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“Allah”. The clothes are typically Viking, so were probably not traded or plundered.

Archaeologists suggest they suggest that Viking age burial customs were influenced
by Islam and the idea of an eternal life in paradise after death. A silver ring from a
female tomb at Birka has "for Allah" inscribed on the stone. DNA analysis of above
Viking graves has shown that some of them contain people who originated in Persia.
Across Scandinavia in many Viking sites archaeologists have found more than
100,000 Islamic silver coins known as dirhams.
The Vale of York Viking hoard, discovered near Harrogate in 2007, contained
objects from Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, North Africa, Russia,

Afghanistan, Ireland, Scandinavia and continental Europe. The hoard consists of 617
silver coins and 65 other items ( including ornaments, ingots and precious metals)
hidden in a gilt silver vessel lined with gold (variously identified as a cup, bowl, or
pot), decorated with vines, leaves, and six running animals (two lions and four beasts
of prey), and buried in a lead vessel. Archaeologists say the cup it could be an
ecclesiastical vessel from northern France either plundered or given as tribute. It is so
similar to another vessel, the Halton Moor cup, now in the British Museum, that

archaeologists say both must be from the same Carolingian workshop and were
produced in the mid-ninth century. Also found were a rare gold arm ring (possibly
from Ireland) and fragments of cut metal called “hack- silver”, sometimes used
as currency). The coins bear Islamic, Christian, and pre-Christian Norse
pagan symbols, thought to reflect the beliefs of newly Christianized Vikings."
The hoard had been protected by lead sheeting of some kind, suggesting a careful
burial. The coins date from the late 9th and early 10th centuries. Historians suggest it
may have been buried by a wealthy Viking leader during a period of turmoil in the

Viking kingdom of Northumbria. In 927 Athelstan (924 – 939), the Anglo-Saxon king
of a unified England, invaded Northumbria. More turmoil followed Athelstan’s death
in 939. Eric Bloodaxe, the Viking king of Jorvik (York) regained Northumbria until his
expulsion and murder in 954. Archaeologists say the hoard illustrates the breadth of
the Vikings' travels and trade connections: the finds relate to three belief systems,
Islam, Christianity and the worship of Thor, and to seven different languages.