices has taken place to date, this study highlights several avenues of research that require further consideration. First, it is clear that detailed study of the locales used for trade and exchange is necessary in order to identify potential proxies for slave trading and the activities that accompanied it. This would provide invaluable insights into the construction and maintenance of the trade networks through which captives were being transported and sold. A second significant issue concerns the acquisition and transportation of captives themselves. Given the importance of seaborne raiding and maritime transportation during the Viking Age, further work is necessary to understand the organisation and operation of piratical raiding fleets as well as their role in bringing captives to market. More detailed comparative studies of early-modern pirate groups, such as the Barbary Corsairs and the Balangingi slavers of the Sulu Zone, may provide useful insights into the acquisition and transportation of captives by Viking groups as well as the relationships that raiders maintained with terrestrially-based merchants and elites. Related to this, there is a need to better understand the conditions and motivations that underpinned the acquisition, trade, and exploitation of captives, not only from an economic perspective but also in terms of the socio-political mechanisms that drove raiding groups to engage in slaving activities.
Although captivity and slavery remain an enigmatic aspect of daily life among Viking-Age Scandinavian societies, this study has demonstrated the potential for comparative research to provide insights into this practice and the ways by which it was enacted. While the general archaeological invisibility of captive peoples will always render it difficult if not impossible to identify these groups in the material record, it is, as Elizabeth Fentress has asserted, โhigh time that we started lookingโ.91 It is hoped that additional cross-cultural studies will allow archaeologists to shed further light on the institution of enslavement as it manifested in both the distant and more recent past, and in doing so to contribute to a greater understanding of how this practice continues to impact contemporary societies today.
Endnotes
1. Modern-day Howth, Ireland; Seรกn Mac Airt and Gearรณid Mac Niocaill, eds., The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131) (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983), 277.
2. In this article, the term โVikingโ is used not as an ethnonym, but rather to refer to the primarily Scandinavian seaborne raiders, pirates, and merchants operating in northern and western Europe, Scandinavia, and the Baltic during the Viking Age (broadly defined as the period 750โ1050 CE). Viking groups are not to be directly equated with the Rลซs, discussed later.
3. E.g. Claus Krag, โTreller og Trelleholdโ, Historisk Tidsskrift 61, no. 3 (1982): 209โ27; Jรธrn Sandnes โโTolv Kyr, to Hester og Tre Trรฆlarโ. Litt om Omfanget av Trรฆleholdet i Norge i Vikingetid og Tidlig Kristen Tidโ, Historisk Tidsskrift 62, no. 1 (1983): 79โ82; Mats Roslund, Guests in the House. Cultural Transmission Between Slavs and Scandinavians, 900 to 1300 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Stefan Brink, โSlavery in the Viking Ageโ, in The Viking World, eds. Stefan Brink and Neil Price (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 49โ56; Clare Downham, โThe Viking Slave Tradeโ, History Ireland May/June (2009): 15โ17; Stefan Brink, Vikingarnas Slavar. Den nordiska trรคldomen under yngre jรคrnรฅlder och รคldsta medeltid (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2012); Mary Valante, โCastrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade and the Value of Eunuchsโ, in Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. Larissa Tracy, L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 174โ87; Janel M. Fontaine, โEarly Medieval Slave-Trading in the Archaeological Record: Comparative Methodologiesโ, Early Medieval Europe 25, no. 4 (2017): 466โ88.
4. E.g. Ruth Marzo Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1988); Thomas Lindkvist and Janken Myrdal, eds., Trรคlar. Ofria i Agrarsamhรคllet Frรฅn Vikingatid till Medeltid (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 2003); Stefan Brink, Lord and Lady โ Bryti and Deigja. Some Historical and Etymological Aspects of Family, Patronage and Slavery in Early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England (London: The Viking Society for Northern Research, 2008); Brink, Vikingarnas Slavar; Roslund, Guests in the House.
5. Stephanie E. Yuhl, โHidden in Plain Sight: Centering the Domestic Slave Trade in American Public Historyโ, Journal of Southern History 79, no. 3 (2013): 593โ624, at p. 595.
6. See, among many others, Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. A Comparative Study, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); Catherine M. Cameron, ed., Invisible Citizens: Captives and their Consequences (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2008); Catherine M. Cameron, Captives: How Stolen People Changed the World (Lincoln, NB & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2016).
7. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 46. Also see Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, โAfrican โSlaveryโ as an Introduction of Marginalityโ, in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 3โ81.
8. See Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery. A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
9. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 46; Cameron, Captives, 55.
10. David M. Lewis, โOrlando Patterson, Property, and Ancient Slavery: The Definitional Problem Revisitedโ, in On Human Bondage. After Slavery and Social Death, eds. John Bodel and Walter Scheidel (Chichester and Maldon, MA: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2017), 31โ54.
11. Cameron, Captives, 51โ2. See also Peter N. Peregrine, โSocial Death and Resurrection in the Western Great Lakesโ, in Invisible Citizens: Captives and their Consequences, ed. Catherine M. Cameron (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2008), 223โ32.
13. Karras, Slavery and Society; Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins, trans., Laws of Early Iceland: Grรกgรกs I (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980); Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins, trans., Laws of Early Iceland: Grรกgรกs II (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2000); Laurence M. Larson, trans., The Earliest Norwegian Laws. Being the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935).
14. As noted in the skaldic poem The Lay of Harold (ON Haraldskvรฆรฐi), v. 16, and Aแธฅmad ibn Faแธlฤnโs observations of the Rลซs court. See Lee M. Hollander, trans., โLay of Haroldโ, in Old Norse Poems, trans. Lee M. Hollander (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 56โ62; James Montgomery, โAแธฅmad ibn Faแธlฤn, Mission to the Volgaโ, in Two Arabic Travel Books, eds. and trans. Tim Mackintosh-Smith and James Montgomery (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 169โ259, at 253.
16. See Karras, Slavery and Society; Ruth Mazo Karras, โConcubinage and Slavery in the Viking Ageโ, Scandinavian Studies 69 (1990): 141โ62; Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Auรฐr G. Magnรบsdรณttir, Frillor och Fruar: Politik och Samlevnad pรฅ Island 1120โ1400 (Unpublished PhD thesis, Gรถteborgs Universitet, 2001); Brink, Lord and Lady.
17. An eclectic society whose ethnic and cultural identity incorporated Scandinavian, Slavic, and other Eurasian elements, the Rลซs were the primary operators of the riverine trade routes and slaving networks in what is now Eastern Europe, following their emergence during the ninth century. For the Russian Primary Chronicle see Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, trans and eds. The Russian Primary Chronicle: The Laurentian Text (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1953), 75.
18. See, for example, Clare Downham, โThe Earliest Viking Activity in England?โ, The English Historical Review 132, no. 554 (2017): 1โ12.
20. See Ben Raffield, Neil Price, and Mark Collard, โPolygyny, Concubinage and the Social Life of Women in Viking-Age Scandinaviaโ, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 13 (2017): 165โ209, at p. 175.
21. See, among others, Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, Annals of Ulster; Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, trans., โIbn Hayyฤn on the Viking attack on Seville 844โ, in Ibn Fadlฤn and the Land of Darkness, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 105โ109.
22. Timothy Reuter, trans., The Annals of Fulda (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 88.
23. E.g. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, Annals of Ulster, 311; Francis J. Tschan, ed., Adam of Bremen. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), Bk. 4, ch. 6, 190.
24. Leila Blili, โCourse et Captivitรฉ des Femmes dans la Rรฉgence de Tunis Aue XVIe et XVIIe Siรจclesโ, in Capitus i Esclaus a lโAntiguitat i al Mรณn Modern: Actes del XIX Colloqui Internacional del GIREA, eds. Marรญa L. Sรกnchez Leรณn and Gonรงal Lรณpez Nadal (Naples: Jovene, 1996), 259โ74.
25. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death; Dagfinn Skre, โSome Reflections on Gotland, Slavery, Slave Traders, and Takersโ, in Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland, eds. Jacek Gruszczyลski, Marek Jankowiak and Jonathan Shepard (Forthcoming).
26. Angus A. Somerville, trans., โThe Life of Saint Findanโ, in The Viking Age: A Reader, eds. Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 195โ98.
27. Ch. 6; Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes, trans., โรlรกfs saga Tryggvasonarโ, in Heimskringla, Volume I: The Beginnings to รlรกfr Tryggvason, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), 137โ233.
