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Danegeld and trade were intimately connected—same ships, same people, different modes of interaction depending on circumstances and opportunity.
The Merchants-Warriors:
Many Vikings were simultaneously traders and raiders—bringing goods to trade, willing to use violence if trade wasn’t profitable, shifting between modes based on assessment of situation. The duality made them formidable economic actors—trading from position of strength, able to enforce terms through threatened violence, extracting favorable deals because refusal meant raid.
The Trading Monopolies:
Control of trade routes became protection racket—paying for safe passage, buying monopoly rights, ensuring competitors were raided while payers were protected. The payments were trade costs but backed by threat—stop paying and lose access to trade or face violence against trading vessels.
The Slaving:
Captured slaves were both plunder and trade goods—taken in raids, sold at markets, generating wealth through combination of violence (capture) and commerce (sale). The slave trade was enormous economic enterprise linking raiding, trading, far-reaching networks that moved captives from peripheries to urban markets.
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