ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a regional case: an area located inland, right in the middle of the Scandinavian Peninsula, nowadays in Sweden but belonging to Norway between late twelfth and mid-seventeenth century, namely province of Jämtland. In Jämtland no large-scale metal detector surveys have yet been carried out, and almost no Viking-period settlement sites have hitherto been investigated. It is thus not possible today to study to what extent there are lost coins, hacksilver and small weights lying in the ground on old farms or at possible marketplaces in Jämtland. A few male graves stick out from the rest, being characterised by exclusive and expensive grave goods. The Jämtland case demonstrates that even in a rural area far from large trading centres of Viking period, there might have been many people who were active in buying and selling goods, performing transactions with many partners and using silver as a medium of exchange – not dissimilar to what urban people did.
