What was the price of a Viking sword at the time? How about expressing a price then in some unit of measure we can grasp today? I have looked on the ol’ net but haven’t found any good guesses. Previous post discussed one indicator that I couldn’t process.

Hurstwic website describes one sword that had a reported value.   Chapter 13 of Laxdæla saga says a sword given to Höskuldur by King Hákon was worth a half mark of gold.

Hurstwic says that is equal to 16 milk cows.

At two ounces of silver for one cow that would be 32 ounces of silver.

At 8 ounces of silver to an ounce of gold, that would be 4 ounces of gold.

Working the math another way, a mark is 8, whether gold or silver. So half a mark of gold is 4 ounces. At 8 ounces of silver to an ounce of gold, 4 ounces of gold equals 32 ounces of silver.

See my previous Estimate of price of silver and gold in Viking Age.

So, this one data point indicates a sword nice enough to be a gift from a king, in others words a relatively nice one, had a value of 16 milk cows, or 32 ounces of silver, or 4 ounces of gold.

With my guess / estimate of an ounce of silver being worth somewhere around $550 an ounce, that would put that sword at

• 32 ounces of silver
• x $550 / ounce silver
• = ~ $17,600

Keep in mind that wild guess contains a huge string of assumptions. On the other hand, that is the only shot at putting a price tag on Viking sword I have seen.

How well could you be armed today for price of a nice sword then?

Here is a thought exercise to put that high end weapon of the Viking Age into context of far richer, high-tech 21st century. Let’s look at Bass Pro Shop website and see how many weapons one could buy for $17,600.

We could express the equivalent price of $17,600 in terms of transportation, housing, or food. I think the better comparison is to adjust the rough-guess for price of a weapon back then to state of the art weapons today. So, back to the Bass Pro Shop listings.

I pulled prices for some rifles and shotguns from their site. Picked the most expensive item listed, some nicer weapons at the point there is a bunch of items in a narrow price range, some representative average priced items, and two of the more economical weapons.

Here is how many of different weapons you could buy today for the price of a gift-quality sword back in the Viking Age: