existed at this time. But as no coin of Eadgar, of Æthelred II., of Canute, nor of his successors has been found at Björkö, it seems to me possible to draw but one conclusion that the city of Björkö had been already destroyed at this time, when the great influx of AngloSaxon and German coins commenced. Therefore it is impossible to ascribe any of these Björkö coins to the epoch of King Canute the Great. All of them must belong to a period before A.D. 1000. "But some of these coins have been preserved, and from such a coin some mint-master [moneyer] of Canute has copied his reverse." II. The other part of Dr. Hildebrand's paper (the first in his order) is connected with what may fairly be called the beginnings of a native Scandinavian coinage. The pieces with which it deals are the coins (Nos. 5—15) of Tab. I. of Schive's Norges Mynter i Middelalderen. Schive rightly attributes his Nos. 1-4 to Eric Blódöx, son of Harold Haarfagr. But as these coins were struck in England, they are in no sense a beginning of the native Scandinavian coinage. Those which follow Schive attributes as follows: No. 5, Olaf Tryggvesson (Norway), 995-1000. Nos. 6, 8, Jarl Erik Hakonssön (Norway), 1000-1015. Nos. 11, 12, Svend Tvæskegg (Denmark), 1000-1014. Nos. 15-20, Olaf the Saint (Norway), 1015-1028 + 1030. All the coins 5-14 are copied from the same type of Ethelred II. (Hildebrand, Type C), and therefore there is nothing in the types of the earliest Scandinavian coins to No. 15 is derived show the priority of one over another. from Ethelred II., Type D. No. 20 copies a rare type (G) of Ethelred. The rest are all derived from types of Cnut. Concerning the attributions of coins 15-20, there can, in fact, be little dispute. But Schive's attribution of 5-14 is by no means above question. One of the latest writers upon this subject, Prof. K. Ersler, of Copenhagen, comes to the conclusion that the earliest Scandinavian coins are those of Svend Tvaeskegg and Olaf Tryggvesson; later come those struck by Olaf Skötkonung. Svend was in England more or less constantly in Viking expeditions between 982-988. In 994 he and Olaf Tryggvesson, in conjunction, made another Viking raid here; they fell upon London, and harried a large part of the surrounding country. The English paid a heavy Danegeld, Olaf left this country to obtain the crown of Norway, and Svend left England in peace for the moment. Svend was, however, again in England in 1003-1004, and again in 1013. On the last occasion he was acknowledged as king, but left the country 1014. His son Cnut was, as we know, acknowledged on the death of Æthelred in 1016. Now as the coin attributed to Svend in the above series and that attributed to Olaf both have the same moneyer's name, Godwine, on the reverse, it has been natural to suppose that the coins were made at this time, or were made in Scandinavia by a moneyer whom they carried away with them in 994. Olaf Skötkonung may have taken the type of his coin from Svend, who was his step-father. Svend married Olaf Skötkonung's mother in A.D. 999. There would not be much difficulty in these attributions were there any continuous Norwegian series of coins from Olaf Tryggvesson downwards. Schive, indeed, does give such a continuous series, ascribing coins to Jarl Erik Hakonssön (1000-1015) and to Hakon Erikssön (1015), after which we come to St. Olaf, about whose having struck coins there can be no question. But Dr. Hildebrand shows, I think conclusively, that the coins ascribed by Schive to Erik could not really have been struck by him. One of these coins (the last) has unintelligible letters. The Stockholm Cabinet has two examples similar to Schive's, with intelligible legend; one showing the end of an inscription . . . A REX ZVENO [Olaf]a rex Svenovum. This shows that all these coins were not struck by Erik but by Olaf Skötkonung. The other two coins engraved by Schive and attributed to Erik, read on the obverse HENRICVS COM[es], and on the reverse HROSA ME FEC[it]. Comes might very well stand for Jarl, but it is impossible that an English or a Scandinavian moneyer should have written Henricus for Erik. over, Hrosae, the name of the moneyer, is not either an English or a Scandinavian name (of this date), though it is a German one. In fact, there can be little doubt that the coin in question was struck for some German Count Henry of the eleventh century. Dr. Hildebrand admits the attribution of Schive's coins to Hakon Erikssön (1015), as, of course, those to St. Olaf, whose reign also began in 1015. 6 More This leaves such a large gap after the death of Olaf Tryggvesson before the earliest known Norwegian coin that it becomes doubtful, or more than doubtful, whether the attribution of coins to Olaf Tryggvesson can be sustained; and in fact Dr. Hildebrand attributes the coin we have been discussing to St. Olaf. 6 Dr. Hildebrand refers to Förstemann's Alt deutsche Namenbuch. In the same way, as there is no intermediate coinage between the one coin of Svend and the beginning of a regular Danish coinage under Cnut, it is natural to attribute the former piece to the very end of Svend's reign, i.e. to a time just after the last visit to England in 1013 -1014. We then have to correct Schive's list of the issuers of the earliest native Scandinavian coins to the following: Sweden. Olaf Skötkonung, 1000-1015 (in Norway). Norway. Hakon Erikssön, 1015. Nos. 13, 14, of Schive. Denmark. Svend Tvseskegg, 1000-1014. Nos. 11, 12, of Schive. The weight system of these coins is not uniform, that of Olaf Skötkonung following the Swedish, and not the English system. Earl Hakon's coin does the same, and therefore appears to be influenced by the coin of Olaf Skötkonung, who ruled in Norway between A.D. 1000 and 1015. The relationship between Svend and Olaf the Swede dates from the marriage of the former to Olaf's mother in A.D. 999; and (it seems to me) that either may have copied his coin from the other-though the money of neither (we may assume) dates before about A.D. 1013 -1014. St. Olaf must have copied his coin with the name of Godwine from the similar coin of Svend. These, then, are the results of Dr. Hildebrand's paper. It may be interesting, in connection with them, to give a glance at the early history of Scandinavian money in Europe, so far as it can now be reconstructed. I have already said, in the first volume of the Catalogue of English VOL. VII. THIRD SERIES. H H Coins, that the remarkable Cuerdale find seems on one hand to represent the earliest Scandinavian coinage. We know the coins of this find to have been most of them struck before the end of the ninth century, and from their peculiar types-half English and half Frankishthey seem to deserve, more than any other, the name of Viking coinage; for the most important half of the Viking period-what might indeed be called, par excellence, the "Viking Age "-lies chiefly in the ninth century and in the earliest years of the tenth. Many of the names of moneyers of the Cuerdale coins are of Frankish form, and others may be Danish. This series includes the coins of the earliest Dano-Northumbrian kings (Guðred) Cnut and Siefred, coins which have a character of their own, quite distinct from that either of the contemporary English kings or the later Danish or Norse kings of Northumbria. We have, on the other hand, the Björkö coins, which have been discussed above, if we admit that they did pass current as coins. I am myself by no means prepared either to admit, or categorically deny this. We have seen that the originals from which these types were copied were probably carried to Sweden in the first half of the ninth century; the copies themselves might belong to the same time, but more probably to fifty years or even a hundred years later they must have been made before A.D. 1000, as Dr. Hildebrand has shown. But, on the other hand, the type of some of them was still known as late as the time of Cnut, so that it seems reasonable to suppose that they were not made so very long before Cnut's days. This would suggest that they were made about the middle of the tenth century. P. 20. |