Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/219

 REMARKS UPON THE ANTKiUlTIES FOUND AT CQERDALE. 201 eastern and northern provinces of the cahfat, there are coins of eighteen dynasties, among which are some of the African and Spanish califs, but they are exceedingly scarce. The coins of the Samarinds form the five-sixth part of the whole. A Swedish numismatist, Mv. Tornberg, wlio is about to give an account of these coins, has been enabled through the numismatic differences which the coins present, to shew that they have been brought from the east to the north through two distinct channels. One class seems to have been brought from the Transoxana of the Bulghars (coins of which dynasty are not uncommon in the Swedish finds) to Russia; then down the river to the Baltic. Another class came from Kho- rasan, across Armenia to the Black Sea, when the Khazars and other people received them, and brought them fm"ther up through Russia to the Baltic^. It was undoubtedly for carrying on this trade that in the old time so many Norsemen frequented the town of Novogo- rod in Russia : it is even said that the town was built by the Norsemen. On the island of Gothland, where sometimes several thousand Cufic coins have been found in one place, and where these coins are most frequently discovered, was another great, and perhaps the greatest, place of trade for northern Europe, Wisby, which afterwards, with Novogorod, formed a considerable part of the Hanse confederation. The numerous Anglo-Saxon, German, and Hungarian coins of the tenth and eleventh centuries, which have been found in Goth- land, shew however that this trade was greatest as long as the connection with the east continued. In the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries Russia began to be disturbed by internal wars and invasions of Moguls, &c., which broke up the connection between the east and the north. The way in which the trade was carried on was after that time by the Black Sea, from the Krimea to Venice and Genoa ; the wares no longer went to the north, whence the Norse merchants so long had brought them to England and Ireland. It is exceedingly remarkable that we have accounts in the works of very old Arabian authors relating to the trade be- tween the north and the east. These writers, who themselves visited the shores of the Baltic, describe the manners of the pagans hving there. They mention trading places in the north, as Slesvig in Denmark, Avhich from other sources also b Cf. Hildebraiul, 1. c. p. ix.