Trade and culture
The cultural importance of the trading settlements has already been suggested. For Slavs and Scandinavians alike, they were the points of contact with the outside world, the places through which travelers and goods had to pass even if their final destinations were far away.
Archaeology amply supports written history, and the tens of thousands of Arab coins that have been found in the vicinity of such settlements are alone sufficient to prove their commercial vitality. They would obviously have handled both utility and luxury goods, weapons and ornaments, raw materials and foodstuffs, but since not all these survive equally well, we shall confine ourselves to those goods that are most easily traced in the archaeological record.
Some trade and trade routes can be deduced from pottery. Frisian jugs from the lower Rhine, for instance, probably contained wine. Others, probably made to hold honey, wax, fats or other foodstuffs, are evidence for the movement of these commodities. Much of the Slav pottery found in Scandinavian trading ports no doubt of ten arrived there as containers, but it may also have been in demand as tableware, for it was greatly superior, both in form and decoration, to the crude Scandinavian pottery. It appears to have been copied in south Scandinavia, possibly by Slav potters imported for the purpose. The distribution of Slav pottery in the earlier period therefore reflects the intensity of Scandinavian-Slav relations, even though it is not necessarily the result of direct trading. The so-called Feldberg and Fresendorf pottery of the seventh to tenth centuries produced by the Wilti copying classical pottery types was itself an abject of trade. Carl
Schuchhardt, one of the first scholars to identify it, called this pottery the 'Meissen of the Middle Age' on account of its fine finish and high technical standard. Long-distance trade ensured its wide distribution in the countries around the Baltic.
In the eighth and ninth centuries silversmiths in the forts and trading settlements of Poland and Pomerania were greatly influenced by styles and fashions from the lands along the Danube and from Moravia. The Tempelhof type of earring, for example, can ultimately be traced back to Byzantian prototypes. They were most widely distributed in the tenth century, when they occurred in great numbers on Bornholm and Gotland, odd ones even reaching Sjoelland and Skane. Silver basket earrings and silver belt and cloak clasps have the same pattern of distribution. Other metal artifacts such as crescent-shaped pendants, ornaments and female fertility symbols also reached the Baltic, generally by way of the territory of the eastern Slavs. Arab prototypes have even been found in the Slav heartland, where they were copied and elaborated further. Among these there were filigree-decorated crescent pendants, earrings with basket-shaped beads or beads ornamented with filigree.
The kaftan worn in Persia and the Arab world was very much in vogue in the Swedish town of Birka in the period from the late eighth to the tenth century. Here, as in Poland and even Pomerania, the native tunic was adapted, possibly due to the influence of the kaftan or of the Byzantine riding coat. Patterned linen shirts found in the earliest graves at Birka dating to the ninth century were foreign to Scandinavia and had obviously reached these parts from the lands of the eastern Slavs.
One specific problem has been much discussed, namely the trade in weapons, above all the supply of good quality swords. In the past, more on a priori than empirical grounds, it used to be maintained that only the Vikings supplied swords to eastern and central Europe. Such a theory ignores unequivocal statements in the Frankish sources. In 805, Charlemagne, in order to preserve the monopoly of the Frankish counts, issued a proclamation prohibiting certain towns from selling weapons to the Slavs; the towns are listed by name, as are the places where merchants crossed the frontier. The fact that the prohibition had to be repeated on several subsequent occasions only proves how well established the trade had become. It is clear that not only weapons, but also a great many other goods reached Slav territory through trading centers located on important routes of circulation. Names such as Ulfberht, lngelreht and Hilpreht are inscribed on their blades. The high quality of Frankish swords made them objects of great demand even in the Arab world. Slav, Baltic and probably even Scandinavian smiths attempted to produce swords of the same quality. Swordsmiths sometimes even copied the names of the Rhenish masters, apparently taking them to be ornamental but inscribing their own names as well. One sword recently found in Foscevataja in the Ukraine bears an inscription in Cyrillic script: 'Ljudota the smith made this.'
A developed iron technology, the prerequisite for producing similar weapons, was known to the south of the Baltic; for example in Greater Moravia, Bohemia, Poland, in the Baltic countries and of course in the important early towns of the Kiev Rus'. The manufacture of steel, the welding together both of different types of steel and of soft forged iron with steel were known to Slav smiths as early as the seventh and eighth centuries, as they were in parts of Scandinavia.
A similar story is told by the leaf-shaped spear-head; originally of Rhenish manufacture, this weapon was later produced at many Scandinavian, Slav and Baltic centers, as was the battle-axe which was copied from late classical and Persian prototypes. It is at present almost impossible to gauge the volume of the trade in weapons on the basis of the available archaeological evidence, especially as no weapon workshop has yet been excavated.
It is easier to trace the origin and distribution of other items of trade, Norwegian soapstone, for example, amber, ornaments of the types mentioned above, certain pottery and mould types and coins. Some items can by their nature be known only from documentary sources, slaves for example. Slav, Baltic and Finno-Ugrian slaves were sold in large numbers at Bulgar, Magdeburg, Regensburg and other border towns, mainly to Arab countries.
The trade in furs was both widespread and extremely lucrative. It flourished particularly between Frisia and the Baltic countries. In the eleventh century Adam of Bremen raged against the trade in furs from Lapland 'which has brought the death-bringing poison of ostentation into our world . . . For we thirst for a marten fur coat at any cost as if it were eternal salvation. They therefore offer us marten furs in exchange for our woolen cloth which we call falsones.' As a consequence of the importance of the fur trade a few Old Russian words crept into some Low German patois. In Old Russian the word kuna meant marten, marten-skin money. In Old Frisian the word recurs as cona meaning coin. The Russian sobol found its way into Middle High German as sabel and zobel. In English it occurs as sable, meaning both the animal and its fur. The Old Slavonic ward for fur, kozych, is probably the origin of the medieval Latin crusna, crusina and the Old High German and Old Saxon kursinna and the Old Frisian kersua.
The slave trade and the fur trade were by far the most profitable in north-south and east-west trade. On the Volga, for instance, a marten skin cost about one dirhem, i.e. 3 grams of silver at the most, the value of one green glass bead. One could therefore buy a fortune in skins and furs for a handful of beads. In Arab markets this wealth could be realized at a profit of 1,000 per cent or more. This single example, which is one of many, shows how the mutually exclusive ranges of goods and price differentials between northern and eastern Europe and the developed world provided the incentive for a trade which was often hazardous. Some 150000 Arab coins, most of which occur in more than 1500 silver hoards found in the various Baltic countries, clearly show the extent of this trade in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Slav traders and Slav markets played an important part in this Baltic trade, merchants acting both as principals and as middlemen.
Only towards the end of the tenth century did trade with central and western Europe increase in importance; this is indicated by the eleventh-century concentration of coins mainly of German origin in the Baltic region.
Some trading settlements, as well as some trade and craft centers located outside forts which had emerged in the interior in the ninth to tenth centuries, formed the nuclei of medieval towns. Between 50 and 80 per cent of medieval towns on Slav territory and about 50 per cent of the German towns east of the Elbe can be traced back to these ninth- and tenth-century foundations.