Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700

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The Northern Seas (ﬁfth to eighth centuries) 643

the contrary,

we must reckon that the presence of the Anglo-Saxons was dense

and numerous along the coasts.

It was also signiﬁcant on some continental

shores, especially in the Boulonnais, the Bessin (around Bayeux) and the lower

valley of the Loire, where Saxon settlement has long been identiﬁed from

written and place-name evidence. It is evident too in the Ponthieu (a coastal

area in northern Picardy, between the rivers Canche and Somme) and the Caen

area, where a Saxon presence has recently come to light in cemetery excavations,

especially at Vron and Nouvion (in Ponthieu), or at Fr

enouville, H

erouvillette,

Giberville and St Martin-de-Fontenay (in Normandy).

Arelative cultural and linguistic homogeneity (Celtic in the western areas;

Germanic, or, as current linguistics call it, Nordseegermanisch,inthe central and

eastern areas) resulted from these movements and coastal settlements. In fact,

the existence of such widespread linguistic communities facilitated the contacts

between the different shores of north-western Europe, and certainly helps to

explain the archaeological distribution of some speciﬁc items, like the ‘D ware’

(bowls and plates) and the ‘E ware’ (wheel-thrown pots and jars), originating

from western Gaul, which were found in many sixth-century sites in Ireland,

Scotland, south-west Britain and the Scilly Isles;

similarly, some kinds of the

so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ brooches (disc brooches or button brooches) which

have been found not only in the south of England (in the cemeteries of Kent,

Sussex and the Isle of Wight), but also in all the cemeteries which have been

excavated in the Ponthieu and Caen areas.

If such exchanges took place, this would imply the existence of some sort of

transport system, with men, ships, landing places, perhaps some trade instru-

ments. But supporting archaeological evidence is rather scarce – just a few

weighing scales have been found in English and continental graves,

and writ-

ten evidence says little more, except perhaps about the ships. For instance, in

his De Excidio et Conquestu Brittaniae,Gildas speaks of the Celtic currucae

(the famous curaghs) and about the coming of the Saxons in ‘tribus ut lingua

eius Saxonum exprimitur cyulis, nostra longis navibus’ (‘three cyuls,asSaxons

call in their language what we term in ours “long boats”’).

So, according to

Gildas, the sixth-century Britons or Romano-Britons knew of two kinds of

boats. The curaghs or hide boats were described by Caesar in the ﬁrst century

bc and by Adomn

an of Iona in the eighth century. Curaghs could be propelled

by oars and by sail, and probably looked like the ﬁrst-century bc gold model

found in Broighter (Co. Derry, Ireland), or like the ship carved on the Kilnaru-

ane pillar (Co. Cork, Ireland). Secondly there were the longae naves,probably

Higham (1992).

Myres (1989); Jones (1996).

Lebecq (1989); Welch (1991).

Thomas (1990).

Welch (1991).

Steuer (1987).

De Excidio et Conquestu Brittaniae, cc.19 and 23, ed. Winterbottom, pp. 94 and 97.

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planked boats that were propelled by sail, as suggested by the coins issued by

Cunobelin in the ﬁrst century ad,orbythe St Peter Port (Guernsey) wreck

from the third century.

The Anglo-Saxons, as we have just seen, had long

ships that they called cyul(i) (OE ceol, modern English keel ), a word which

probably refers to ships such as the famous fourth-century Nydam boat, found

in Schleswig-Holstein, i.e. approximately the ancient Angulus or Angeln, the

land from which, according to Bede, the Angli came. These were long clinker-

built wooden ships, which, during the Migration period, were more probably

propelled by oars than by sail, as we can see from writings of Sidonius (ﬁfth

century) and Procopius (sixth century).

From stem to stern, all these ships

had a symmetrical proﬁle and a relatively ﬂat bottom, and so they could be

landed almost anywhere.

