Hi! A similar question was asked here. My answer was that it was possible but not at all probable that a Chinese slave would have traveled the trade routes to Scandinavia, since the human trafficking routes were structured to funnel people toward North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean and not to circulate them more broadly in a worldwide slave swap. My answer there addressed direct contact between Scandinavians and Asian slave markets (which they had, but again, the human traffic was going the wrong way), but the supposed Paris slave market merits some special considerations.

Nevertheless, my answer remains much the same: the existence of such a slave Chinese slave arriving in Scandinavia via the Red Sea and Paris remains possible but highly improbable. There are occasional finds linking China to the Middle East during this period, such as an Arab trading ship that sunk filled with Chinese pottery off the coast of Indonesia, or an Iranian glass bowl that made its way into a Buddhist shrine in central China. And the Franks clearly maintained exchange contacts with the Islamic world, most spectacularly in the case of an elephant that the caliph sent as a diplomatic gift to Charlemagne but also with more regular day-to-day trade as well. With regard to slaves, however, it seems that the Franks preferred to traffic their captives south to Venice and then out to Byzantine or Islamic regions. So again, there was trade contact and slaves moving along these routes, but they were generally moving the wrong way.

According to this article, it seems like the show's writers came up with the story and then the producer Michael Hirst checked in with one of his historical consultants. According to Hirst, the consultant said, "it’s all possible, it’s all plausible, it almost certainly happened." And while I agree that it's possible, I don't see any reason to assume that it's therefore plausible or that it almost certainly happened.

That's not to say everything on Vikings is far-fetched, or that their historical consultants are an academic version of quacks. I recently saw this video that they made on Viking Age trade which gives a much better account than the silly story about a Chinese slave arriving through Paris. Check it out!

First off, vikings definitely participated in the greater European slave trade at the time. So, the question is more of where those slaves came from.

Vikings primarily got their slaves (thralls) by two sources; their own raids (in that time period focused in Western Europe), and commercial trade centers like Novgorod and Kiev.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan still remains one of our best sources of Norse culture around that period, and his contemporary, Mohammed ibn Hawqal, a decent source of geography. Ibn Hawqal spent time in Kiev, and does mention that the commercial slave trade did reach from Western Europe to Egypt, and that the Kiev market was primarily sourced with Slavs. Ibn Fadlan doesn't mention much about the Norse participation in the commercial slave trade, but what we can glean from that is that the Norse thralls were most likely a mix of Western Europeans (Celts, English, Franks), and Eastern Europeans (Slavs, Rus).

Muslim explorers and traders did make frequent trips between Europe and Asia at the time, but there's very little to suggest that there was any cross trade of slaves between Europe and Asia. I would say that it's certainly possible that over the course of ~400 years of Norse trading that an Asian slave ended up in Scandinavia, but I would say that it's highly unlikely, at least not until the Mongols showed up a few centuries later.

Hello there, as I don't think it is particularly material to the question, would you mind editing the body of the post to remove plot details present in the second paragraph? They might be spoilers for people behind on the show.

It's because one of the writers of the show watched too much Outlander and Marco Polo.

The likelihood of a Chinese slave (complete with cheongsam!) winding up in viking-era Norway is so low, as to be outside any reasonable historical boundary.

Also. The Vikings didn't have that much contact with Byzantium in the time period where the show is set. That came later, after Kiev was established.

Actually im Chinese. My mother always told me we're 100% Asian... Been arguing with her for years- because I look slightly different than my other family members. (Father side) So I took a DNA test- 89% Asian 11% Scandinavian Going to do a DNA test on my grandma to see the rest of the results. Hope this answers your question? Proof that my ancestors were probably slaves and raped by vikings. Thanks a lot Ragnar 😐

Can you maybe put a spoiler warning in your title?