Fifteen silk textiles in the Oseberg ship, tens of thousands of dirhams in northern soil, a Buddha from the Swat Valley on an island in Lake Mälaren: the finds make it look as if Vikings stood on the Silk Road itself. Look closer and the picture breaks down into a chain of middlemen. On current evidence most northern silk came from Byzantium, Persia and Central Asia, not demonstrably from China, and the most important commodity from the East was not cloth but silver. This article tests the evidence piece by piece and says plainly where the answer remains open.
No Viking ever heard of the Silk Road. The term belongs to the 19th century: the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen popularised it in 1877, and he mainly had in mind the ancient link between China and the West. What we now mean by it is not a road at all but a loose web of caravan tracks, sea lanes and markets, along which hardly any cargo travelled the whole distance in one pair of hands.
That distinction settles much of the argument. Asking whether Vikings were "on the Silk Road" really means asking three separate things. First, did goods from this web reach the North? Nobody disputes that. Second, did people from the North reach markets that belonged to the web? For the Caspian, for Baghdad according to one Arabic source, and for Constantinople, the evidence ranges from decent to good. Third, did anyone from the North get as far as China? I know of no archaeological evidence for this, and the only passage cited in its favour is disputed. More on that shortly.
The great waterways themselves are covered in our articles on the Varangian route and the Vikings in the East. This piece asks something different: how much weight can the finds bear that are so often presented as proof of a northern Silk Road?
To measure the link between Scandinavia and Central Asia, reach for a coin balance rather than a silk thread. A dirham is a thin Islamic silver coin of about three grams, with no image but plenty of text: a statement of faith, a mint name and a date. So it tells you where it came from and the earliest moment it could have entered the ground. A hoard can only be dated by its youngest coin, which is a basic rule of numismatics.
The earliest dirham finds in the Baltic region and northern Russia go back to the late 8th century; hoards of the late 780s are known from Staraya Ladoga and from Tune in Uppland, and the youngest coin of the Staraya Ladoga hoard dates from 786/787. In the Petergof hoard near St Petersburg, buried around 805, coins carry scratched Arabic, Khazar-Turkic, Greek and Scandinavian marks. It is a small but very direct clue: anyone who carves Scandinavian marks into a coin probably had it in their own purse.
The flow peaked in the 10th century, and now it really does lead to cities we associate with the Silk Road. Roman Kovalev's 2002 study covers 14,865 Samanid dirhams from Samarkand in 634 hoards across western Eurasia. The Samanids ruled parts of Central Asia, and their two most important mints were Samarkand and al-Shash, modern Tashkent. Mass minting at Samarkand began in the early 890s, the most intense phase ran from the 910s to the mid-920s, and by 954 more than 92 percent of these dirhams had been struck. Then output collapsed. In the North, according to the numismatist Kenneth Jonsson, imports were already falling in the 950s, on Gotland to a low level; coin imports dropped steeply from the 960s into the 980s, western European coins appeared in great numbers from about 990, and the flow of dirhams ended altogether in the early 1010s. The causes are much debated. Kovalev points to the Samanid economic decline, the drain of silver northwards and the debasement of the coinage from about 943.
Gotland shows the outcome most starkly: more than 700 silver finds from the 9th to 12th centuries and, according to Jonsson, about 168,600 Viking Age coins, two thirds of all Swedish finds of the period. The volume "Viking-Age Trade" gives some 180,000 coins, about two fifths of them Arab dirhams or fragments. The figure sometimes seen of 168,000 Arab coins on Gotland does not fit: for the whole of Sweden Jonsson counts about 83,800 Islamic dirhams. The Spillings Hoard alone holds 14,295 coins, almost all of them Islamic. How silver worked as money in the North is explained in our article on hacksilver.
One caveat belongs here. Nobody from Gotland had to travel to Samarkand for a Samarkand coin to end up on Gotland. Dirhams changed hands on the Volga, above all among the Volga Bulgars. And they were not only paid for in fur: furs, wax and honey sat alongside human beings sold as slaves. A good share of that gleaming silver has this origin, a detail that romantic pictures of the Silk Road tend to leave out.
