ME600 – DENMARK, Harald Bluetooth Gormson (Danish: Harald Blåtand) (c.940-986), Silver Brakteater

ME600 – DENMARK, Harald Bluetooth Gormson (Danish: Harald Blåtand) (c.940-986), Silver Brakteater (Bracteate) Penning, 0.31g., (struck c.940 - c.960), Hedeby mint (now Schleswig-Holstein, Germany) or Jelling mint (near Vejle, Jutland, Denmark), design copied with degradation from the Carolingian deniers in the name of Charlemagne from the mint of Dorestad (near the modern Wijk-bij-Duurstede. Utrecht province, the Netherlands), with an axe below, the letters TAT in the centre are the last vestiges of the legend DORSTAT, (Hauberg 1), exquisitely toned, a practically as struck specimen on a full round flan, extremely rare. $2450 REDUCED $1995 SOLD

Provenance:
Ex William J. Conte Collection of Viking Coins, Baldwin's Auctions, #13, 28 May 1997, lot 1422.

Harold Bluetooth, the grandfather of Cnut (the Great), converted to Christianity in 956 and famously had his parents Gorm the Old and Thyra posthumously converted to his new faith and reburied in a new church he had built next to their traditional pagan burial mounds at the royal site of Jelling. The achievements of Harald and Gorm are recorded on two elaborately carved runestones at the site. Jelling, is one possible mint for this coinage, the other being the large commercial town of Hedeby further down the Jutland peninsula.