Landing places must, therefore, have been numerous, particularly on the

sandy shores of the southern coasts of the Northern Seas. Moreover, trafﬁc

must have been so scattered that it is difﬁcult to identify real trading ports

between the end of the third century, when Roman ports started to decline,

and the beginning of the seventh, when a real revival of port activity took place.

But, here and there, it is not impossible to ﬁnd the remains of beach markets

or trading posts, probably connected with high-status settlements or centres of

local power, as in the Danish prototype of Gudme/Lundeborg, excavated on

the Baltic isle of Funen, and where a lot of rich, especially gold, material from

the third to sixth centuries has been found.

This was perhaps the case of the

fort of Dalkey Island, on the southern end of Dublin Bay, where ﬁfth- and

sixth-century imported material from the Mediterranean and from Aquitaine

has been found.

Other cases could be Benouville (on the Orne estuary, near

Caen), where archaeologists have found items which may be related to the

material found in the nearby hinterland cemeteries; Sarre, on the bank of the

Wantsum Channel in Kent, where a large cemetery from the sixth century has

been excavated, with a variety of material including scales;

or the terp (i.e.

the artiﬁcial mound on the maritime plain) of Wijnaldum in Frisia, where

very rich material from the sixth and seventh centuries was imported and/or

transformed.

None of the newly settled populations in the maritime countries minted

coins, however. If they did need currency, they still used the late Roman,

then Byzantine coins, such as the solidi,orthe thirds of solidi called trientes or

tremisses, which were reproduced by the Frankish mintmasters in Gaul. It is not,

however, certain that they needed currency, except for its metal weight (which

McGrail (1987) and (1990).

Ellmers (1972); McGrail (1990).

Thrane (1987); Clarke and Ambrosiani (1995).

Hodges (1982), p. 67;Edwards (1990), pp. 41–3.

Hodges (1982), p. 69 and (1989), pp. 55 and 92–3.

Heidinga (1997); Besteman et al., forthcoming.

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The Northern Seas (ﬁfth to eighth centuries) 645

could explain the use of scales, like those found in some Kentish cemeteries).

According to an anthropological perception of the early history of barbarian

societies, exchanges between the peoples of northern Europe during the Dark

Ages consisted mainly of scattered or occasional contacts, barter, reciprocal

gift-exchange – all practices which were part of diplomatic, matrimonial or

social customs and rituals.

So the few continental coins that arrived in the

British Isles during the ﬁfth and sixth centuries seem mainly to have been used

as ornaments.

Such was probably the social background in which an East Anglian prince

(perhaps King Redwald) was buried in Sutton Hoo around 625–630, and which

accounts for the heterogeneous quality of the objects found in his grave, the

famous ship-burial Number One.

Besides the material of Eastern, Scandina-

vian and Rhenish origin which was found in the grave, a hoard of thirty-seven

trientes from thirty-seven different Frankish mints was found. This shows the

artiﬁciality of such a collection, possibly a diplomatic gift (why not the dowry

given to the deceased by a Frankish wife?). This collection, to which were added

three coin blanks and two little ingots, was perhaps put together, as Philip

Grierson has suggested,

to pay the forty oarsmen and ferrymen of the soul

of the dead man to another world. This treasure seems to make Sutton Hoo

the best example of this period of peaceful but not yet commercial exchanges

between the Isles and the continent. But it is also one of the last archaeological

examples of such exchanges; for, from the beginning of the seventh century,

things began to change.

the development of a maritime economy

To wards the year 600,infact, trading in the Northern Seas began to take on a

better-deﬁned structure. Written sources, which had been almost silent on the

subject since the migratory period, started to make mention again of indepen-

dent, professional merchants. These sources refer to the commercial rebirth of

ancient maritime cities and of port activity unknown until that moment, but

the existence and spread of which are often conﬁrmed by archaeology. Finally,

one sees the continental Frisians and insular Anglo-Saxons, chief instigators of

this rebirth, beginning to mint coins, copying the model of the Frankish mints

that had themselves imitated the late Roman and Byzantine models.

