Original version
Viking-Age Trade. Silver, Slaves and Gotland. 2020, 437-449, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315231808
Abstract
This chapter draws out the implications of two issues raised by contributions to the volume: the holding of slaves in Scandinavia; and the question of whether Gotlanders were involved in the slave trade in the ninth and tenth centuries. It suggests that slaveholding existed across most of the social spectrum and that it was more widespread in Iron- and Viking-Age Scandinavia than has been suggested, with Slavic slaves being held on Gotland and elsewhere in Sweden from the tenth century onwards. Slaves were an integral part of the honour culture which pervaded Vendel- and Viking-Age Scandinavia. The author suggests that the Gotlanders owed their ability to trade in slaves and other commodities, operating mainly between the Baltic and the Black and Caspian Seas, to networks developed through a longstanding culture of travel and trade. Hence Gotlanders appear to have been the first in Viking-Age Scandinavia to position themselves as merchants in a long-distance trading system.