Damhus-skatten - en foreløbig præsentation af en Ribeudmøntning fra tidlig 800-årene

Resumé

The article presents the main results of the
analysis of the hoard from Damhus. The
hoard
consists of 262 coins exclusively. It was
found during a metal detecting campaign
just outside Ribe, southwestern Jutland, and
subsequently excavated during the autumn
of 2018. Only two types of coins were represented
in the hoard; both types belong
to Malmer’s so-called combination group 4
(KG 4). The vast majority of the coins, i. e. 258,
belong to the type face/forward-looking deer,
while the last four coins belong to the type
ship/forward-looking deer.
An analysis of the dies used on the hoard’s
coins as well as the already known c. fourteen
coins showed that thirty-six dies were used
for the reverse design and fifty-seven for the
obverse design. Presumably, hundreds of
thousands of these coins were struck over a
long period of time, allowing minor variations
of the main type to evolve.
It is particularly surprising that the type
ship/forward-looking deer appears to have
been a halvpenning (halfpence).
The coins are seen as an immediate continuation
of the frequently found type Wodan/
Monster sceattas, which were minted by the
king until the beginning of the 9th century in
Ribe and possibly also in the other large emporia
of the 8th century, i. e. Åhus in Scania
and Groß Strömkendorff in Mecklenburg.