Birka

• 1. Introduction

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  Birka disappeared so thoroughly that no one today knows what the Vikings who lived there actually called it. The settlement stood on Björkö, an island in Lake Mälaren about 30 kilometers west of modern Stockholm, in what is now the municipality of Ekerö. It was founded around AD 750, thrived for more than two centuries, and was abandoned around AD 975. Estimates put its population somewhere between 500 and 1000 people. Since 1993, Birka and the nearby estate of Hovgården have held UNESCO World Heritage status. Both sites are recognized as evidence of the elaborate trading networks of Viking Scandinavia. Everything known about the town comes from two medieval German clergymen, who never fully agreed on its size or shape. The rest comes from archaeologists who spent over a century digging up its graves.

  What did the merchants of Birka actually buy and sell? Why did foreign bishops care so much about its churches and kings? And why does a silver ring bearing an Arabic word still spark academic arguments nearly a thousand years after the town went quiet?

• 2. Goods From Every Direction

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  The Dnieper Trade Route linked Birka to Ladoga and Novgorod, and from there onward to the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. Merchants there most likely dealt in furs, iron goods, and craft products, trading them for materials brought from across Europe and Western Asia. Furs came from the Sami people, the Finns, and trappers in Northwestern Russia, as well as from hunters closer to home. The pelts traded included bear, fox, marten, otter, and beaver, alongside combs carved from reindeer antler, walrus tusks, amber, and honey.

  Graves at Birka have yielded glass and metalware, along with pottery from the Rhineland. Among the textiles found there were Chinese silk and Byzantine embroidery worked with extremely fine gold thread, plus brocades trimmed with gold passementerie. From the ninth century onward, coins minted at Haithabu in Northern Germany began to appear alongside others from elsewhere in Scandinavia. Yet most of the coins recovered at Birka are silver dirhams from the Middle East, while English and Carolingian coins turn up only rarely.

  Birka is also the site of the first known Christian congregation in Sweden, founded in 831 by Saint Ansgar.

• 3. Ansgar's Mission

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  In 829, Swedish ambassadors reached the court of Emperor Louis the Pious, reporting that many of their people wished to embrace Christianity. Their king reportedly favored the idea and said he would let God's priests live among his people, provided the emperor sent suitable preachers. Ansgar took on the mission, tasked with finding out whether the Swedes truly wanted to accept the new faith.

  Ansgar had already worked as a missionary in Denmark before setting out for Sweden. According to Rimbert, pirates attacked the party partway through the journey, seizing their ships and everything they carried. The travelers barely escaped to land on foot and finished the journey walking. They crossed several seas by boat wherever that was possible, until they finally reached the Swedish port of Birka.

  When Ansgar traveled to Birka again from Germany around 852, the journey went more easily, taking him nearly twenty days by ship. King Björn met Ansgar in Birka on his first visit in 829, and King Olof received him during that second trip in 852.

  Herigar, the prefect of Birka, built a church on his own land and served God with great devotion, according to Rimbert's account. That church stood close to the field where regional tings were held. Herigar once asked his servants to carry him there directly from an assembly in progress.

  The exiled king Anund Uppsale plotted with Danish raiders to plunder Birka. He reportedly noted that a church already stood there, alongside many Christians who worshipped Christ. When the Danes attacked, the townspeople fled to a nearby fortress. Herigar warned them that their wives and sons would be led away as captives if they surrendered. The Danes eventually left, sparing Birka from destruction that time.

  During Ansgar's 852 visit, King Olof said he could not approve the mission on his own authority. He needed to consult the gods by casting lots and gauge the will of his people first. At the assembly held in Birka, a herald announced the mission's purpose to the crowd, and the people agreed unanimously to accept Ansgar's proposal. Olof still withheld his full consent, since he wanted to check the mood of another regional assembly before giving a final answer.

  The bigger ting Olof referred to was likely the Ting of all Swedes. It was held every year in Uppsala at the end of February, during the festival called Disting.