In order to explain this rebirth, one has to invoke the end of the maritime

migratory movement and the stabilisation of peoples sharing the same cultural

horizons along the North Sea coasts, for it is obvious that an ethnic explanation

is not sufﬁcient. A noticeable improvement in climate reached north-west

Grierson (1959) and (1961).

Evans (1986); Carver (1998).

Grierson (1970).

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Europe, which was soon to be free of the last great epidemic threat from

antiquity (this was the plague, sometimes knownas ‘Justinianic’ because it came

from the East, and which was far more lethal in southern Europe than in the

north). The area beneﬁted from the beginnings of a demographic and economic

growth such as had not been seen since the third century.

Everywhere around

the Northern Seas one witnesses the rise of ever more powerful aristocracies and

monarchies. These (for example, the Franks in southern England) were looking

to exercise a certain overseas supremacy, through diplomatic or matrimonial

channels.

Above all, however, they wanted to stimulate, support and inﬂuence

activities of production and trade, and therebyto direct futuresurpluses towards

external markets by developing port activity in places that would henceforth

be better controlled.

Thus, at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries, the whole of the North-

ern Seas basin, from the Atlantic coasts of Europe as far as the great delta of

the Meuse and the Rhine, in the heart of what is now the Netherlands, seems

to have been affected by this revival of commercial activity. One only has to

refer to Adomn

an of Iona who, in his Life of St Columba, mentions those

‘Gallici nautae de Galliarum provinciis’ who, at the end of the sixth century

frequented Hebridean waters;

or to Jonas of Bobbio who, in his Life of Colum-

banus,refers to the presence in Nantes, on the Loire estuary, of those ‘naves

quae Scottorum commercia vexerant’, which were preparing to set sail with

a cargo of wine.

Bede himself, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Peo-

ple, turns the London of c.604 into an emporium frequented by ‘multi populi

terra marique venientes’, amongst whom, some tens of years later, he would

distinguish a Frisian slave trader.

Archaeologists have uncovered, from the

beginning of the seventh century, the ﬁrst harbour development of sites such

as Domburg (formerly Walacras, Walcheren, in Dutch Zeeland)

or Ipswich

(formerly Gipeswic, in Suffolk).

Finally, numismatists see an increase in the

minting of coins around 600, not only in ancient sites such as Rouen, at the

head of the Seine estuary, but also amongst those new populations – Frisian,

Anglo-Saxon – who had not previously minted coins at all.

Initially, this was the case amongst the Frisians of the Low Countries who,

having imitated the gold trientes struck by the Franks at Maastricht, launched

themselves into minting more original coins. Numismatists describe these as

being of the ‘Dronrijp type’, after the Dutch site where an important hoard

was found. Then it was the turn of the Anglo-Saxons to mint coins, ﬁrst

of all in Kent (probably in Canterbury), then in London. The minting of

Lebecq (1997).

Wood (1983).

Adomn

an, Vita Sancti Columbae i.28; Thomas (1990).

Jonas, Vita Columbani i.23.

Bede, HE ii.3, and iv.22.

Lebecq (1995).

Wade (1988); Hodges (1989), pp. 97–101.

Grierson and Blackburn (1986).

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The Northern Seas (ﬁfth to eighth centuries) 647

these thrymsas –itisappropriate to call them this after the Old English word

meaning tremisses – was at ﬁrst sporadic. However, it increased during the

course of the seventh century, perhaps under the impetus of those kings whose

names feature on certain coins, such as Eadbald, successor to Æthelbhert of

Kent in 616.

The coincidence between these ﬁrst mintings by Frisians and by

Anglo-Saxons is disquieting. If one can continue to explain the development

of their production and circulation by the claiming of power and of prestige

by the issuing authorities, it is likely that the simultaneity of the phenomenon

can be explained by the requirements of trade, especially between south-east

England and the mouths of the Meuse and the Rhine. Proof is there in the fact

that workshops were often set up in port sites, and that it is at these same sites

that the most important coin ﬁnds have been made.

