section_path: Trade
section_name: Trade
paragraph_text: Trade
  
  Some of the most important trading ports founded by the Norse during the period include both existing and former cities such as Aarhus (Denmark), Ribe (Denmark), Hedeby (Germany), Vineta (Pomerania), Truso (Poland), Bjørgvin (Norway), Kaupang (Norway), Skiringssal (Norway), Birka (Sweden), Bordeaux (France), York (England), Dublin (Ireland) and Aldeigjuborg (Russia).
  
  As Viking ships carried cargo and trade goods throughout the Baltic area and beyond, their active trading centres grew into thriving towns. One important centre of trade was at Hedeby. Close to the border with the Franks, it was effectively a crossroads between the cultures, until its eventual destruction by the Norwegians in an internecine dispute around 1050. York was the centre of the kingdom of Jórvík from 866, and discoveries there (e.g., a silk cap, a counterfeit of a coin from Samarkand, and a cowry shell from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf) suggest that Scandinavian trade connections in the 10th century reached beyond Byzantium. However, those items could also have been Byzantine imports, and there is no reason to assume that the Varangians travelled significantly beyond Byzantium and the Caspian Sea.
  
  Viking trade routes extended far beyond Scandinavia. As Scandinavian ships penetrated southward on the rivers of Eastern Europe to acquire financial capital, they encountered the nomad peoples of the steppes, leading to the beginning of a trading system that connected Russia and Scandinavia with the northern routes of the Eurasian Silk Road network. During the Middle Ages, the Volga trade route connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The international trade routes that enabled the passage of goods by ship from Scandinavia to the east were mentioned in early medieval literature as the Austrrvegr passing through the eastern Baltic region. Ships headed to the river Volga sailed through the Gulf of Finland, while those destined for Byzantium might take one of several routes through present-day north-eastern Poland or the Baltic lands.
  
  The Vikings catered to the demand for slaves in the southern slave markets in the Orthodox Eastern Roman Empire and the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate, both of whom desired slaves of a religion different from their own. The trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks connected Scandinavia, Kievan Rus' and the Eastern Roman Empire. The Rus' were of note as merchants who supplied honey, wax, and slaves to Constantinople. The Varangians served as mercenaries of Russian princes, then of the Swedish princes who founded and ruled Norse kingdoms in Eastern Europe such as at Kiev and Novgorod.