Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/220

 20,2 REMARKS UPON THE ANTIQUITIES FOUND AT CUERDALE. is known to have carried on a great trade with Russia. Most of these highly interesting and important accounts have been translated from the original Arabian by Professor Rasmussen of Copenhagen, in his valuable treatise De Orientis Commercio cum Russia et Scandinavia medio sevo, (Hafniae, 1825, 4to.) He has also here collected all the numerous accounts in our Icelandic sagas and our northern chronicles relating to the visits of the Norsemen to Russia, and their commercial relations there. Hildebrand in describing the Cufic or oriental coins found in Sweden, says (p. xi.) " that along with them are generally found silver ornaments, large rings for the neck, or the head, of wires twisted together, smaller rings for the arm, partly of wires twisted together, partly made of a single thin piece of silver, the ends of which form a beautiful knot ; bracelets, some- times with patterns, which are made with a punch, ingots, both complete and broken, lumps of silver, mostly hammered and rolled together for convenience of transport, and in order that they might be used as money." This description would exactly apply to the silver ornaments found at Cuerdale. " There can be no doubt," continues Hildebrand, " that those ornaments, ingots, and lumps of silver have accompanied the coins from rich Asia, where they could much more easily obtain silver than in the northern parts of Europe, even if we suppose that the little silver which is to be found in the mines in the Scandinavian mountains was known and used at the time in question. This view is confirmed by the circumstance that similar ornaments are still used in some parts of Asia." As those ornaments are not found in the west of Europe, except along with Cufic coins, and not at all in the interior or southern parts of Em'ope, and as similar silver objects are said by Fnihn to have been found in Russia with the same coins, 1 regard it as without doubt that Mr. Hawkins has been per- fectly right in giving an oriental origin to at least a great part of the silver ornaments found at Cuerdale, a view which Hd- debrand also adopts*". It is very natural to suppose that some of them would be smelted and made into other shapes after they had been brought to the British islands by Norse mer- chants or vikings. But the original oriental types seem to have been very much retained. It is worth observing, that they were found along with coins of Norse sea-kings and earls. ••' 1. c. p. xviii.