Faith and Fortune: Ritually Folded Coins in Medieval Norway (original) (raw)
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An edited version of a paper given at the Akademydei in Leeuwarden in 2021, this article analyses coin finds in the Netherlands from the period 751-900. It shows that there are distinct developments over time, and clear differences between the various regions of Carolingian Frisia. This is particularly apparent from the differences between the occurrence of single finds and coin hoards. The combined evidence suggests that the presence of Scandinavians played a significant part in this.
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Eagerly venerated and able to perform miracles, medieval relics and religious artefacts in the Latin West would occasionally also be subject to sensorial and tactile devotional practices. Evidenced by various reports, artefacts were grasped and stroked, kissed and tasted, carried and pulled. For medieval Norway, however, there is very little documentary and/or physical evidence of such sensorial engagements with religious artefacts. Nevertheless, two church inventories for the parish churches in Hålandsdalen (1306) and Ylmheim (1321/1323) offer a small glimpse of what may have been a semi-domestic devotional practice related to sculpture, namely the embellishing of wooden sculptures in parish churches with silver bracelets and silver brooches. According to wills from England and the continent, jewellery was a common material gift donated to parishes by women. Such a practice is likely to have been taking place in Norway, too, yet the lack of coherent source material complicate the matter. Nonetheless, using a few preserved objects and archaeological finds as well as medieval sermons, homiletic texts and events recorded in Old Norse sagas, this article teases out more of the significances of the silver items mentioned in the two inventories by exploring the interfaces between devotional acts, decorative needs, and possibly gendered experiences, as well as object itineraries between the domestic and the religious space.
In medieval Britain coins found use beyond the monetary exchange purpose for which they were originally produced. Through the study of surviving coin finds and supporting documentary and archaeological evidence, this paper introduces the principal non-currency methods to which coins were put and explores a number of questions: why were coins used as the adaptive edium and for what purpose? What can we deduce from the type, denomination and condition of the adapted coins? What do the various practices outlined below tell us about the relationships between people and money, display and piety, and religion and ritual?
In: Graham-Campbell J., Sindbæk, S. & Wiliams, G. (eds.) Silver economies, monetisation and society in Scandinavia, AD 800-1100, pp. 259-280 , 2011
The aim of this paper is to discuss the monetary use and function of the Anglo-Scandinavian coinages, especially the Sigtuna coinage. In the early days of numismatic research their status among other Viking-age and early medieval coinages was not clearly understood, nor was it clear how they should be classified. Today, their status as Scandinavian imitations of English coins – minted in Viking towns such as Sigtuna and Lund – has been recognized. Their numismatic classification has recently been accomplished by meticulous die-studies, but the question of how they were used as means of payment remains unresolved. It is suggested that the coinages did not necessarily have a nominal value, but an officially sanctioned exchange-value, which could only be reckoned and valued by weight and not by number. In such a monetary system, which had both elements of a coin-based and a bullion-based economy, weighing was probably the only way in which to settle the exchange-value. The archaeological evidence from the Sigtuna mint seems to suggest that the Sigtuna coins were weighed with oblate spheroid weights. These weights follow the Islamic mitqal standard. It is also argued that at some stage in the bullion economy, coined silver was preferred to hack-silver in transactions. Because of that there might have existed a similar situation in the transactional sphere in the Viking Age, as later during the Middle Ages, whereby different qualities of silver were recognized and valued according to different exchange-rates. This change in the transactional sphere had probably been prompted by the arrival of Western European silver coins to Scandinavia at the turn of the first millennium AD.Finally, the Anglo-Scandinavian coinages probably did not have any monetary value outside the strongholds in which they were minted. They were intended for use only by people visiting the town and using its market.
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