Hello everyone! I am an IB student, and in the IB we are expected to write a detailed essay about a certain subject. I have chosen History as my subject, and I decided to examine the long term longevity of WW2 Germany using the various Scandinavian kingdoms during the viking age as a case study. However, while finding good sources about the economics of Nazi Germany is almost trivial, finding good sources about the economics of the vikings is not so. My question is: are there any good sources, primary or secondary, from which I can learn about the way the vikings made money, so to speak? I tried searching it up and google, but the only thing I found was a book about modern Scandinavian economics. Any help will be much appreciated!
There's lots! Of course, that means it's sometimes hard to pick out highly specialized articles from more general updates on the state of the field, which I suspect is what you're going for. Don't get daunted if this seems too dense; sometimes it's just good to know a bit about what's out there.
As a starting point, I'd recommend taking a look at Brink and Price, eds., The Viking World (2008) [Amazon link so you can preview the table of contents]. I'd start with the introduction (it's short), then technology and trade, and then urbanism or any other sections that seem necessary for you.
An older book, but one that's still very influential is Hodges and Whitehouse's Muhammad, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe (1983). It will give you a good idea of what scholars think was happening, but there's been a lot of research and updates to it over the last 30 years. Before you cite Hodges and Whitehouse, I'd cross reference it with a more recent work, using the table of contents or index to focus your reading. In particular, I'd look at Skre's Means of Exchange (2007) (see especially Skre's intro and conclusion as well as Kilger's "Kaupang from Afar") and McCormick's Origins of the European Economy (2001). They're both great works, but based on how you described your project, I wouldn't risk getting stuck in a quagmire trying to read them both all the way through.
Finally, there's a few terrific articles that should be read if you can:
Steven P. Ashby, “What Really Caused the Viking Age? The Social Context of Raiding and Exploration,” Archaeological Dialogues 22.1 (2015): 89-106. [Sorry: the link doesn't give the full article, just the abstract.]
James Barrett, “Rounding Up the Usual Suspects: Causation and the Viking Age Diaspora,” in Atholl Anderson, James H. Barrett, and Katherine V. Boyle, eds., The Global Origins and Development of Seafaring (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2010), 289-302.
Ulf Näsman, “Exchange and Politics: The Eighth–Early Ninth Century in Denmark,” in Inge Lyse Hansen and Chris Wickham, eds., The Long Eighth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000): 35-68.
Søren M. Sindbæk, “Silver Economies and Social Ties: Long-Distance Interaction, Long-Term Investments – and Why the Viking Age Happened,” in James Graham-Campbell, Søren M. Sindbæk, and Gareth Williams, eds., Silver Economies, Monetisation and Society in Scandinavia, AD 800–1100 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2011), 41–65.
When I studied the Vikings for the first year of my degree, I mainly pulled from The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings and A History of the Vikings by Gwyn Jones - The latter of the two being more helpful in my opinion.
However, anything Viking related by Peter H. Sawyer are usually great resources.