comparison data, Viking Era

What is a cow worth today? That provides a framework for valuation in ancient times.

Momma Cow and calf. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Comparing prices and values over a long period of time is tough to do.

For example, how can we compare the cost to live for a year in the Viking Age to today? How can we understand the cost of a sword that cost X ounces of silver?

This involves not only converting the value of silver then to now but also adjusting for the very low standard of living then (you hope all your family survives the winter and hope you live long enough to see a grandchild from each of your children) to the high standard of living with long life expectancy today.

One way is to look at the value of something back then and the value of something today.

This post looks at the value of a cow today in order to provide some frame of reference for ancient times.

What is a cow worth today?

An article from Farm and Ranch Guide back in 2012 gives some good info: What’s a cow worth? Determining the value of a cow important to success. (Update:  Link no longer works. Article is not visible on that website. Several articles on the ‘net refer to the article but don’t have the text. I can’t find the original article.)

Article provides education on how to price cows and calculate their production. Lots of brand new information for me and the detail would be good training for someone learning to run a farm.

Here is some info relevant to my blog:

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Viking Era

What was the cost to hire an entire Viking army?

In the Viking Age, if you saw this from a distance, you were about to have the worst day of your life. Of course these guys are friendly since their shields are still in place. Courtesy of Adobe Stock.

A large contingent of trained, well armed warriors could hire themselves out as mercenaries for a nice wage during the Viking age.  Vikings at War by Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike gives us a specific example.

Edmund Ringson reached a good deal with Prince Jaroslav in Novgorod back in 1016.

Jaroslav needed to defend himself from his brother, who had already killed off a few other brothers.

Edmund, having been exiled, had 600 warriors with him.

Let’s look at their one year deal.

Prince Jaroslav would provide a great hall for the company, which obviously means provide housing for all the troops.

He would also provide all the food they wanted, with the description in the book of “the best provisions.”

So up to this point the Prince essentially agreed to provide all the living costs for a year since near-subsistence farmers spent essentially all their time providing themselves and their family food and shelter.

The serious part of the wages were one ounce of silver per man per month. Ship captains would get an extra half ounce per month. I will add my wild guess that Edmund got a multiple of the base; I will assume 10 ounces of silver per month.

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Viking Era

Distribution of wealth at the end of the Viking Age

Icelandic farm recreation. Stretch you mind and picture a farm in Norway or Sweden. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

How concentrated was wealth at the end of the Viking Age?

In lecture 34 of his course The Vikings, from The Great Courses Prof Kenneth Harl tries to frame up the dispersal of wealth in Scandinavia at the end of the Viking Age.

He makes the following estimates of the concentration of land ownership in the late 12th and earliest 13th century. This would reflect the increased trade and improved agriculture that occurred as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark fully embraced Christianity and had well-developed territorial monarchies.

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Viking Era

Guesses on how much loot the Vikings hauled out of Europe – #2

If this was your view from the shore during the 900s or early 1000s, you were about to have a really bad day. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Here are some more guesses for how much gold and silver the Vikings extracted from Frankia and England during their plundering raids. Keep in mind these are official payments and don’t include what the Vikings were able to take from monasteries or the local populace. Also doesn’t include any guess at the amount of food they took as they devoured the fields and storehouses.

The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings by Lars Brownworth says the payouts from the Franks to the Vikings totaled 120,000 pound of silver.

About a third of all the coins minted in France made their way to Viking hoards in Scandinavia.

Mr. Brownworth reports another wave of attacks by Norwegian Vikings starting in 991 was remarkable lucrative. Here are a few fun, summarized highlights from pages 228 through 232.

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Viking Era

Guesses on how much loot the Vikings hauled out of Europe – #1

“Viking Wall” by hans s is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

I’ve read a number of guesses on how much gold and silver the Vikings looted on various excursions around England and continental Europe. A few posts will describe those estimates.

The first recap is explained by Professor Kenneth Harl in his course The Vikings, from The Great Courses. (By the way, with minimal effort you can find all their courses at huge discounts from the list price.)

In lecture 26, Prof. Harl touches briefly on the guesses for silver taken out of Europe by the Vikings.

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Roman Empire

Roman currency debasement overlaid with cause of death for Roman Emperors.

The Money Project, from The Visual Capitalist, has a great visualization comparing the debasement of Roman currency with the cause of death & duration of reign for Roman Emperors.

Keep in mind that correlation is not causation.  The drop in average tenure and increased likelihood of being assassinated is not caused by debasing the currency alone. Instead the increased turmoil, civil war, deteriorating economy, and external pressures all combined in a massive mix of factors that led to both.

Visual Capitalist uses powerful visual content to help investors and business professionals understand the world. Focusing on topics such as markets, technology, energy, and the global economy, Visual Capitalist is currently one of the fastest growing online publishers in North America.

Having described all that, here is the visualization “Roman Currency Debasement Plotted vs. Cause of Death for Roman Emperors“:

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Roman Empire

Contrast on the ability of the East and West parts of the Roman Empire to maintain a strong army and economic prosperity

Map of Roman Empire at its peak is courtesy of Adobe Stock.

At the conclusion of The Complete Roman Army, Adrian Goldsworthy provides a very brief summary of the role the army at the end of the western Roman Empire with a contrast to how the army helped sustain the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire for another thousand years.

The Roman Empire in the west was gone by the fifth century while the Byzantine Empire lasted another millennium. By the way that provides a link between discussion on my blog of the Roman Empire and the Viking era.

Mr. Goldsworthy says at the end in the west its military was still stronger than its opponents. In spite of that strength, a combination of factors contributed to the end:

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Roman Empire

Roman logistics

“Roman soldiers attacking with spears” by Dale Gillard is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The Complete Roman Army, by Adrian Goldsworthy, provides some background on logistics.

Logistics

The Romans had an equation on how far an animal could go before it would eat its weight in food. This would provide a way to calculate how much feed would be necessary to move supplies the distance the army planned to travel.

The options for transport over land were mules and draft oxen. Mules were more flexible, could march as fast as the infantry, and had more mobility. Oxen had more power, but were slower, and would typically need roads or at least tracks for travel.

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Roman Empire

The price paid for losing out to a Roman siege

Big wooden catapult at old Tighina fortress in Moldavia. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The Complete Roman Army, by Adrian Goldsworthy, explains the rule of war on sieges during the Roman reign.

The cost of resisting a siege

On page 197 the book says there was a general convention which eventually developed into a law on how defenders would be treated if Romans surrounded a city or town and laid on a siege.

Up to the moment a Roman battering ram made contact with the wall the defenders could surrender on favorable terms.

After the first swing of the ram all bets were off.

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Roman Empire

Pay stub for one particular Roman soldier

“My 2 ‘new’ Roman silver denarii from the rule of Marcus Aurelius, 1850 years ago” by J Wynia is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The Complete Roman Army, by Adrian Goldsworthy, provides a pay sheet for one soldier as an illustration of the pay structure for the Roman army.

Pay sheet for one individual soldier

To illustrate the limited documents that survive, Adrian Goldsworthy quotes one document for a soldier in Egypt during 81 A.D. Comment in the book indicates this is one of the best examples of the few documents which are actually known.

Consider what little amount of documentation survives when there would have been three pay sheets for each of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers every year for hundreds of years. Of that massive amount of paperwork relatively few documents remain.

This particular soldiers is assumed to be an auxiliary since his gross pay is equal to 187.5 denarii instead of the 250 denarii for a Legionnaire.

Since this is a quotation of an ancient document I feel free to quote it either because the original document itself in public domain, or in the alternative under fair use.

Information from pay sheet on page 95:

 

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