• 4. Adam Of Bremen's Birka

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  Adam of Bremen finished the first version of his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum in 1075. He kept revising it with additional notes, called scholia, until his death in the 1080s. Unlike Rimbert, Adam never set foot in Birka himself, relying instead on informants such as the German bishop Adalvard the Younger.

  Adam placed Birka in the middle of Sweden, not far from the temple at Uppsala, which Swedes held in the highest regard. He described the port as blocked by hidden rocks along more than 100 stadions, about 18 kilometers. That made it treacherous for anyone unfamiliar with the waters. Ships from Danes, Norwegians, Slavs, Sembrians, and other Scythian peoples gathered there every year for trade. It was one of the best-sheltered anchorages in Sweden. By sea, the route from Skåne to Sigtuna or Birka took about five days. The same trip by land, through Skara and Telgas, took nearly a month.

  In the 1060s, the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen consecrated six bishops for Sweden. They were Adalvard the Elder, Adalvard the Younger, Tadicum, Acilinum, Simeon, and a monk named John. John was assigned to the islands of the Baltic Sea. Adam notes that John was based in Birka, preparing for missionary work among the many pagans who traveled there from around the Baltic coasts.

  According to Adam, Archbishop Unni of Hamburg died in Birka in 936, and his tomb became a landmark tied to Saint Ansgar's old mission there.

  One later addition to the Gesta, called Scholia 138, describes Birka as reduced to loneliness. Its ruins were so faint that Unni's tomb could no longer be found. Bishop Adalvard the Younger had passed through the area on his own travels. The note may have been written to warn later pilgrims not to bother searching.

  Coin dating suggests Birka died out as a settlement around 960, though historians still disagree about the cause. Not long afterward, the nearby settlement of Sigtuna took over as the main trading center in the Mälaren area. Historian Neil Kent has speculated that Birka may have fallen to an enemy assault. Around the same time, the island of Gotland was rising as a better-positioned hub for Rus-Byzantine trade. The Varangian trade stations in Russia suffered a serious decline at roughly the same time. The whole regional network, not just Birka, was clearly shifting.

• 5. Rediscovering Björkö

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  In 1450, the "Chronicle of Sweden" first claimed that the island of Björkö was the site of Birka. National Antiquarian Johan Hadorph carried out the first excavation attempts there in the late 17th century, searching for proof of the old town.

  Hjalmar Stolpe, trained as an entomologist, arrived on Björkö in the late 19th century to study fossilized insects preserved in amber. He found unusually large amounts of amber, which was odd since amber does not normally turn up around Lake Mälaren. That discovery led him to suspect the island had once been a major trading post. Stolpe went on to excavate the site between 1871 and 1895, spending two decades uncovering a major Viking Age settlement.

  Archaeologists eventually recovered around 4800 textile fragments from Birka's chamber graves, most of them made from wool and flax. In 1938, textile scholar Agnes Geijer published the most detailed analysis of the collection, though her study covered only around 5% of the total fragments. Geijer found the quality ranged from coarse cloth to fine, high-thread-count fabric requiring complicated weaving techniques. She also identified a three-end twill textile found nowhere else in Northern Europe. She theorized that some fragments, given their use of gold and silver wire alongside silk, may have originated as far away as China.

  The archaeological remains on Björkö span about 7 hectares in the island's northern section, including a hill fort known as Borgen, meaning "The Fortress." An adjacent island holds the remains of Hovgården, an estate that once housed the king's retinue during visits. Roughly 700 people are thought to have lived at Birka when the settlement was at its largest.

  The most recent large-scale excavation ran from 1990 to 1995. It focused on a patch of dark earth believed to mark the site of the main settlement. On the 15th of June 2022, archaeologists from Stockholm University's Archaeological Research Laboratory announced a new discovery in Lake Mälaren. It was a Viking Age shipyard, the first find of its kind.

