This is a repository copy of Routes and long-distance traffic : the nodal points of Wulfstan's voyage. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/11111/ Book Section: Sindbæk, Søren (2008) Routes and long-distance traffic : the nodal points of Wulfstan's voyage. In: Englert, A., Trakadas, A., Englert, A. and Trakadas, A., (eds.) Wulfstan's Voyage. Maritime Culture of the North . The Viking Ship Museum , Roskilde , pp. 72-78. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. 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ISBN 978-87-85180-56-8 White Rose Research Online [email protected] Routes and long-distance traffi c – the nodal points of Wulfstan’s voyage by Søren M. Sindbæk Wulfstan, author of the sole preserved con- A route is an expression of the fact that temporary description of the th-century exchange between specifi c regions has been southern Baltic littoral, is an enigmatic fi g- ‘routinized’, or made routine. Although a ure. From archaeology we have learned that route may follow a natural geographical cor- the coast he followed was at this time speck- ridor, it is never a self-evident fact of geo- led with trading ports, large and small. Yet graphy, but must be ‘worked out’ as a social not only does Wulfstan’s party call in none of reality and – occurring in a specifi c period – these ports, but his description omits them as a historical process. Th is process can be completely, while supplying consistently ac- called ‘routinization’. curate information on the islands passed Routinized practices are essential to the to the north. Was Wulfstan therefore badly constitution and reproduction of any social informed? To approach an answer it will be institution. As argued by Anthony Giddens, useful to consider more closely the relation- social structures are essentially routines – the ship between the activities he was engaged in medium and outcome of organised action. and his geographical knowledge. Early historic trade and communication is no exception. It was not abstract logic that organised Viking-Age trade and exchange, Routes and ‘routinization’ as it has sometimes appeared in evolutionary models proposed by archaeologists and his- If by ‘route’ we mean the course followed by torians. Instead, it was the motivated acts of any particular journey, there would hardly individual agents that edited practices associ- be any point in trying to defi ne or study the ated with exchange into recognisable social routes of the Viking Age. Chance and ac- structures, recursively constituting travelling cidents, then as now, occasionally brought as routes and exchange as trade. people to move over any stretch of land and sea where physical barriers did not exclude the possibility. As a concept, ‘route’ must ‘Nodal points’ and regional markets be taken in another, more precise sense: as a well-known and frequently-used way be- Routinized exchange implies that the trans- tween specifi c destinations. In this sense of portation of goods takes place recurrently the word, a ’route’ is defi ned not by the in- along specifi c routes. Th is entails that long- cidents of the journey, but by the intention distance exchange is practiced in an organ- and knowledge available to the traveller be- ised form in specifi c localities, where large fore departure. In a pre-literate society such cargoes are loaded or unloaded. Th is prac- knowledge cannot be stored in archives, but tice, the assemblage or breaking down of is created and maintained only if the journey bulk, constitutes what can be called a ‘nodal is taken on a regular basis and is expressed in point.’ Th is concept is defi ned in order to . A term minted by Giddens verbal exchanges; that is, the route is being classify the activities pursued at a particular . performed as a social practice. site, rather than produce a general typology . Giddens : . II. Th e western and central Baltic Sea region of sites. Th ere is nothing to suggest that the remarkably consistent picture emerges from nodal point role was fi xed to one uniform this comparison. Some obvious diff erences type of site in the Viking Age. How long- are conditioned by regional cultural distinc- distance exchange met with other activities tion, by the diff erent chronological limits of could vary in individual cases. Th erefore, this the sites, or by the activities in the particular defi nition is meant to characterise one prac- areas investigated. But relating the number tice among others and not a new locational of fi nds to the size of the investigations and archetype. the excavation methods employed (in par- A generation ago, only a handful of th- ticular the use of sieving), we fi nd the same century sites that could be identifi ed as nodal classes of imports occurring with great fre- points in long-distance trade were known ar- quency, while tools of exchange like coins, chaeologically in Northern Europe; the mod- weights and scales are found in numbers that el examples of these are Hedeby and Birka. are rarely approached in other archaeological Th ey were almost invariably sites that were contexts. also ascribed with such a role in contempo- It is quite a diff erent matter with sites rary written sources. At this stage Wulfstan’s such as Groß Strömkendorf, Dierkow, Rals- account seemed in perfect agreement with wiek, Menzlin, Bardy/Kołobrzeg or Ystad/ the archaeological evidence. Tankbåten. According to publications, im- In recent decades, however, many new ports and tools of exchange are found at sites have been added to this number. On these sites in incomparably low numbers, the southern Baltic coast, sites such as Dier- also when seen in proportion to the volume kow, Menzlin, Ralswiek or Wolin are now of earth excavated, or the methods of retriev- frequently compared to the classic examples. al. However, the structures uncovered give When systematic surveys in the s re- evidence that these sites were by no means vealed scores of Viking-Age harbour sites in unimportant for maritime communication. regions like Gotland, it was even suggested Indeed they may well have acted as region- that “the places we know of from written al markets for trade and exchange. It is not documents or which have been discovered by trade as such that distinguishes “great” from pure chance are only the tip of the iceberg. “small” trading places – but exactly the role We should calculate with a vast number of as nodal points for long-distance exchange. It trading places all around the Baltic coast.” is this role that was absent in the many minor It is this growing archaeological knowledge ports of the Baltic Sea area. that raises a question of Wulfstan’s report: . E.g., Jankuhn . why was the author seemingly ignorant of . Carlsson : . Crafts and raw materials: . Feveile & Jensen ; these sites? Fevejle (ed.) ; Malcolm It may be suggested that there was in- local and imported & Bowsher ; Skre (ed.) deed a critical diff erence between Wulfstan’s . terminal stations and the sites he passed in Th e distribution of crafts adds further to the . Survey in Jankuhn et al. silence. Recently, new results from exten- defi nition of nodal points. It is interesting to . Sindbæk . sive archaeological investigations have been note that refuse from crafts like textile pro- . Wietrzichowski ; Jöns presented from a number of ‘classic’ th-cen- duction, iron working or antler working oc- et al. ; Warnke ; tury nodal points like Ribe, Lundenwic and cur in Groß Strömkendorf, Dierkow or Men- Herrmann ; Herrmann Kaupang. Th ey allow us for the fi rst time to zlin in quantities almost similar to those at ; Schoknecht ; Le- ciejewicz with further compare the archaeological evidence of these Birka, Hedeby, Kaupang and Ribe. Crafts us- references; Strömberg ; sites more specifi cally, and to compare them ing locally-available materials, or using only Strömberg . with earlier investigations such as Hedeby. A materials in small quantities, could be prac- Routes and long-distance traffi c – the nodal points of Wulfstan’s voyage ticed where there was a demand for them – bile, and would occasionally practice at other and apparently there was in many regional sites. But for large-scale production there was markets. a need for a steady supply of raw materials, Remains from large-scale metal casting which could only be secured in the nodal and glass working, on the other hand, are points. Serial production with imported raw closely restricted to the latter sites.