Ibn Khurradadhbih, a postmaster of Persian descent in Abbasid service, wrote the "Book of Roads and Kingdoms". His passage on the Rus is generally regarded as the earliest mention of that name in Arabic. Its date is contested. The historian Thorir Jonsson Hraundal places the work in the 840s and points to Peter Golden, who puts the Rus notice before 840; other accounts give 885/886, others around 870. The author lived from roughly 820 to 911/913, which explains the room for disagreement. This cannot be settled with certainty.
The passage itself is remarkably matter-of-fact. The Rus merchants, "a kind of the Saqaliba" (an Arabic catch-all for people from northern and eastern Europe that cannot simply be translated as "Slavs"), bring beaver pelts, the pelts of black foxes, and swords. They sail by river through Khazar territory into the Caspian, and sometimes go ashore at Gurgan and carry their goods by camel all the way to Baghdad. There eunuchs from the land of the Saqaliba interpret for them; they present themselves as Christians and pay dues.
Two things stand out. First, there is no silk in this list of goods. The passage describes what the Rus bring south, not what they take home. Second, the same text goes on to describe routes reaching al-Sīn, which is China. These paragraphs are traditionally attributed to Jewish long-distance traders, the Radhanites, whom Ibn Khurradadhbih portrays as multilingual merchants with routes from western Europe to China, carrying brocade and furs eastward among other things, and musk and spices westward. Neil Price, by contrast, has stressed that the sections run on from each other and can be read as describing the same people. In that case Rus merchants would be connected to al-Sīn, at least on paper, and even that name is not clear-cut: Price considers the Uyghur realm or Tang China. This is a serious suggestion from a respected scholar, but it is not an established fact, and I know of no finds in China that would support it.
Silk carries the ring of China because sericulture began there. By the 9th century the equation had long ceased to hold. Procopius relates that under Justinian, in the 6th century, monks brought silkworm eggs to Byzantium. The details sound like anecdote, but the result is clear: Byzantium wove its own silk, and large workshops also operated in Persia and Central Asia, some with their own thread.
For the question of origin this means keeping three things apart. The thread may have been produced in one place, the cloth in another, and the pattern may quote a third style. A bird motif in the taste of Tang China does not prove a loom in China, any more than a Persian fabulous bird guarantees a loom in Persia. Motifs travelled and were imitated. When a report speaks of "Persian silk", it generally rests on style and technique. That is a reasoned attribution, not a certificate of origin like the mint name on a dirham.
The Oseberg ship burial, whose timbers are dated to 834, is the single most important find. The textile scholar Marianne Vedeler of the University of Oslo studied its silks in her book "Silk for the Vikings": more than a hundred small fragments from fifteen different fabrics, plus embroideries and tablet-woven bands of silk and wool. No other northern grave has produced such varied silk from a single burial.
Many pieces were narrow strips sewn onto clothing as trim. So the costly fabric served mainly as decoration, much as a gold braid would elsewhere. The tablet-woven bands were probably made locally from imported silk thread. Not only finished cloth was imported, then, but raw material too. And people in the North did something of their own with what arrived.
Where the fabrics came from is not phrased the same way in every account. In the University of Oslo's 2013 report, Vedeler names Byzantium and Persia as the two main sources, with Persia ahead, and points to patterns such as the shahrokh, a bird that brings royal blessing in Persian tradition. A 2019 article of hers, which I know only through a Princeton University project page, is summarised as saying most of the silk came from Central Asia and Constantinople, with a very few pieces from China; one fragment with a bird may combine Zoroastrian imagery with Chinese models. "Persian" in the press and "Central Asian" in a specialist article are not mutually exclusive, since the Persian style spread far beyond Persia. China, however, appears only at the margins in both versions.
Birka in Lake Mälaren has no single grave like Oseberg, but according to Vedeler it has the most burials with silk of any site. Hjalmar Stolpe excavated about 1,100 graves there between 1871 and 1895, and Agnes Geijer published the textiles in 1938. What survives is fragmentary. The best known pieces are the tablet-woven bands of silk with gold and silver thread worked into them; Geijer is said to have distinguished at least 26 patterns, which I know only at second hand.
English Wikipedia reports the nickname "Silk Road of the North" in this connection, and I could not trace where it comes from. It rests, however, on a guess about Near or Far Eastern origins, not on proof. Tablet weaving was known in the North well before the Viking Age. Yet the particular materials and construction of these bands are scarcely attested outside Birka, so it remains open whether we are looking at imports, local work from imported materials, or both. Accounts differ on this.
