Gaby
Vikings were not only notorious raiders and seafarers who reached North America roughly 500 years before Columbus, they were also traders. Between the 8th and 11th centuries they built extensive trade networks. Some of those routes stretched surprisingly far, linking busy trading towns with remote rural outposts.
Researchers in the UK and elsewhere in Europe uncovered the reach of Viking trade by analyzing ancient hair combs. The combs came from the site of the ancient city of Hedeby, in what is now northern Germany. The artifacts were made from the antlers of reindeer that once roamed Arctic Scandinavia.
A comb from the early Viking era found in Hedeby, made from the antler of a reindeer. (Mariana Muñoz-Rodriguez / University of York)
Hedeby was one of the most important trading centers of the Viking Age. It stood near the southern tip of the Jutland Peninsula, in what was then Denmark. Hedeby also served as a key link between Scandinavia and northern Europe.
The city’s economy relied heavily on processing reindeer antlers. Earlier excavations recovered about 288,000 antler artifacts at the site, including production waste from hair comb manufacture.
What Researchers Discovered
Using a technique called Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), the team determined that roughly 90 percent of the combs from Hedeby were made from reindeer antler (Rangifer tarandus), also known as caribou.
Because those reindeer lived only in northern Scandinavia, the researchers conclude that either antlers or finished combs were imported to Hedeby. That points to sustained, large-scale trade between Hedeby and the far north.
Reconstructed houses at the former site of Hedeby. (Kai-Erik Ballak/CC-BY-SA-3.0/Wikimedia Commons)
The analysis suggests this trade was happening as early as 800 AD—just a few years after the Viking raid on Lindisfarne in England, an event often marked as the start of the Viking Age.
Stephen Ashby, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of York, said the team used these findings to begin answering a range of questions about travel and trade in Britain and Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Still, much remains unknown about daily life in that era.
The study was published in the journal Antiquity.
