That silver was cast into bars which weighed a mark is rendered highly probable by the fact that three of the silver bars found at Cuerdale weigh respectively 3960, 3954, and 3950 grs. Troy; that is, just the weight of 160 pennies of the reign of Alfred. 160 pennies are two-thirds of a pound of 240 pennies, or in other words a mark.
The practice of running silver into ingots of such a weight may well have arisen from an earlier practice of employing bronze or iron bars of such a weight. It is at all events certain that the mark is native Teutonic and is not borrowed from Rome. That the Kelts at least used bars of iron as money is made not unlikely by a famous passage of Caesar which I shall quote later on. A various reading states that the Britons used iron rods as money (ferreis taleis). Even without this we may reasonably infer from what we have learned of the practice of primitive peoples in dealing with iron or copper, that the Teutons and Kelts must have used these by measure. It is well known that the Swedes used ingots of copper as currency down to comparatively recent times. It is then most likely that the öre or ounce of 410 grs. was the highest original weight unit, just as the unga is in the ancient Irish system. The weight of this öre is of great interest. If we found the Roman pound of 12 ounces in Scandinavia, we should at once say that the öre of 410 grs. was the reduced Roman ounce (432 grs.). But as the native mark evidently got its position before the influence of Rome was felt in the North, we may well consider the öre to be pre-Roman. The reader will remember that I identified the ancient Roman uncia with the small talent of Sicily and Macedonia. The latter weighed 3 ox-units or about 405 grs. I also suggested that it originally represented the value of a slave, and was thus the original highest unit used for gold or silver. I showed on an earlier page (141) that the Norse örtug, the one-third of the öre, was the price of a cow. If three cows were the price of a slave