Copenhagen, Denmark-biology A new study of Viking coins from the Damhus Hoard, a hoard of 226 pennies found in Denmark near the site of the Viking city of Ribe in 2018, shows that they contain silver recycled from Islamic coins, the report said. The 1,000-year-old coins, known as pennies, have a face on one side believed to represent the Norse god Wodan or Odin, and a stag on the reverse. Thomas Birch of the National Museum of Denmark said each coin would be enough to buy wine, bread or simple tools. Analysis of the coins also shows that when the dies used to stamp them wore out, they were replaced with a similar dye, Birch said. At least 30 dies were used to produce these coins, and possibly hundreds of thousands like them at the same mint in Ribe. Twenty-five coins were also examined with X-ray fluorescence to analyze their chemical composition. Trace elements found in the silver suggest that more than half of the metal in the coins came from Islamic silver coins called dirhams. It is believed that Islamic coins were melted outside Scandinavia, and transported to Ribe in the form of ingots. “If these coins are being minted in the thousands, that’s a huge amount of Islamic silver,” Birch said. Read the open source academic paper on the research here archaeometry. To read more about what the coins can reveal about the Ancient Norse, visit “Vikings’ hoardings”
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