DANISH EAST ANGLIA

Viking Kingdoms - Danish East Anglia (c.895-902)

Click on image to enlarge.

GF6 - Viking Kingdoms, Danish East Anglia, St. Eadmund Memorial Coinage (c.885 - c.915), Silver Penny, 1.31g., moneyer Adalbert, +SCEAIDMVNE around a large A with a trefoil of pellets below, rev., small cross within a circle, +ADALBBRT M, (N.483; S.960), attractively toned, extremely fine. $1250 SOLD

The trefoil of pellets were most probably stamped into the die after it had already been used to strike coins. This would appear to be a common practice for this series and most probably enabled the moneyer to distinguish issues for some otherwise unknown fiscal purpose.

This coinage was struck by the Danish settlers of East Anglia in memory of the canonized martyr Eadmund, the last English King of East Anglia, who was brutally murdered in A.D. 869 by the invading Viking army. In its own way this coinage reflects the rapid adoption of 'civilized' Anglo-Saxon habits, like Christianity and coinage, by the invaders following their arrival in England.

Eadmund was the last king of the independent Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in A.D. 870: “[the Vikings] went across Mercia into East Anglia, and took winter-quarters at Thetford; and in that year St. Edmund the king fought against them, and the Danish took the victory, and killed the king and conquered all that land…” The Chronicle goes on to name the Viking leaders who slew the king as Ivar and Ubba. A later medieval source records that he was tied to a tree and filled with arrows. This act took place at a town called Beadoriceswyrthe, where he is believed to be buried and where a cult grew up around the canonized king and which is still today known as Bury St. Edmunds.