Coin of Maine

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The Maine coin (English: Maine Penny ) is a Norwegian penny from the reign of Olaf Kyrre . It was found in 1957 during archaeological excavations at an old Indian settlement at Naskeag Point on Penobscot Bay in the US state of Maine .

The Maine State Museum sees the coin as "the only pre-Columbian Nordic find in the United States that is generally recognized as genuine". The American Numismatic Society , on the other hand, comes to the conclusion that "the Maine coin should be regarded as a forgery" based on the "unreliable documentation of the recovery and indications that point to an intentional manipulation and concealment of the find situation". The anthropologist Edmund Snow Carpenter also regards a pre-Columbian origin of the coin in North America as unproven.

The coin was struck between 1065 and 1080 AD, more than 50 years after the last of the Vinland journeys reported by Nordic sagas and chroniclers. This suggests that contacts between Norway and America still existed later. The Goddard excavation site at Naskeag Point, Maine, is dated from 1180 to 1235 and is believed to have been inhabited by the area's Native American people.

Since the coin is said to have been found on an excavation site on the coast, one could assume that the Vikings came here and lost or exchanged the coin here. Most researchers who consider the find to be genuine, however, have a different theory. Since the coin was the only Northern European find from this large excavation, it is assumed that the coin was brought to this then large trading center by the Indian population, especially since there were also other finds from the far north of America, such as tools that the People of the Dorset culture . In this respect, it is believed that the coin found its way to Maine on trade routes from Labrador or Newfoundland (particularly L'Anse aux Meadows ).

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Wilson Hoge: Current Cabinet Activities . In: ANS Magazine . Vol 4, No. 1 . American Numismatic Society ( online ). Online ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ansmagazine.com
  2. Edmund Snow Carpenter: Norse penny ( memento of November 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) 2003, accessed on June 29, 2013 (PDF; 230 kB, English).

Coordinates: 44 ° 14 ′  N , 68 ° 33 ′  W