- [Narrator] In this video I want to start to answer
the question of how did the environment and how did
political factor impact trade?
And that is a really big question that we're not
gonna answer in one video, but I want to use a specific
example to illustrate the role of environment
and the role of politics in shaping trade.
So I want to start in Birka, which is roughly here
in present day Sweden.
And the reason I start here is that in the late
1800s a team of archeologists working in this site
uncovered a woman's grave, among other things,
and found in that grave the ring that we see
in the photo here.
And they've dated this grave and the ring they
found in it to somewhere in the 9th century.
So somewhere in between the years 800 and 900 or so
and we can see in our bigger timeline that that falls
right into what's called the viking age
and the vikings were people living in Scandinavia
and this region shaded in red.
They weren't a single political entity,
there were a lot of smaller more independent communities,
but they shared a lot of cultural characteristics.
So back to our ring, firstly it's made of silver.
Secondly, the bead that's set into it is made of
a really high quality glass.
And that's of a higher quality that archeologists
have found in Scandinavia from this time period.
So those two facts would indicate that the ring is
probably from somewhere else.
There's an inscription on the ring,
it's kind of hard to see, but if you look closely
you can sort of make it out and linguists and
archeologists who have looked at this are fairly
certain that this is a form of old Arabic script.
And they think it says something along the lines
of to or for Allah.
And I mentioned that the vikings shared a lot of
cultural characteristics and one of those characteristics
was that they all spoke Norse languages.
So an Arabic inscription on the ring implies really
strongly that the ring did not come from Scandinavia.
So that should raise the question for you of where
did this ring come from and how did it end up in Birka?
So the first factor we can look at to try and figure
out where this ring came from and how it got here
is to look at the political context.
The political context at any given time
is gonna determine where and what goods are traded.
So think about it like this, if there are two groups
of people and they have a relatively good political
relationship it's more likely that they're gonna
trade with each other, too.
So if we look at the political situation, broadly speaking,
during the viking age we have three major empires.
The first in purple we have the Byzantine Empire,
which was what was left of the Roman empire at this time.
We have, in yellow, the Abbasid Caliphate,
and this is the Islamic empire that was founded
in about 750.
And then we have, in blue, the Carolingian empire
in Europe, and that's named after Charlemagne who
in Latin is Carolis Magnus, so Carolingian comes
from that.
And I should point out on the timeline the Carolingian
empire does continue after Charlemagne's death,
it just becomes a little bit more fractured politically.
Empires tend to have large cities,
they can support larger concentrations of people,
which means larger concentrations of wealth,
which in turn means that there is more demand.
So cities become attractive to traders because you
have a lot of customers in one spot and those imperial
cities, especially, tend to concentrate a lot of wealth
if they are the seat of government too.
So I'm gonna pull our cities onto the map,
and as we look around here we can see Aachen is the
capital of the Carolingian empire, which is actually
geographically quite close to the vikings.
We have Constantinople as the Byzantine capital,
and then we have Baghdad which is the Abbasid capital
down here.
And when we look at those three empires and those three
cities specifically, only one of them speaks
Arabic and writes Arabic.
And that would be the Abbasid Caliphate.
So that would mean that the most likely place of
origin for this ring was somewhere in the Abbasid
Caliphate in yellow down here.
So we want to think about why would the vikings be
trading with the empire that's farthest away from them?
Well, part of the answer is political.
So if we look at the relationship between the vikings
and the Carolingians, for example, one of Charlemagne's
big projects as the ruler of the Carolingian empire
was to wage war against and try to convert the Pagans
who were living on the northeastern edge of his empire.
So there's this ongoing conflict between Charlemagne
and non-Christians, including the vikings,
and that tends to hurt the potential economic relationships
that they could have.
And you actually see the vikings raid the coast of the
Carolingian empire in the ninth century, as well.
So the vikings are trading with the Byzantines
and with the Abbasids, what they're engaging in is
what we call long distance trade.
So when we talk about long distance trade,
what we usually see are luxury goods.
And luxury goods are goods that are rare and expensive.
And so in all of these empires what we see is
the political context, the fact that they have large
powerful empires, makes it likely that they have more
advanced technology which means that they're able to
produce higher quality, more technologically advanced,
goods.
But then we have to ask what do the vikings have that
they would be trading with these more advanced empires?
Well one thing we can point out here is that the vikings
in Scandinavia are in a very different climate
than we have down in the Byzantine empire,
in the Abbasid Caliphate, and to a certain extent,
different than even what the Carolingians have,
although we pointed out some of the political issues
prevented more trade from occurring between them.
And the point we could make about the different climates
is that climates determine what resources are available.
So if we look at what the vikings are trading,
we see things that are somewhat unique to their climate.
And when we talk about the viking traders,
a lot of what they're doing is actually coming across
the Baltic Sea into this region here, the Baltic region,
we call that and they are obtaining goods such as timber.
And specifically the timber they want are from pine trees.
And pines in the Baltic tend to grow very tall and straight
and that makes them really attractive for building material.
Also, it's much colder in this climate and animals,
fur-bearing mammals, especially will tend to grow
nicer thicker coats if they live in cold climates
and that makes them more attractive then as potential
clothing items.
Another resource we see frequently in the Baltic region
is amber, and that is dried tree resin.
And that can be polished and shaped into stones for
jewelry, for decoration, as well.
And the vikings also do engage in the slave trade.
They'll kidnap and take people from this region and then
trade them as slaves with these imperial capitals,
that is not something that's necessarily influenced by
the environment, but it is also a part of this trade.
Some of the most popular items that the vikings are
trading for are things like fabrics, especially silk,
which is produced in these empires.
I also mentioned glass earlier.
We saw the glass inset in the ring,
they also are making glass vessels like drinking glasses.
You can see a picture of one here.
And that is gonna be of a much better quality than
anything that the vikings are able to produce.
So that glass becomes an attractive technology.
There's a lot of silver coming out of, especially,
the Abbasid Caliphate.
One of the reasons that they know this trade was
occurring more broadly is that in the Baltic region
and along some of the travel routes between the Baltic
and the Abbasid Caliphate archeologists have found
hordes, or large collections, of silver Abbasid coins.
And so we see here both silver and glass,
the elements of that ring that we discovered,
are things that are being traded for by the vikings
coming from this region.
So we see the climate impacting to a certain extent
what goods exist in different regions.
So there's an environmental impact there.
We also see geography or environment affecting the
transportation of goods.
So what I want to do next is pull in the commonly
used trade routes at this time.
And this helps us to understand how these goods
actually move between these places.
So we see that the major trade routes between the
Baltic region and the Byzantines and the Abbasids
follow major river systems.
And the vikings are able to take advantage of these
river systems in part because of the technology
that they possess.
So again we see the environment playing a role in trade
and determining what routes are convenient to
transport goods.
And one other point I would make about these routes
that develop is we see these cities of Novgorod,
of Kiev, and of Bulgar that pop along these trade routes
and these cities sort of grow because the trade
routes exist.
These cities themselves become center of trade over time.
So to come back to our ring that we started the
video with, hopefully this is looking less like
an anomaly, a strange find, and more like the natural
result of the existing trade networks that were
in in place because of the environmental and because
of the political conditions at this time.