Measuring trust

A relatively swift transition from a silver bullion economy to a coin-based monetary market- exchange system in Norway in the eleventh century CE coincided with both the new emergence of a sustained state-scale society and a widely accepted conversion to Christianity in the twilight of the Viking Age. However, what is less well-understood are the ideological dynamics of the transition itself. In this paper we propose that there was an empirically visible stage during the eleventh century during which traders slowly came to accept the legitimacy of coinage, and by association many aspects of a larger imagined community, far beyond the close-at-hand authority of local chiefdoms and in support of a wholly new, continental- style monarchy. We present as a case study the clear material evidence for a gradually growing trust and confidence in new coinage issued under the expanding authority of the king by way of an identifiable reduction in the practice of pecking coins, as in testing its precious metal quality, indicating increased trust in the authority of the issuer, Harald Hardrada. We propose that this entailed a process of symbolic entrainment, with the coins being seen ultimately as valuable in their own right, apart from value based solely on their precious metal content alone.