A rare silver coin bearing the name of King Olaf Haraldsson, known as Olaf the Holy, has been discovered in a Viking Age hoard found near the village of Rena in Norway. The coin was minted approximately between 1024 and 1028, at the end of the Viking Age. As Live Science reports, fewer than 20 such coins from the reign of Olaf Haraldsson have been found so far.
Coin from the Mørstad hoard
The find is part of the Mørstad hoard, discovered in April. At the time, it was described as the largest hoard ever found in Norway and was estimated to contain nearly 3,000 silver coins. Further research showed that the hoard contains between 5,500 and more than 6,000 coins.
Museum researcher Anne Skogsfjord, who is cataloguing the coins, initially mistook the find for an Anglo-Saxon penny. After reading the inscription ONLAF R+ NORMANORV, she established that the coin was minted in Norway during Olaf’s reign.
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Portrait of the king and crosses
The obverse of the coin depicts a portrait of Olaf the Holy and a cross, while a cross is also minted on the reverse. Svein Gullbekk, a coin expert at the University of Oslo, called it a large-scale example of a coin associated with Christianization. According to him, Olaf used coinage to establish the new faith and present himself as a Christian king of European standing.
Olaf Haraldsson ruled Norway from 1015 to 1028 and was proclaimed a Christian saint after his death in 1030. He is considered one of Norway’s first Christian kings and the first Norwegian king to mint coins in his own name.
The coin was in circulation for approximately 20–25 years before being placed in the hoard. It has small cuts on both sides: at the time, this was how people checked whether a coin was made entirely of silver. Gullbekk suggested that Olaf determined the appearance of the coins and may have been present during their minting.
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