28. Michael Swanton, trans., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (London: Phoenix Press, 2000).
29. Charles H. Robinson, trans., Anskar: Apostle of the North. 801โ65 (London: SPG, 1921); Georg Waitz, ed., Vita Anskarii, Accedit Vita Rimberti, Auctore Rimberto (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1884).
30. Probably Gothenburgโs southern archipelago, Sweden. Melkorka is a captive Irish princess, and while she is almost certainly a fictional character the circumstances of her sale may well reflect the reality of slave trading in the Viking world. See ch. 12; Keneva Kunz, trans., โThe Saga of the People of Laxardalโ, in The Sagas of Icelanders, eds. Jane Smiley and Robert L. Kellogg (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2000), 270โ421, at 286โ88.
31. Gyula Moravcsik, ed. and Romilly J.H. Jenkins, trans. De Administrando Imperio (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967), 57โ63.
32. The age of these captives is not given, but the text implies that they were in their teens; Montgomery, โAแธฅmad ibn Faแธlฤnโ, 243.
33. While it is unlikely that large numbers of western European captives found themselves being sold in eastern markets, we cannot rule out the possibility that some were transported over great distances, perhaps being purchased and sold several times en route. For Rลซs raids on the Slavs see Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, trans., โIbn Rusta on the Rลซs 903โ13โ, in Ibn Fadlฤn and the Land of Darkness, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 126โ7.
34. B.G. Scott, โIron โSlave Collarsโ from Lagore Crannog, Co. Meathโ, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 78 (1978): 213โ32; Ian H. Goodall, โLocks and Keysโ, in Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester, ed. Martin Biddle (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1990), 984โ1036; Richard Warner, โOn Crannogs and Kingsโ, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 57 (1997): 61โ9; Patrick Wallace, โThe Use of Iron in Viking Dublinโ, in Irish Antiquities. Essays in Memory of Joseph Raftery, ed. Michael Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell, 1998), 201โ22; Joachim Henning, โStrong Rulers โ Weak Economy? Rome, the Carolingians and the Archaeology of Slavery in the First Millennium ADโ, in The Long Morning of Medieval Europe. New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, eds. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 33โ53.
35. Henning, โStrong Rulersโ; Marek Jankowiak, โDirhams for Slaves: Investigating the Slavic Slave Trade in the Tenth Centuryโ. Paper presented at All Soulsโ College Medieval Seminar, Oxford University, 2012. [WWW] http://www.academia.edu/1764468/Dirhams_for_slaves._Investigating_the_Slavic_slave_trade_in_the_tenth_century (accessed May 10, 2018).
36. For discussion see Mรกtyรกs Szabรณ, Herdar och Husdjur. En Etnologisk Studie รver Skandinaviens och Mellaneuropas Beteskultur och Vallningsorganisation (Lund: Nordiska Museet, 1970); cf. Ny Bjรถrn Gustafsson, โFรถr Folk och Fรค: om Vikingatida Fjรคttrar och Deras Anvรคndningโ, Fornvรคnnen 104, no. 2 (2009): 89โ96.
37. Fontaine, โEarly Medieval Slave-Tradingโ, 467.
38. Wallace, โThe Use of Ironโ; Gustafsson, โFรถr Folkโ.
39. Henning, โStrong Rulersโ.
40. Warner, โOn Crannogsโ; David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800โ1200 (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Fontaine, โEarly Medieval Slave-Tradingโ, 469.
41. E.g. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster; Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 110.
42. Andreas Olsson, Maritime Birka (Stockholm: Sjรถhistoriska museet & Statens maritima museer, 2017).
43. Paul Holm, โThe Slave Trade of Dublin: Ninth to Twelfth Centuriesโ, Peritia 5 (1986): 317โ45; Downham, โThe Viking Slave Tradeโ.
44. Linzi Simpson, Stratigraphic Report on Excavations at Temple Bar West, Dublin 2 (Unpublished Excavation Report, 2001); Linzi Simpson, pers comm., 10th May 2018.
