Coins weighing 20 kg each, copper coins that led to the execution of a finance minister, and three different “riksdaler” in circulation simultaneously. The evolution of Swedish currency has taken both steady and faltering steps forward. Join us on a journey from barter trade to today’s kronor.
In a society without money and coins, barter was and is a solution. One item or service is exchanged for another. Certain things tend to be considered to be more valuable than others. A long time ago, cows were one of these. In ancient Greece cows were used to pay fines. In Småland farmers in the 1500s had to pay fines with oxen following the Dacke War, a rebellion against the king. Metals were another valuable item.
About 2,000 years ago the first coins came to Sweden from other countries. They continued to come for a thousand years: Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Arabian…
Throughout this time period, Swedes weighed the coins and treated them like any other silver or gold pieces. If smaller pieces were needed to make a payment, the coins were simply cut up.
The mark has been money in such countries as Germany, Finland and Sweden. Originally the mark was a unit of weight, about 210 grams, which was used to weigh precious metals. A coin was made of something valuable such as gold, silver, copper or iron.
Towards the end of his reign, King Erik XIV became paranoid and suspected several people close to him of treason. In 1567 he had an inexplicable outbreak of rage and ordered what were called the Sture Murders, by which several noblemen were executed.
In the old days, it was rare to have good coins that contained a high proportion of precious metal. A coin with a good reputation could therefore become an international brand. In Joachimsthal (St. Joachim’s Valley) in Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic, there was a mine containing high-quality silver.
Kings and queens often ordered a special kind of coin to be struck in connection with major events such as their own coronation. These coins contain more precious metal than ordinary coins do, are issued in a limited edition, and are really intended to be saved not spent.
Before there were banks, paper money differed from a coin made of gold or silver because the material itself, the paper, had no value at all. Instead, the paper notes were promises that there was money somewhere else – coins that the paper note’s owner could collect with the aid of the note.
In the 1600s some coins were big and heavy and could weigh up to 20 kilos. As a result, the institution that later became Sweden’s central bank began to issue what were called transportsedlar (transport notes). The first one was issued in 1701.
After Karl XII’s (Charles XII’s) war at the beginning of the 1700s, the State was short of money. In order to afford the wars and other expenses, the State ordered small copper coins to be minted.
Until 1776 there were several different kinds of money in Sweden. Mark, öre and penningar were used in parallel with riksdaler and daler – which were not the same thing. Nor were ten riksdaler in banknotes the same thing as ten riksdaler in coins. Daler could also be made of either copper or silver.
Many countries that had linked their currency to silver switched to gold in the 1860s. Sweden, Norway and Denmark decided to introduce a common Scandinavian currency at the same time as this switchover. The three countries’ coins were already flowing fairly freely across their borders, and much of the small change being used in Skåne was Danish.
The original idea, that coins and notes should be worth the same amount in metal as was stated on them, disappeared almost immediately. However, the idea that money should at least correspond to a certain amount of precious metal, which would preferably exist in the State’s vaults, survived into the 1900s.