I was watching on the history channel about the Vikings this weekend. I was wondering if they minted any coins? Also, what about the Mongolians and Huns? Both had large empires.
Yes,the Vikings did issue coins.They were struck for Denmark,England,& the Hiberno-Norse Kingdom of Dublin. Aidan.
And of course after the Vikings raped and pillaged,they settled and even took over in a lot of places.Eventually,they even became royalty and finally one was king,I'm not sure if Canute was the first Viking king of England but I believe his father was named Svein Forkbeard and his mother was Gunhilde.That's about as "Viking" as you can get. Once again,I present to you Canute the Great (aka Cnut) ,King of England,Sweden and Norway,not to mention Overlord of Shleswig and Pomerania.It's good to be the king.
Oh yeah,before Canute there was this guy,a Viking's Viking..Coin of Eric Bloodaxe, first type, with an Anglo-Saxon style design. Read about more Viking coins here:http://www.viking.no/e/heritage/en-money.htm
I have little doubt that the value of Norwegian coins were based on the cost of a tankard of ale or mead.
They must have also had currency or electronic forms of payment as well, according to Capital One's 'What's in YOUR wallet?!' tv commercials. Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-)
I looked up Ancient Celtic on Ebay and was disappointed to find a lot roman, few English and other European coins. Thanks to Mikjo0 for the link, I have a little better understanding of the Viking coins. I guess I had some idea that the early Viking would have made their own coins like the Greeks city-states did. After all they where very accomplished crafter. Instead it looks like the Viking acquired coins ether through trade or pillaging (MMmm swag). Does this sound like a correct conclusion? I was thinking how nice it would be for my first ancient coin to be Viking but I decided to go roman. More documentation, easier to find and cheap. Lol… funny that my roman Follis was made in London sometime in the early 300AD. Before I stared doing research on what coin I should buy I didn’t realize that parts of Britain was Rome territory ether…..who know!
cobra, I'm not sure you conclusion is correct.The Vikings did mint their own coins,sometimes with runic characters and designs,and in the case of Eric,a sword unique to the vikings. Here it is.
