Some 118 ancient silver coins were found in a forest in northeast Poland The coins were minted during the Carolingian Empire, which united western and central Europe in the 9th century Experts theorize they may have been part of a payoff to Vikings to spare the Carolingian capital of Paris https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...be-Vikings-sacking-Paris-1-200-years-ago.html
Raiding and pillaging is not the only way coins could get around. There was significant North Sea trade during what is popularly called the "Viking era".
Wow, Amazing find, @midas1. I'm set to watch the video! Many thanks for posting this. It sent me to Gwynn Jones, A History of the Vikings (rev. ed., Oxford, 1984 --still very good), who confirms that, according to primary sources, Charles the Bald's first 'danegeld' was paid in 845, as ransom for Paris; amounting to the 7,000 pounds noted by the Polish professor quoted in the article. ...It's too bad that, this early in Charles's reign, his father Louis's 'temple' type would still have been the main one in circulation. Charles's subsequent issues specified the mint. @Nap, not only was trade as integral to Viking activity as plunder from the onset of the Viking Age (a phrase used nowadays as much for its ethnographic connotations as for the common --as such, frequently apt-- stereotype); as the Polish professor noted, it already ranged from the North Sea to the southern coast of the Black Sea, and points south and east. Which, precisely to your point, is how the hoard would've found its way there. ...Horn-tooting inexorably ensues. You're cordially invited to look at this post, from earlier this week. https://www.cointalk.com/threads/another-cut-coin.381800/#post-7652277
Hi All, The Daily Mail story notes that “The remaining silver piece was minted during the brief reign of his son Charles the Bald, who ruled from 875 to 877.” making 875 the earliest the hoard was buried (Terminus post quem) if this coin was not intrusive to the hoard. The bulk of the silver may still have originated in the 840s and might be ransom. - Broucheion
There's a belated story about this in the New York Times today: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/world/europe/medieval-french-coins-poland.html
They certainly got around. The Varangian guard in Constantinople were basically Norse from the 9th C. I find ancient trade routes quite astonishing and the coins which flowed along them remarkably interesting from a social/historic pov.
...Well, the Daily Mail overlooked the fact that the interval, "875 to 877" was only Charles's tenure as emperor, not as king of (West) Francia. There, his reign began in 840. The coins in the hoard are earlier Francian.
Thanks, Donna. Here's a quote from the article, reemphasizing where I was going with this from the beginning. "Most of the coins found so far date from the rule of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son, with only one minted under his grandson Charles the Bald, who ruled the western part of the Carolingian Empire and was in power during the Viking siege of Paris. "This, according to Stéphane Lebecq, an emeritus professor at the University of Lille in France and a leading expert in French medieval history, suggests that the stash had been “collected together at the beginning of Charles’s reign, so around 840-850, in the heart of his kingdom, which was situated in the Paris basin.”
