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Silk in Viking Age burials has captured the interest of archaeologists and textile researchers since the first fragments were identified during the late 19th century. The delicate and exotic fabric connected Scandinavia to long-distance trade routes and provided a fundamentally different addition and unexpected golden lining to the cloth culture that was dominated by wool and linen fabrics. The archaeological material is highly fragmentary with few preserved larger pieces, and is dominated by fabric cut into long strips with little consideration for the pattern. At times, this has led to a simplified view in which the silk has been reduced to being purely ornamental and an expression of high social standing, wealth, and long-distance trade connections. The study is a reflection on the intangible values that surrounded silk in the silk-producing regions and the extent to which these ideas accompanied the fabric into Scandinavian society. Using the two sites of Birka and Valsgärde as a starting point, I examine the Scandinavian context of silks, their possible origin, and the trade routes of silk to Scandinavia. Although silk is present in various contexts, my focus is on the martial sphere of society, in which the need to express affiliation, status, and rank was fundamental, and clothing offered an opportunity to do so. Subsequently, I discuss some of the martial connotations of silk in its regions of origin and explore how these ideas may have been materialised in the silk itself. By exploring the biographies of the silk, and the ideas, cultures, and people that shaped them on their path to the north, I argue that part of the silk material in Viking-Age Scandinavia represents an intellectual import of the Byzantine, and Arabic, practice of warriors wearing silk.