How the Vikings Turned Chaos Into Commerce

Viking ship

Did the Vikings invent cross-border trade? That’s the claim of Valerie Hansen, author of “The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began.”

She had us at “globalization,” and while merchants traversing the Silk Road back in the year 130 BCE might disagree, let’s go with Vikings for their apparent edge in logistics and scalability.

Around the year 1000, when beaver pelts were as close to cryptocurrency as you could get (faux beaver fur was easy to spot … if it existed at all), we now know that the Vikings or the Norse — not exactly the same, but close enough — accidentally “discovered” America.

That there were already lots of indigenous peoples in North America who had been “the locals” for millennia is its own glorious history. Today, we’re focusing attention on explorers of yore who, in between fits of pillaging, carved the pathways of modern cross-border commerce.

First things first. How about some proof? After all, there are competing claims as to which Europeans got to North America first. Was it an Irish monk in a tiny boat? An Italian-born mariner financed by the Spanish Crown in three little ships? Ancient aliens? The list goes on.

Let’s see what the experts have to say.

The Vikings Got Here First

On Wednesday (Oct. 20) The Wall Street Journal put some of the speculation to rest, reporting that “A new look at wooden artifacts found amid the ruins of an ancient homestead shows that Vikings had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in North America as far back as 1021—exactly 1,000 years ago and almost five centuries before Columbus’s famous voyage.”

That ancient homestead is in a place called L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Using a new radiocarbon dating technique, scientists analyzed trees chopped with non-native metal axes to narrow it down. Turns out the Norse (Vikings if you like) were living in Canada in the year 1021.

Some believe this led to the invention of Molson Bradors. We call them “drunken scientists.”

As to the PYMNTS spin, context is crucial to our saga. While Leif Erikson’s ne’er do well brother Torvald later returned to what they called Vinland — and, it is thought, took a native arrow for being a terrible guest — the Vikings were busy elsewhere inventing cross-border trade.

Fittingly, Canada’s History Channel gave us a great fictional glimpse into all this with its hit series “Vikings” where we learn that a weirdo named Floki built a better boat.

They were already doing a brisk business river trading (and reaving) up into modern-day Russia, but what self-respecting barbarian would stop there when they could have — the world.

Among the first accounts of Vikings crossing the open sea looking for “trading partners” actually dates to 793 CE and the infamous attack on the church of St. Cuthbert in Lindisfarne, England.

Based on the historical record it wasn’t so much “trade” as “raid,” but that didn’t matter to Ragnar Lothbrok (possibly), because all that booty indicated they were onto something.

From Raiding to Trading

After their brutal success at Lindisfarne, they took to raiding vulnerable outfits — not unlike T. Boone Pickens — and traded with those better able to defend themselves. This led to Viking settlements in places from Ireland to Normandy to North Africa and the Middle East.

As summarized by History On the Net, “Vikings fostered close ties with Constantinople, becoming the Varangian guard to the Byzantine emperor. From Constantinople, Baghdad and perhaps even Persia, the Vikings could obtain goods from the Far East,” and on the way home, “Arabic silver, coins, fabrics, spices, silk, fruit, wine and other goods of the south. By the end of the Viking Age, Norsemen had created a trading empire, covering most of the known world.”

From there it’s just a hop, skip and jump to credit cards and digital banking. Connect the dots.

Because payment is easier than plundering on all involved, National Geographic explains that “the Second Viking Age, as it was known, involved a new form of power: money. Vikings demanded payment, later known as ‘danegeld,’ in exchange for not conducting raids and maintaining peace. England’s taxation system was founded on this method of extortion.”

That last sentence explains so much about 21st century finance. We’ll let you figure it out.

As for the Vikings and their North American exploits, an NPR segment featuring author Valerie Hansen notes that of all the proof of their presence — and love of money — perhaps the best was the discovery of a Norse penny “minted between 1065 and 1080” and found — in Maine.

Bet that would’ve made a fair down payment on a sweet Veksø helmet, replete with fur and horns. As the Amazon of their epoch, chances are you’d end up buying it from a Viking.