Viking Slave Trade
Nordic raiding and the thrall economy
Scandinavian raiding from the eighth to eleventh centuries was in large part a slaving enterprise run by Norse polities. Captives seized across the British Isles, Ireland, and the Slavic east fed a thrall economy at home and export markets abroad.
Damage
Raid-and-trade slavery moved captives across Northern and Eastern European circuits.
Lives lost
Tens to hundreds of thousands trafficked over centuries (incomplete tallies)
Record Points
- Thralls formed the base of Norse society, doing agricultural and domestic labor as legal property of Scandinavian households.
- Raids on Ireland, Britain, and the Slavic lands were organized to capture people for sale as much as for plunder.
- Eastern river routes and western ports under Norse control moved captives as Scandinavian commercial cargo.
- Dublin under Norse control operated as a major slave-trading hub for the Irish Sea region.
- Iceland's settlement genetics reflect large numbers of enslaved women taken from the British Isles by Norse settlers.
Perpetrator(s)
Victims
Enslaved Slavic and Celtic peoples