• 6. The Allah Controversies

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  In 2017, textile researcher Annika Larsson announced in an Uppsala University press release that she had found Arabic words woven into a textile from Birka. The words, she said, read "Allah" and "Ali." Larsson argued the discovery showed some Vikings could have been influenced by Islam, and the claim drew wide media coverage.

  Stephennie Mulder, a professor of Islamic art at the University of Texas at Austin, challenged the reading in a Twitter thread. Based on the epigraphy, Mulder argued the pattern was simply geometric rather than Arabic script. The textile dated to the 10th century, but the square Kufic style Larsson identified did not appear until the 15th century. Textile specialist Carolyn Priest-Dorman added that Larsson's proposed extension to Geijer's original drawing was impossible. Finished edges called selvages would show cut weft threads if the band had actually been narrowed. Larsson's own drawings were speculative rather than evidence-based, since no expansion of that kind had actually been documented.

  Following the backlash, Uppsala University added a note to its press release acknowledging that Larsson's research was preliminary, alongside a comment addressing the criticism. In 2020, Larsson published a new article repeating her original claim about Arabic writing on the textile. She did not respond to any of the objections raised against it.

  A silver ring recovered by Hjalmar Stolpe from a 9th-century woman's grave at Birka became known as the "Allah ring." The ring is made of high-quality silver alloy set with a pink-violet oval glass. It carries a pseudo-Kufic inscription resembling the word Allah. It was the only ring found at Birka with this kind of inscription, even though other rings turned up during the same digs.

  Arabic historical linguist Marijn van Putten argued the inscription was pseudo-Kufic and carried no real meaning in Arabic. Other analysts, however, treated it as solid proof of direct Viking contact with Islamic civilization. Mulder drew on van Putten's work to argue the ring, like the textile, had been misread. She acknowledged, though, that the Vikings likely valued Arabic script itself as a mark of social status.

  That status theory suggests the ring's owner may have gained it through trade or travel bringing direct contact with the Islamic world.

• 7. What The Graves Reveal

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  The Birka dragonhead is a 45-millimeter decorative object cast from a tin alloy, likely made using a soapstone mold. Researchers Sven Kalmring and Lena Holmquist point to casting burs on the object as evidence for that method. Similar dragon-shaped molds have also been found elsewhere at Birka. Scholar Anne-Sofie Gräslund and others believe these dragonheads, which turn up in similar form elsewhere around the Baltic, likely functioned as dress pins.

  Excavators found 10 small silver crosses in Birka's graves, evidence of some residents converting to Christianity. Alongside them were 27 pendants shaped like Thor's hammer, dated to around the 10th century, showing that traditional Norse belief and Christianity coexisted at Birka. Similar copper alloy brooches decorated with animal motifs turned up in several graves around Birka, typically linked to female burials and to the era's womenswear.

  One dirham coin recovered from a Birka grave carries Arabic script and no imagery. That style dates it to sometime after the 7th century. Other markings on the coin identify the mint, along with the names of a caliph and an Amir. Together they trace the coin's origin to al-Shah, in what is now Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Its inscription translates as a declaration that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is God's messenger.

  Over 3,000 grave sites have been found at Birka, ranging from cremations to burials in coffins and chamber graves. Skeletal analysis and gender-linked grave goods show that most of the identified burials at Birka belonged to women. Scholar Nancy L. Wicker suggests this imbalance appears because grave goods linked to women are easier to identify. Male graves without such goods are harder to spot. Many graves also held coins, glass, and textiles imported from as far as the Middle East and Eastern Asia. According to Wicker, these goods were either brought in as luxury items or belonged to foreign individuals buried at Birka.

  Grave Bj 463 held the skeleton of a girl who died in the mid-10th century. She was buried with a round brooch, glass beads, and a needle case befitting a high-status woman. Her teeth show she was 5 to 6 years old at death. Yet analysis of her diet matched that of adult male warriors, not a typical child's diet. Scholar Marianne Hem Eriksen calls this combination highly unusual, since children at Birka were rarely buried with grave goods that mark status at all.