The beginning of the seventh century saw an increase in port activity that

affected not only the old cities already mentioned, such as Nantes, Lon-

don or Rouen, but above all the new sites, and which generally promised

agreat future. The ﬁrst generation of these ports ﬂourished mainly in the

area found between south-east England and the great delta of the Meuse and

the Rhine.

In the texts they are called portus, emporia or, most often, vici –

from the Latin word vicus in its Germanic form wik which would occur in so

many place-names ending in -vic, -wich, -wijk, -wig. The chief ports were as

follows:

Quentovic (the wik of the river Cuenta or Quantia, the Canche) was situated

in Ponthieu, twenty or so kilometres to the south of Boulogne. The ﬁrst written

references appear in English sources at the end of the seventh century. However,

the name of Quantia on one of the coins of the Sutton Hoo treasure and that

of WicinPontio (Wic in Ponthieu) on one of the coins of the Crondall hoard

(c.640) suggest a history reaching back to the ﬁrst half of the seventh century.

The names of the ﬁrst mintmasters who produced the Quentovic coins –

Dagulfus, Dutta, Anglus, Donna, Ela – suggest an Anglo-Saxon origin, which

underlines the links existing between the south of England and what was to

become the important port of Merovingian Neustria. According to Eddius

Stephanus (Stephen of Ripon) in his Vita Wilfridi, the via rectissima, which

allowed his fellow countrymen to make their way to Rome, passed through

here.

Walcheren/Domburg lay on an island in Dutch Zeeland, where, according

to a very empirical archaeology, a new port began to be developed towards

600. This was near to an ancient sanctuary devastated by a great ﬂood at the

Grierson and Blackburn (1986).

Hodges (1982), pp. 47–65; Clarke and Ambrosiani (1995), pp. 5–45;Verhulst (1999), pp. 44–7.

Lebecq (1993); Zedelius (1991).

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648 s t

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end of the second century and where numerous seventh- and eighth-century

coins from all over northern Gaul and England have been discovered.

Dorestad was situated on one of the starting points of the Rhine delta near

aRoman fort, at the very place where the river’s main current turned north

(i.e. towards Scandinavia) and where the Lek took on a westerly direction (i.e.

towards Britain). Like that of Quentovic,

the name Dorestad only features

in texts from the end of the seventh century, but it appears on coins struck by

the mintmasters Madelinus and Rimoaldus from about 630–640. Although the

port’s origin was certainly Frisian, it was to develop much more after the end of

the seventh century, when the site, together with the whole of Rhenish Frisia,

would fall to the power of the Franks. Archaeological excavation has revealed

that Dorestad beneﬁted from a large port complex, consisting of a huge system

of wharves/landing stages deployed along the banks of the Rhine.

As such, it

was to become the main turn-table for trade between the Rhineland, eastern

England and Scandinavia. In the ninth century its reputation would become

such that Dorestad was described in written sources as vicus famosus,oreven

as vicus nominatissimus.

Lundenwich, a suburb of London, was thus renamed by eighth-century

sources inspired by the new toponymic fashion. If one can believe the numerous

discoveries of Saxon material made during the last thirty years, it seems to

have been situated between the Thames and the Strand, and thus only a little

upstream from the ancient city.

Ipswich, already mentioned, like Dorestad, has been subjected to systematic

diggings. These have revealed a site occupied since the beginning of the seventh

century, and rich in a considerable quantity of pottery, mainly East Anglian in

origin, but also from the Rhineland, the Meuse basin and Flanders.

