Infopanel 24

Slavery

Slavery played a very important role in the Viking Age, but in a different way than in Roman slave-owning society. In Viking-era Scandinavia, the systematic use of slaves in mining or shipbuilding, for example, cannot be completely ruled out, but the focus was on slave hunting and slave trading for commercial profit. A distinction must be made between two forms of slave hunting: on the one hand, there were prisoners of war, who were returned to their families as quickly as possible in exchange for ransom, as is documented in Ireland and Friesland, for example. The second form was systematic slave hunting for the purpose of resale. However, transporting slaves over long distances was arduous and risky. Therefore, although it was somewhat less lucrative, it was safer to resell the slaves through Viking middlemen at slave markets. Irish and Scottish slaves were resold on the Orkney Islands, for example. Haithabu was also famous as a slave market. Further east, in the Baltic States and on Gotland, there were other markets. Ultimately, the slaves ended up in the territory ruled by the Umayyad dynasty (which during the Viking Age only controlled Andalusia and parts of North Africa) and the Abbasids who replaced them, who had a great need for male war slaves due to their constant military campaigns. But girls and women for the harems of Baghdad and elsewhere were also paid for in silver dirhams to the Nordic slave traders. The dirhams were usually melted down and made into silver jewelry.