(no subject)

[pauamma]

https://twitter.com/greenleejw/status/1206606000456896512

And now I wonder: did gold and silver also start as in-kind currencies before getting formalized into coins and standard weights?

Comments

[chalcopyrite]

The Vikings had “hacksilver,” which was literally silver jewelry, ornaments, cups, whatever, cut up and used by weight. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

(I mean, it’s still assigning value to the metal, but it has to have value to be used as payment, so…?)

[pauamma]

Yes, if it was before the Vikings started using coins. If it was after, it hints at the subsistence of an earlier state where they used gold and silver as in-kind payment only, but may not be in itself hard evidence for the existence of a prior system. (I'm not sure what qualifies as hard evidence to historians, but that's another debate.)

[chalcopyrite]

::squints at memory:: I think coins were included in some of the hacksilver finds -- cut up, because they were used the same way, by weight, not by face value.

[pauamma]

*nod* Thanks for the elaboration.

[sami]

When Vikings started using coins, initially they were coins they got from the English. When they started minting their own coins, they still put English monarchs on them for a while.

No-one seems to be sure entirely why. Like, did they make their molds from English coins or even use English molds, or did they just think that was How Coins Worked?

[cuillere]

I'm pretty sure they did! And even when they were formalized into coins and standard weights, the weights could be checked by anyone, because what was valuable was the material itself! if you did have 70% of a coin, that would have a value of 70% of the coin. On the opposite, today if you have more than 50% of a bill, its value is still the same as the whole bill.

[dancesofthelight]

In the West at least, if they did it was so long ago that it's not really recoverable. Silver and gold coins were part of the cash supply of the Roman Empire and in the Byzantine/medieval variant it endured into well, medieval times as such. The use of metal as currency tends to be connected much moreso to strong states than to weak ones.