A written frame comes from Ibn Fadlan, who describes a Rus funeral on the Volga in 921/922: the dead man wears a brocade caftan and lies on a couch of Byzantine brocade. That shows what Rus on the Volga could own. It says nothing about any particular grave at Birka, and Ibn Fadlan reports what he saw and understood as an outsider.
Valsgärde near Uppsala is often mentioned in surveys. The boat-grave cemetery was used from the 6th to the 11th century, stretching from the Vendel Period into the Viking Age. The silk becomes tangible in three 10th-century graves, Valsgärde 10, 12 and 15: silver-thread embroidery on silk, partly on samite, a sturdy twill. The pieces apparently served as garment trim; one from Grave 15 is described as a collar, others as cuffs. This goes back to Lise Bender Jørgensen's 1992 survey, which I know only through two summaries. I know of no analysis of origin. Byzantine fashion is suggested as an influence; an origin "far to the east", as is sometimes claimed, cannot be derived from this.
The Gokstad ship is more interesting for the China question. In 2013 Vedeler suggested that gold-wrapped silk threads found there might come from further east, possibly China, and announced she would investigate. I have not been able to find a result. It is exactly the sort of lead that would deserve a headline if confirmed, and until then it remains a research question.
Silk was not simply lying around on the open market. Byzantium strictly regulated sales to foreigners; according to Vedeler a foreign trader could buy silk worth ten nomismata, at a time when a horse cost twelve. The Rus treaty with Byzantium of 944 likewise limits the amount of silk merchants could take out. Persia also controlled production and sale. An unspectacular conclusion follows: most of the silk reaching the North was probably of medium or lower quality, Vedeler judges. The finest stayed with emperors, churches and embassies.
On the route there is reasoned conjecture rather than proof. Vedeler considers the Dnieper and Volga the main arteries but does not rule out a path through central Europe. Individual pieces could also have been looted in the West: one Oseberg fragment with a cross very probably comes from an Irish church, Vedeler says, though it may have been sewn locally. Overall Vedeler reckons with trade, plunder, gifts and diplomacy side by side. Anyone speaking of "the silk trade" should bear in mind that a single scrap from a grave rarely reveals which of these paths it took.
On the Caspian, the Rus touched the network not only as customers but also with weapons. The tradition records a small attack on Abaskun in the reign of Hasan ibn Zaid (864–884) and another with 16 ships in 909/910. Best known is the expedition al-Masʿūdī places after 912/913: 500 ships with 100 men each, free passage from the Khazar ruler in return for half the loot, months of plundering the southern shore, and on the way home destruction at the hands of the Khazars' Muslim guard, the Burtas and the Volga Bulgars. He gives 30,000 dead.
These figures are storytelling numbers. Al-Masʿūdī wrote about three decades later from a great distance and was no eyewitness; 50,000 men on the Volga exceed any plausible logistics. Ibn Miskawaih is more sober on the capture of Bardaʿa in Arran in 943: the Rus hold the town for months and are finally worn down by disease. Ingvar's expedition also headed in this direction; Icelandic annals date its end to 1041. Whether such ventures ever brought back silk as loot is possible, but I know of no direct evidence.
Swedish runestones of the 11th century mention a distant land that writers on the Silk Road like to call "the land of silk". The best-known instance is the Gripsholm stone, one of the Ingvar runestones:
Tola had this stone raised after her son Harald, Ingvar's brother. They went manfully far for gold and in the east gave to the eagle; they died in the south in Serkland.Gripsholm runestone, Sö 179, c. 1040; own translation from the normalised Old Norse text ("Þæiʀ fōru drængila fiarri at gulli ok austarla ærni gāfu, dōu sunnarla ą̄ Særklandi")
"Giving to the eagle" is poetic language for killing enemies and leaving them to the birds. And these men expressly went for gold; the stone says nothing about silk. Four derivations of the name Serkland are discussed: from the Saracens, meaning Muslims; from Latin sericum, silk; from the Khazar fortress of Sarkel; and from Old Norse serkr, a shirt or gown, hence "land of the gown-wearers". Philologists have not settled the matter, though the Serkir are usually identified with the Saracens. The name first meant the area south of the Caspian and later other Islamic lands too. "Land of silk" is therefore one possibility among several and cannot serve as proof that the North knew about the silk routes.