45. Ch. 12; Kunz, โThe Sagaโ, 286โ88.
46. Jankowiak, โDirhamsโ; Fontaine, โEarly Medieval Slave-Tradingโ; Skre, โSome Reflectionsโ.
47. Dagfinn Skre, โMonetary Practices in Early Medieval Western Scandinavia (5th-10th Centuries AD)โ, Medieval Archaeology 61, no. 2 (2017): 277โ99.
48. Skre, โMonetary Practicesโ.
51. Skre, โSome Reflectionsโ.
52. Ch. 12; Kunz, โThe Sagaโ, 286โ88. The author of Egilโs Saga implies that Thrand was purchased for twice the price normally paid for a thrall. Ch. 83; Bernard Scudder, trans., โEgilโs Sagaโ, in The Sagas of Icelanders, eds. Jane Smiley and Robert L. Kellogg (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2000), 3โ184, at 170.
53. Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors.
54. Ch. 6; Finlay and Faulkes, โรlรกfs sagaโ, 140.
55. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, trans., โIbrฤhฤซm ibn Yaโqลซb on Northern Europe 965โ, in Ibn Fadlฤn and the Land of Darkness, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 126โ7.
56. Hazzard Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle, 75.
57. Marek Jankowiak, โByzantine Coins in Viking-Age Northern Landsโ, in Byzantium and the Viking World, eds. Fedir J. Androshchuk, Jonathan Shepard and Monica White (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2016), 117โ39.
58. As Janel Fontaine has noted, salt may have been exchanged for captives at slave markets in tenth-century Moravia; Fontaine, โEarly Medieval Slave-Tradingโ, 476.
59. Stephen M. Lewis, โSalt and the Earliest Scandinavian Raids in France: Was There a Connection?โ, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 12 (2016): 103โ36.
60. Majvor รstergren, โSpillings โ Vรคrldens Stรถrsta Vikingatida Silverskattโ, in Spillingsskatten โ Gotland i Vikingatidens Vรคrldshandel, ed. Ann-Marie Pettersson (Visby: Lรคnsmuseet pรฅ Gotland, 2008), 11โ40.
61. See Paolo Braconi, โIl โCalcidicoโ di Lepcis Magna era un Mercato di Schiavi?โ, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005): 213โ19; Filippo Coarelli, โLโ โAgora des Italiensโ: lo Statarion di Delo?โ, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005): 196โ212; Elizabeth Fentress, โSelling People: Five Papers on Roman Slave-Traders and the Buildings they Usedโ, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005): 180; Elizabeth Fentress, โOn the Block: Catastae, Chalcidica and Cryptae in Early Imperial Italyโ, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005): 220โ34; Giuseppe Pucci, โโDetrahis Vestimenta Venalibusโ: Iconografia Della Vendita di Schiavi NellโAntichitร e Oltreโ, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005): 235โ40; Monika Trรผmper, Graeco-Roman Slave Markets: Fact or Fiction? (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009), 75.
62. Benjamin W. Kankpeyeng, โThe Slave Trade in Northern Ghana: Landmarks, Legacies and Connectionsโ, Slavery and Abolition 30, no. 2 (2009): 209โ21.
63. Matthew R. Laird, Archaeological Data Recovery Investigation of the Lumpkinโs Slave Jail Site (44HE1053) Richmond, Virginia. August 2010. Volume I: Research Report (Unpublished Excavation Report 2010).
64. John Bodel, โCaveat Emptor: Towards a Study of Roman Slave-Tradersโ, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18 (2005): 181โ95.
65. Terence Walz, โWakฤlat al-ฤallฤba: The Market for Sudan Goods in Cairoโ, Annales Islamologiques 13 (1977): 217โ45; Trรผmper, Graeco-Roman Slave Markets.
66. Daniel J. Schroeter, โSlave Markets and Slavery in Moroccan Urban Societyโ, Slavery & Abolition 13, no. 1 (1992): 185โ213; Akosua Adoma Perbi, A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana, From the 15th to the 19th Century (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2004), 47.
67. Trรผmper, Graeco-Roman Slave Markets, 75.
69. Kenneth Morgan, โSlave Sales in Colonial Charlestonโ, The English Historical Review 113, no. 453 (1998): 905โ27.
70. See Johann Baptiste von Spix and Carl Friedrich Phillip von Martius, Travels in Brazil, in the Years 1817โ1820 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824), 178.
