How did participation in Viking raids effect the Norse economy?

by Xxxn00bpwnR69xxX
textandtrowel

I'm actually uncertain about how important exchange was for the Norse economy (although it was certainly very important to the captives who got sold and traded as slaves, i.e. the people I study). To put it in perspective, the biggest Scandinavian town during the Viking Age was probably Birka near Stockholm, which had a population around 1200. The next biggest town was Haithabu, a Danish trading town of about 600 people, and that was 450 miles away, or maybe two weeks by boat through waters that were often hostile.

All that goes to say, that viking raids probably did not introduce a massive amount of portable wealth that could vitalize the Scandinavian economy. It was probably very important to chieftains and war leaders, who used it to reward loyal followers, and it was probably useful to the men who ended up with it and could use it to pay for a marriage or a small croft of their own.

But overall, the Viking-Age economy was probably predominated by cereal, dairy, and wool production. The departure of viking raiders probably did not substantially detract from this production, nor did their return with a few handfuls of precious metal do anything much to improve it.

EyeStache

Really, this question is very difficult, if not impossible, to answer, since there are no extant records of transactions in the Norwegian (presumably you mean Norway when you use 'Norse,' yes?) petty kingdoms during the 8th-11th centuries. If you're asking about the unified kingdom of Norway, the answer is again next to impossible to provide, since Norway was unified into a single kingdom in 1020, and again, we don't have detailed records of that sort; we have the development of large trading centres in the mid-late 11th century, but by then vĂ­kingar were far less common than they had been even 50 years prior.