Retail

Among the Vikings and the Wends, merchants weighed silver for payment on small scales. Photo: Lennart Larsen.

Traders and markets

Both coastal Slavs and Danes were traders. Merchants bought and sold goods in marketplaces and later in cities around the Baltic Sea. Along the coast of the Baltic Sea, the trading posts were strategically located at transport hubs on the coast, at the estuaries of the Baltic Sea or near fishing grounds and salt extraction sites.

At Reric, a little north of the city of Wismar in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, there was an international Slavic marketplace, which suffered an ill fate. It was conquered in the year 808 by the Danish Viking king Godfred, who forcibly moved the merchants to Hedeby, which was the king's new trading town at Slien.

We do not yet know of any market places from Lolland and Falster, but near Vester Egesborg by Dybsø Fjord in South Zealand, archaeologists have investigated a trading place with workshop houses, which was in use seasonally from the 700th century until the year 1000 AD. If we are to look for something similar from before the rise of the market towns on Falster, then Vålse Vig is a good bet. Vålse Vig is a protected natural harbour, and one of Denmark's largest silver treasures from the Viking Age was found here. This shows that there was a powerful big man who could manage and secure a market place. The same applies to Rødby Fjord, which also has good landing opportunities, and several rune stones and treasure finds are known here.

Later, the cities emerged during the 1000th and 1100th centuries with regulated markets where Danish and Slavic traders could meet. Archaeological excavations show that Nykøbing Falster grew up as a town with crafts and the resulting trade during the 1000th century. We do not know if there were Slavic merchants in Nykøbing, but they were present in other cities. In Roskilde, the place name Vindeboder, which means stalls of the winders, suggests that there were Slavic traders in the town in the 1000th century.

Silver was the hard currency of the time

When Danish and Wendish merchants shook hands on a deal, the payment was made in silver, which was the hard currency of the time. The payment could in some places fall in silver coins. In Denmark, the Vikings struck coins in Ribe and Hedeby. The coins could be used locally in markets where the coin issuer could guarantee the validity.

In the vast majority of places around the Baltic Sea, the payment fell in weighed silver. It didn't matter what form the silver took. Whether you paid with a piece of silver cut from a bar or with an old piece of jewelry was of no importance. If you paid with a coin, it was completely irrelevant whether it came from England, Arabia or Germany, or whether it was whole or half. The weight and soundness were decisive. The merchant's most important tool was a scale on which he could accurately weigh the payment.

Both in Lolland-Falster and in the Vendian areas large silver hoards are known, which were of great value. Near Vålse Vig, a silver hoard from around the year 1835 was found in 1000. It weighed six kilos and contained everything a trader could want in terms of currency. The treasure contained, among other things, whole and cut silver bars and silver jewellery. There were also 371 whole or fragmentary coins struck by the King of Saxony, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor. The treasure also contains parts of Slavic jewellery, which the owner may have received as payment at a market with a Wendish tribe.

Late in the 1000th century, the Vendars began to issue coins. At that time, the Danish kings had established a solid monopoly on minting coins. In this way, the king ensured that only Danish coins were used in Denmark, and he could decide himself how much and how little silver he put in the coins. Gone are the days of colorful wallets.

The Baltic Sea was a melting pot of different ethnic groups bound together by trade, cultural impulses and know-how. Danes settled in the Slavic coastal areas, while Slavs settled on Lolland and Falster. Danish kings and Slavic princes entered into strategic relationships sealed with marriages, but they also liked to wage war if it furthered their interests.

In the middle of it all, on the border between Denmark and the coastal Slavic area, Lolland and Falster lay as the gateway to Scandinavia or the gateway to Europe, depending on which side you look at it from. For most of the time, the coexistence was peaceful and favorable for all parties, but at times the Baltic Sea was ravaged by war, where the people of Lolland and Falster had to defend themselves.

Through archaeological traces and written sources, the story of Danes and coastal Slavs in the period from 800 – 1200 AD is told. in what we in Denmark refer to as the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages and with a focus on the 1000th and 1100th centuries. The story is based on the results of the project Friends and Enemies. The Danish-Vendian connections in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, as well as interviews with museum inspector and deputy director at Museum Lolland-Falster, Anna Elisabeth Jensen, who has written the book Dania Slavica, and additional interviews with medieval archaeologist and museum inspector Leif Plith Lauritsen.

Venders, Vikings and their ships

The Vikings were known for their seaworthy fast warships and their spacious merchant ships. They bound the world together and led great armies of warriors far in a short time. The ships ensured communication over long distances and the supply of goods from afar. It was the same type of ship that the sailors sailed into the Middle Ages in. The Venders were also skilled sailors who matched the Danes, and they built ships that could sail right up to the Scandinavian vessels. Ship finds show that ships were built in the same way north and south of the Baltic Sea. The keel was laid first and the bows were attached to the keel afterwards. Almost all ships from the period south of the Baltic Sea were built of oak, while in Scandinavia several different types of wood were often used for the same ship. The Slavic shipbuilder's toolbox was simpler than the Scandinavian one. Both wooden and blacksmith tools were needed to repair the Nordic boats, while the Slavic boats could be repaired almost anywhere with an axe, knife, spoon drill and club.

The ships of the time easily sailed 6-7 knots in good weather, that is 10-12 kilometers per hour. In good weather, a ship easily crossed the Baltic Sea in daylight in one and the same day, while one could hardly reach from one end of Falster to the other by land in the same time.

Sometime in the late 800th century, the merchant Wulfstan sailed from Hedeby in Schleswig to Truso in present-day Poland. It is said that the journey took seven days and nights and that the ship went under sail all the way. He relates that Vendland, i.e. the land of the Venders, was on his starboard side, and on his port side he had Langeland, Lolland, Falster and Skåne, and these countries all belonged to Denmark.

At Hollenæs in western Lolland, archaeologists have excavated a house from the first half of the 1000th century. in addition to the house, the archaeologists found a building that is interpreted as a boathouse, a so-called naust, where a ship was stored in the winter. They also found a so-called Hedeby coin, which is an imitation of a Frankish coin, produced in Hedeby. The coin bears an image of a ship on one side. We do not know whether the people from Hollenæs themselves obtained the coin in Hedeby, but they could sail there in just over a day if the wind was right.

Baltic ceramics – a Wendish trademark

The production of clay vessels was not one of the top skills in Viking Age Denmark. In contrast, potters in the Slavic areas produced ceramics of very high quality.

Baltic ceramics is a collective term for jars, drinking vessels, bowls and other household vessels patterned with wavy lines and furrows. The Baltic pottery, which always has a flat bottom, is found in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages in south-eastern Denmark. Clay vessels like these are known from the entire Baltic Sea area, but were first produced in the Slavic area south of the Baltic Sea.

In the Middle Ages until the middle of the 1200th century, Baltic pottery was the preferred earthenware in households in Denmark, the Slavic areas and the northern German cities. The ceramics were produced locally. It is so uniform that archaeologists cannot look at a vessel and determine whether it was made south or north of the Baltic Sea. It says something about the close contact that existed between Danes and the Slavs south of the Baltic Sea.