The Kentish ports developed around Canterbury: Fordwich, mentioned in

a deed of 675;Sandwich, considered to be the portus salutis in Stephen’s Vita

Wilfridi;Sarre, whose activity, mentioned as early as the sixth century, seems to

have continued at least until the eighth century, if one believes the exemptions

from transport taxes granted at that time to churches in the region; and not

forgetting the suburbium to the north-east of Canterbury, where a vicus on the

banks of the Stour has recently been identiﬁed.

Later in the seventh and during the eighth century, the circle of this maritime

activity widened to take in more distant lands, as suggested by the accounts of

Lebecq (1995).

Lebecq (1991).

Van Es and Verwers (1980); Van Es and Hessing (1994).

Lebecq (1983), vol i,pp.149–50 (from the Vita Gregorii Traijectensis by Liudger, and the Annales

Xantenses s.a. 834).

Vince (1990).

Wade (1988); Hodges (1989), pp. 97–101.

Hodges (1989), pp. 92–4; Lebecq (1999).

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The Northern Seas (ﬁfth to eighth centuries) 649

the Life of Willibrord left to us by Bede and Alcuin.

The Anglo-Saxon monk

ﬁrst of all left Northumbria for Ireland, where he went on retreat with some

compatriots in the monastery of Rath Melsigi (i.e. Cluain Melsige, nowadays

Clonmelsh, Co. Carlow, in the south-west of Ireland). From there, in about

690,heset off for Frisia, which he traversed in all directions. He went to

Walcheren to ﬁght paganism and to Utrecht to found his cathedral there. From

this region – that of the Rhine delta – central to the communications system

of the time and consequently the subject of dispute between the independent

Frisians and the conquering Franks, Willibrord went not only to the south,

going up the Rhine and the Moselle to found his monastic refuge of Echternach

(nowadays in Luxembourg), but also to the distant north-east where a boat

eventually set him down in Denmark where he tried to convert the king

Ongendus (Angantyr?). The long peregrinatio, which led Willibrord from one

end of the northern European seas to the other, can only be explained by

the expansion of the horizon mapped out by the merchants/navigators of

the time who guaranteed a transport system. This widening of mercantile

horizons was marked by a development in the port activity of sites which the

missionary possibly visited during his journey. This development was twofold:

the revitalisation of ancient sites sluggish since antiquity, such as the former

Eboracum, and the creation of new ports such as Hamwih, Ribe or, a little

later, Sliaswich-Haithabu.

Eboracum, or rather one of its trading suburbs, in conformity with the

new toponymic usage (just like Lundenwich), was renamed Eoforwich. In

due course the Vikings made this into Jorvik, i.e. York. No doubt this vicus

was to be found to the south of the Roman wall, in the Fishergate area, at

the conﬂuence of the rivers Ouse and Foss. Here, archaeologists have found

not only many artisan constructions of the seventh to ninth centuries, but

also much imported material originating in particular in the Rhineland. This

suggests that it was here, in the second half of the eighth century, that the Frisian

merchants mentioned in Altfrid’s Vita Liudgeri set up their community.

Hamwih, on the site of the future Southampton, is mentioned in written

sources as the key to communications between Wessex and the Seine in around

720.However, excavations have revealed the presence of a port settlement

planned (laid out?) in around 700,inclose contact with the continent (the

lower Seine valley, the Paris region and, to a lesser degree, the Rhineland), and

above all with its nearby hinterland, especially the royal site at Winchester.

This is why we have been able to attribute Hamwih’s origins to the initiative

of Ine, king of Wessex from 688 to 726.

Bede, HE iii.27; and Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi.

Hall (1978) and (1988).

Hodges (1980) and (1989), pp. 80–92.

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Ribe, on a small river ﬂowing out into the North Sea at the foot of western

Jutland, was founded most probably at the beginning of the eighth century.

It is less likely to have been established by the Frisians, as suggested by earlier

hypotheses, but more probably by an emerging Danish monarchy. (Why not

at the time of King Ongendus whom Willibrord met?) The settlement does

not seem to have had long to wait for visits from western merchants and their

money, found in such abundance that one might almost think it had been

minted there.