In the woman's grave Bj 515 at Birka, dated to about 850, a silver ring with a violet stone lay beside a pair of scissors under the right oval brooch. In 2015 a team led by the biophysicist Sebastian Wärmländer examined it by scanning electron microscope: 94.5 percent silver, not gilded as the museum catalogue had it, and the supposed amethyst turned out to be coloured soda-lime glass, itself an exotic material at the time. The researchers read the early Kufic inscription as "il-la-lah", "for Allah" or "to Allah"; as an alternative they offered a reading along the lines of "inshallah", and they conceded that the exact meaning would probably stay open. A Princeton University project page also considers "except God" possible.
From the still-visible file marks Wärmländer concluded that the ring had passed through few hands, and he even raised the idea that the woman came from the Islamic world. That is a thought, not a finding. Her skeleton had decayed, so there are no isotope or DNA data. She lay in a wooden coffin with jewellery and oval brooches, the familiar pieces of Scandinavian dress. That argues against a Muslim burial custom rather than for one, yet tells us little about her personal convictions. The ring proves that an object from the cultural sphere of the Caliphate reached Birka. It says nothing about the faith of its wearer.
A second story must be kept separate. In 2017 news went round the world that the textile scholar Annika Larsson of Uppsala University had recognised the names "Allah" and "Ali" in bands from Viking Age graves. The art historian Stephennie Mulder publicly objected: the earliest examples of square Kufic date only from the 11th century, and the style of Larsson's reconstruction drawing belongs to the 15th, some 500 years after the band from Birka. The drawing also extends the pattern beyond the evidence, although the band has finished edges along both long sides. Larsson replied that she meant not a wider band but a mental cutting up and mirroring of the shapes. Mulder's verdict: there is no Arabic on the band at all. I know of no peer-reviewed publication of the reading, so the claim has no solid standing in research. This does not affect the ring, which is an entirely different object.
The bronze figure from Helgö, 8.4 centimetres tall, is now in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. The museum dates it to the late 5th or early 6th century and considers the Swat Valley in present-day Pakistan its most likely origin; other accounts also mention Kashmir. It was found in 1956 during the excavations Wilhelm Holmqvist had begun in 1954. Some accounts give 1954 as the find year, but the museum and the excavation report point to 1956. Helgö also yielded an Irish crozier and a Coptic ladle.
When the figure reached Helgö, nobody knows. The museum cautiously says in the Vendel or Viking Age. The scholar Brent Nongbri has gone back to the find circumstances: it lay in an indistinct layer outside a building, and the occupation layers were thin and mixed. Its arrival date therefore cannot be cleanly derived from the find. A strap around the neck and arm suggests someone wore it. Nongbri doubts the older idea that a metalworker prized it for its casting, because the workshop lay about 150 to 200 metres away.
What the find tells us: an object from northern India came to Lake Mälaren, possibly centuries before the first Viking voyages and presumably through many stages. What it does not tell us: that northern travellers saw India, or that anyone on Helgö was a Buddhist.
Were the Vikings really on the Silk Road? On the western edge of that web, yes: Rus traded and fought on the Caspian, and according to one Arabic source their goods reached Baghdad. A continuous journey to China is not attested.
Where did the silk in the Oseberg ship come from? According to Marianne Vedeler chiefly from the Persian and Central Asian sphere and from Byzantium, with a few pieces perhaps from China. The attribution rests on technique and pattern.
Was northern silk looted or bought? Probably both, along with gifts. Vedeler thinks most of it was more probably bought in the East than looted from the British Isles; a single piece rarely reveals which applies.
What did Vikings take east in exchange? Ibn Khurradadhbih names beaver pelts, black fox pelts and swords. Other sources and modern research add wax, honey and enslaved people.
What does Serkland mean? That is not finally settled. The usual identification is with the Saracens, alongside sericum, Sarkel and serkr.
Vikings in the East · The Varangian route · Viking trade · Birka · The Oseberg ship · Ibn Fadlan · The Ingvar runestones · The silver hoards · The Rus treaties · Viking clothing
The Vikings in the East – Varangians, the Rus & Byzantium · The Varangian route · Viking Trade · The silver hoards · Birka – the trading hub.
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