71. Morgan, โSlave Salesโ.
72. The โSulu Zoneโ was a maritime zone situated at the junction of the Sulu and Celebes Seas in the Philippines. See James F. Warren, Trade, Raid, Slave: The Socio-Economic Patterns of the Sulu Zone, 1770โ1898 (Unpublished PhD thesis: Australian National University, 1975); James F. Warren, โSlave Markets and Exchange in the Malay World: The Sulu Sultanate, 1770โ1878โ, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 8, no. 2 (1977): 112โ75.
73. Morgan, โSlave Salesโ.
74. Stanford University, โThe Slave Markets of Rio de Janeiroโ [WWW] https://exhibits.stanford.edu/data/feature/slave-markets-of-rio-de-janeiro (accessed May 10, 2018).
75. Bodel, โCaveat Emptorโ; Jason P. Wickham, The Enslavement of War Captives by the Romans to 146 BC (Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Liverpool, 2014).
77. Svante Norr, To Rede and to Rown. Expressions of Early Scandinavian Kingship in Written Sources (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1998); Dagfinn Skre, โExcavations of the Hall at Husebyโ, in Kaupang in Skiringssal, ed. Dagfinn Skre (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2008), 223โ48; Andres S. Dobat, โFinding Sliesthorp? The Viking Age Settlement at Fรผsingโ, Antiquity (in press).
79. Montgomery, โAแธฅmad ibn Faแธlฤnโ, 243.
81. Sven Kalmring, Der Hafen von Haithabu. Ausgrabungen in Haithabu 14 (Neumรผnster: Wachholtz, 2010).
82. As in Egils Saga, Ch. 79; Scudder, โEgilโs Sagaโ, 150.
83. As in Laxdรฆla Saga, Ch. 12; Kunz, โThe Sagaโ, 286โ88. Also see Alexandra Sanmark, Viking Law and Order: Places and Rituals of Assembly in the Early Medieval North (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
84. Majvor รstergren, โโRudera Effter Steenhus och Andra Monumenterโ โ om Roma Som Central or Fรถr Landet Gotlandโ, Gotlands Museums Skrift om 850-ร rsjubileeet av Roma Klosters Grundande (Forthcoming): 29โ61; Skre, โSome Reflectionsโ.
85. Ch. 12; Kunz, โThe Sagaโ, 286โ88.
86. E.g. Ireland in 839, Frankia in 853, and Galicia in 968โ71 and 1015. Justo Pรฉrez de Urbel, trans., Sampiro su Crรณnica y la Monarquรญa Leonesa en eรญ Siglo X (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientรญficas, 1952); Rui Pinto de Azevedo, โA Expediรงao de Almanรงor a Santiago de Compostela em 997, e a de Piratas Normandos ร Galiza em 1015โ16โ, Revista Portuguesa de Historia, XIV (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1974), 73โ93; Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster; Janet L. Nelson, trans., The Annals of St-Bertin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991).
87. Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards, โThe Winter Camp of the Viking Great Army, AD 872โ3, Torksey, Lincolnshireโ, The Antiquaries Journal 96 (2016): 23โ67, at p. 50; Fontaine, โEarly Medieval Slave Tradingโ, 476.
88. See Eamonn P. Kelly, โThe Longphort in Viking-Age Ireland: The Archaeological Evidenceโ, in Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson, eds. The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and After the Battle of Clontarf (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 55โ92; Ian Russell and Maurice F. Hurley, eds., Woodstown. A Viking-Age Settlement in Co. Waterford (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014); Gareth Williams, โViking Camps and the Means of Exchange in Britain and Ireland in the Ninth Centuryโ, in Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson, eds. The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and After the Battle of Clontarf (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 93โ116; Hadley and Richards, โThe Winter Campโ.
89. E.g. Shane McLeod, โFeeding the Micel Here in England, c.865โ878โ, Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 2 (2006): 141โ156; Williams, โViking Campsโ; Ben Raffield, โBands of Brothers: A Re-Appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its Implications for the Scandinavian Colonization of Englandโ, Early Medieval Europe 24, no. 3 (2016): 308โ37.
90. Kelly, โThe Longphortโ.
91. Fentress, โSelling Peopleโ, 180.
Originally published by Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 4:40 (2019, 682-705) under the terms of a Creative Commons CC BY license.
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