Penning, Sigtuna, Olof Skötkonung, circa 995–1000
The mintmaster was the man who directed the work in the coin workshop. The English mintmaster known as Godwine is named on coins from Sigtuna, Denmark and Norway. He can be viewed as a travelling expert from England who was quickly hired in all three countries. Godwine, and at least three other English mintmasters, helped to start coinage in Sigtuna.
The quality of the Sigtuna coins is different from the English ones. The pictures are uneven, and the inscriptions contain lots of errors. It’s likely that Godwine and his colleagues taught a few craftsmen in Sigtuna to make punches and dies (tools used to mint coins), and to copy Latin letters to a degree. The Scandinavian craftsmen who worked on the coin dies were probably unable to read Latin – maybe they were more familiar with the runic script.
)Object number: 100005_KMK
<
2 of 11
>