14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators with the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, in Norway, have determined in a new study that Vikings were significantly more oriented towards the East, or the Orient, than previously assumed.
The work uncovered deep commercial ties between Vikings and Persia or the Byzantine Empire, mostly centered around the silk trade.
Associate professor Marianne Vedeler and her team will publish details of the study in a book entitled Silk for the Vikings, to be published later in the winter. Before this work, most historians believed that Nordic peoples obtained their silk by looting churches in England and Ireland.
However, fragments of fabric uncovered in the famous Oseberg ship and certain dig sites near Stockholm corroborate the idea that Vikings bought silk in bulk from the Orient, rather than rely on pillages to obtain it.
Analysis of excavated silk fragments may also indicate that Vikings had commercial ties with China. Vedeler and her team will travel to the Far East in an attempt to determine whether or not the Nordic people ever reached those shores, AlphaGalileo reports.