1 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Medieval Archaeology on 24th November 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00766097.2017.1374096 Monetary Practices in Early Medieval Western Scandinavia (5th–10th Centuries AD ) Dagfinn Skre 1 A social approach to monetisation shifts the attention from the classic money media – gold and silver – to the dissemination of two social practices: valuing and paying. When these two monetary practices first became widespread in western Scandinavia during the gold rich migration period (in the 5th to 6th centuries AD), they were not introduced in the sphere of trade, but instead were features of traditional or customary payments, such as weregeld (atonements for murder or offences against the person) or marriage dowries. By the Viking Age, in the late 8th to 10th centuries AD, despite flourishing commodity production, precious metals were used as payment in trade solely in towns. Even in towns, this commercial use seems to have been adopted late, and was employed only occasionally. This paper reviews the changing approaches to money and monetisation, and draws attention to the potential for regarding monetisation as the spread of a set of social practices. INTRODUCTION In the last 25 years, the monetisation of Scandinavia has been discussed mostly in connection with the native national coinages of the late 10th to 13th centuries, with the urban coinages of the 8th to 9th centuries as a prelude. 2 Archaeologists tend to include the cut-up silver of the 9th to 10th centuries among what they define as money media. 3 Until the late 1980s, the rich migration-period (c AD 400–550) evidence of gold bullion and coinage, mostly found in hoards, was included in monetary studies. 4 Around 1990, scholarly interest in Scandinavian early medieval gold and silver shifted from the objects’ monetary use, to their ritual and symbolic significance. 5 Since then, precious metal hoards have been analysed predominantly as ritual depositions, and objects have been studied most frequently in terms of their cultural symbolism. Only Viking-Age silver has continued to receive study from a monetary perspective. 6 Although the currently dominant ritualistic and symbolic research perspectives have been rewarding, I find it timely to propose a revitalised monetary perspective on precious- metal bullion and coinage from the period c AD 400–1000. This paper draws on evidence from Scandinavia, and mainly its western parts, but this dataset invites a broader rethink of monetary perspectives in medieval studies. The Scandinavian practice until the end of this period of depositing precious metals and weighing implements in graves and hoards, as well as the ample evidence from southern Scandinavian market sites and towns, provides good evidence for monetisation studies. Also, Scandinavia’s position in Europe’s northern periphery, resulting in fluctuations in the availability of precious metals, has prompted a larger volume than elsewhere in Europe of payment practices that do not involve precious- metal bullion or coinage. Thus, Scandinavia is an especially useful laboratory for investigating more broadly the issues of monetisation in early complex societies.