Sliaswich, the wik of the Schlei, was the ﬁrst trading post set up towards

the middle of the eighth century by westerners on the Baltic, or more exactly

at the end of a fjord in Schleswig-Holstein. The settlement (the S

udsiedlung

of archaeologists), where basalt from the Eifel and amber from the Baltic were

transformed, scratched a modest living until the beginning of the ninth century.

It then was systematically rebuilt by the Danish king, Godfred, a few hundred

metres to the north (Siedlung A). Scandinavian sources and posterity mean that

this site would be known by its Scandinavian name of Haithabu.

It would

command a new navigational route towards the eastern Baltic, particularly

Lake Malar in the heart of Sweden, where the new emporia of Helgo (from the

middle of the eighth century) and Birka (which took over at the beginning of

the ninth century) would, in turn, be developed.

This ‘gazetteer of emporia’, to quote Richard Hodges,

could be expanded

almost to inﬁnity. If archaeology indicates trade movements, texts, particularly

hagiography, show clearly how missionaries, monks or bishops used navigation

routes, which seemed to be getting more and more regular.

For example, the

Vita Columbani reveals the role of Alet (nowadays St Malo) and of Nantes

in communications with Ireland around 600; the Vita Wilfridi by Stephen

of Ripon shows the links between Sandwich, Quentovic and Frisia (possibly

Dorestad) at the end of the seventh century; Willibald’s Vita Bonifatii shows

the links between Lundenwich, Quentovic and Dorestad at the beginning

of the eighth century; the nun Hugeberc’s Vita Willibaldi shows the links

between Hamwih and Rouen in around 720; the Vita Anskarii shows the

importance of the Dorestad–Sliaswich/Haithabu–Birka route in the ﬁrst half

of the ninth century. One can thus fairly easily sketch out the chief lines of the

maritime communications network in seventh- and eighth-century northern

Europe: from the coasts of Ireland and western Britain towards the ports of

Brittany (chieﬂy Nantes) and Atlantic Gaul; from the Wessexcoast (Hamwih in

particular) towards the Seine valley and the Paris basin; from the ports of south-

eastern England (London and the Canterbury satellites) towards Quentovic,

Bencard (1981); Jensen (1991).

Jankuhn (1986).

Clarke and Ambrosiani (1995), pp. 68–76.

Hodges (1982), pp. 66ff.

Lebecq (1999).

The Northern Seas (ﬁfth to eighth centuries) 651

the true gateway to northern Gaul and Neustria; from eastern and south-

eastern England (London again, Ipswich, Eboracum) towards the great delta

of the Meuse and the Rhine (Walcheren/Domburg and especially Dorestad,

gateway to Frisia, to Austrasia and to the Rhineland); from the Rhine delta,

from Dorestad in particular, towards Denmark and then across to Scandinavia

and the Baltic.

Not only did maritime links multiply in all the northern European seas,

but shipping technology changed during the seventh and eighth centuries.

From this time on, continental, British and Scandinavian boats were increas-

ingly equipped with a sail. This was not yet, perhaps, the case of the ship in

tomb Number One at Sutton Hoo, which was in the nautical tradition of

the Nydam boat; nevertheless its length/breadth ratio suggests the presence of

arudimentary sail.

This was certainly true of the ships represented on the

stelae carved on the island of Gotland in the eighth century, and on the coins

struck in Quentovic and Dorestad at the end of the eighth and the begin-

ning of the ninth centuries. The ﬁrst of these coins, dating from the reign of

Charlemagne, perhaps remain inﬂuenced by ancient coins as regards the type

of ship. The next ones, dating from the reign of Louis the Pious, show in great

detail what the ninth-century North Sea boats had become, though they were

still clinker built, following traditional construction methods of the ancient

Germans. This construction guaranteed suppleness and elasticity, but the rig-

ging for sails demanded an increase in the breadth relative to length. Above,

such vessels now had a low proﬁle in the water, such as one ﬁnds in the two

great models that were to dominate the waters of northern Europe over a long

period. These were the ﬂat-bottomed boat of the East Frisians, the forerunner

of the kogge, and the round-bottomed boat of the sailors of the Rhine delta

and of southern England, perhaps the forerunner of the hulk.

