Silver, 0.95 grams; 21.01 mm. 2nd Reign, circa 952 – 954 A.D. A Viking penny contemporaneously cut to weigh one eighth of an Ortugar. Obverse: ERIC REX, in two lines between sword facing right. Reverse: [ ] ADVLF MON, moneyer Radulf, small cross pattee in centre with an interesting pellet in each angle. Recorded with the Medieval Coin Corpus at the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University: EMC 2007.0059. S1030; N 550. Very fine/good very fine. Standard coin books at £7,500 in VF in Coins of England 2008. Found Lincolnshire. Only four other coins recorded for the monarch Eric Bloodaxe at the Early Medieval Coin Corpus; only one other coin recorded with the four pellets, and only one other coin of this moneyer, but not of the Sword Type. SOLD

Hack silver was used as payment. The Vikings often weighed the silver for payment so when a little more silver was needed, it was simply hacked from something else made of silver- a coin or a piece of jewellery. This suggests the silver was more valuable than the value of the coin or jewellery itself, this coin has been cut down to weigh one eighth of an Ortugar. Ortugar and Ore where the weight systems used by the Vikings, primarily to weigh silver.

Eric Bloodaxe was the last Viking king of York (947-48 A.D. and 952-54 A.D.), and a rather colourful figure. The son of Harald Finehair, king of Norway, Eric earned his nickname by murdering several of his brothers in order to secure his succession to the Norwegian throne. According to later sagas, Eric was unpopular because of the cruelty of his wife Gunnhild. The people gave their support instead to Eric's younger brother, Håkon the Good, who had been brought up in England. Eric fled to England, and became a client king, ruling the kingdom of York on behalf of the Wessex dynasty. However, he ruled in York only intermittently, spending some years raiding in Scotland and around the Irish Sea. He was also driven out of York at least twice, and following his death at the battle of Stainmore in 954 A.D. His early coins had a small cross on each side, like contemporary Anglo-Saxon coins. This later coin shows a Viking sword. The sword was the symbol of St Peter, and had earlier been used on Viking coins struck at York in the name of St Peter.