Since the early medieval Scandinavians left little behind in written sources, it is very hard to know if inflation did indeed spring up when people who had been viking came back with large amounts of silver.

However, there are several factors that should have limited inflation, at least immediately. If one considers the amount of treasure troves found from the early medieval era, many of those that went viking did not spend the silver they brought home, but rather added it to their family fortune - probably to be used for large one-time expenses, such as a dowry or bride price, a cauldron, buying a horse, chainmail armour or a sword, or for tools when a second son went bryte (going into the forest to break out a new farm somewhere suitable). Perhaps the silver was kept in case of a disaster, famine or raids by other vikings - to be able to rebuild should disaster strike.

More than 120 000 silver coins from viking era buried treasure troves have been found on Gotland alone, and about 50 000 in mainland Sweden - and that is not counting jewelry, ingots, coils and armbands. Swedes usually traded more than they raided, so the amount of silver retained in Denmark and Norway might have been higher.

While there were professional vikings, most were simply self-owning farmers and would not be spending their ill-gotten gains like 17th century pirates would.

The second factor is that it was hard to actually spend the silver immediately. Scandinavian villages of the era were small and usually consisted of one or several self-sufficient farmsteads. They grew and milled their own grain, they grew flax and made linen and kept sheep for wool and would make cloth and clothes on their own. They kept pigs for meatMany early medieval Scandinavians also extracted their own bog iron and made their own tools.

Inns or alehouses were rare as were shops to spend money in. Trade often happened at the thing once or twice per year, where a large market would happen around the thing, with farmers selling their surplus and craftsmen, merchants and traders would come from near and far to offer their services and goods. If the Scandinavian who had been viking lived close to one of the permanent trading towns such as Birka, Hedeby or Kaupang (close to modern Oslo), they could go there to buy things. In both cases, there would be plenty of goods as well as plenty of buyers at the same time, which would limit inflation a bit.

Sources:

Vikingen (the Viking) gathered by Bertil Almgren.

Vikingar i krig (Vikings at war) by Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike.

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