One can sur-

mise that, beginning in the great delta, the use of sail spread initially towards

English waters, then, keeping pace with the expansion of westerners towards

the east, moved towards Scandinavian and Baltic waters. Whatever the details,

its spread had important economic consequences: it allowed a reduction in the

number of crewmen needed (henceforth reduced to four or ﬁve men on ships

which were about 20 metres in length and which carried 10–20 tons of freight);

it enabled more cargo and more passengers to be taken on board; it made the

crossing easier, quicker and, above all, cheaper.

This transport system allowed the diffusion of the various products discov-

ered by archaeologists along and at the end of the routes frequented by the

merchants/navigators of the seventh to ninth centuries. For example, there

are the ceramics of La Londe, whose centre of production has recently been

Johanek (1985).

Evans (1986).

Ellmers (1972); McGrail (1987) and (1990).

652 s t

ephane lebecq

identiﬁed in the vicinity of Rouen. These ceramics are the principal imports

discovered in the Hamwih site, justifying the allusions in the Vita Willibaldi

to the importance of the links between the lower valley of the Seine and the

Wessex coast.

Or there are the products of the Rhineland: so-called ‘Badorf’

or ‘Tating’ ceramics, manufactured near Cologne and Coblenz respectively;

mill stones made from Eifel basalt; glassware; arms. Their discovery seems to

mark out the routes of the ‘great Frisian trade’, a trade that in fact became

Franco-Frisian after the conquest of the Rhine delta by the Franks.

These

products went to Dorestad, naturally, the unrivalled turn-table, but also to

London, to Ipswich, to Hamwih, to York, to the Irish crannog of Lagore, to

the new Danish port sites of Ribe and of Sliaswich-Haithabu, and even, a little

later, to those of central Sweden, namely Helgo and Birka.

There is the dif-

fusion of the new silver coins introduced by the Frisians and the Anglo-Saxons

which shows, perhaps better than all the rest, the intensity of maritime trade

at the end of the seventh and during the eighth centuries.

It was at this moment that a veritable revolution took place in the history

of western money.

Up until about 670–680, the whole of the West had

remained faithful to the ancient or Byzantine standard, and to the minting of

trientes, tremisses or other thrymsas. These were supposedly of gold but, because

of an increasing lack of the yellow metal, silver was playing an ever more

important part in their manufacture. At this time the workshops of south-

eastern England and of Frisia began to put out pure silver coins. They were not

much lighter, initially, than the ﬁrst tremisses, but they were, by all accounts,

better adapted to the necessities of the market (the precious metal produc-

tion market, of course, but also the distribution market which coped badly

with coins whose buying power was totally overvalued). The ﬁrst specimens,

although often without any inscription, were inspired by pre-existing models,

but with a stylised engraving which perhaps linked up with the Celtic or more

generally protohistoric tradition. These are the coins which, because of a mis-

interpretation of ancient Anglo-Saxon laws, have been called sceattas since the

end of the seventeenth century. In fact, for their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries

they were ‘pennies’, and for their continental contemporaries ‘deniers’.

No doubt it was in Kent that these ﬁrst so-called sceattas, which really

should be called proto-pennies or proto-deniers,were struck. But production

was taken up almost immediately by all the workshops in the south of England

and in Northumbria, as well as by those in Frisia and the Rhine delta (espe-

cially Dorestad) which were in the process of coming under Frankish rule.

This indicates to what extent these regions were economically interdependent.

Hodges (1980) and (1991).

Lebecq (1986).

Lebecq (1983), i.

Hill and Metcalf (1984); Grierson and Blackburn (1986).