Speaker
Description
In Viking-Age Scandinavia, traditional economic practices, using foreign coins and silver primarily as bullion, started evolving into monetary markets around the year 1000. The process was slow and uneven, but it is clear that it unfolded in a mutual understanding between the neighbouring countries. Initially, the first Scandinavian coinages were all imitative, gradually developing into local variations. This process is not unique in the European coin history, rather, a recurrent phenomenon. Imitation seems to play an important role for the very imagination of what a domestic coinage and monetary practice could look like and work. Imitation therefore serves as a link between old and new practices and means of exchange, and as a motor for change. Iconography, silver content and weight were all involved in the transformation of the traditional bullion economy into one that could initially only have been imagined by the travelled few.
