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10.More information
The international activities of the Vikings : raids or trade ?The Viking Age presents interesting observations on the interrelationships between international trade, overseas raids and socio-economic development. Denmark, for instance, sees much trade and little raiding at the period of Charlemagne, followed in the ninth century by the well-known Viking raids on Western Europe which are perceived to reflect social tensions, in the main connected with dwindling incomes from trade. From the mid tenth century onwards such negative correlations between phases of, respectively, trade and raiding disappear. The later Danish societies relied less on the international trade than on local exchanges ; and the economics in tone with the higher degree of political integration was geared towards internal development of the state. Towns, for instance, were serving as provincial centres rather than as ports of trade.