W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

372 The Coins of Eiirope
graduated currency under Eric of Pomerania (1396-1440) ;
and 4, the ultimate concentration of the kingdom by the
successive loss of Norway, Lauenburg, and Schleswig-Holstein
between 1814 and 1864.
The alliances of the Danes with German houses and
consequent gain of territory outside their true boundaries,
culminating in their share in the Thirty Years' War, where
their king, Christian IV. (i 588-1648), was a prominent actor,
may be judged to have permanently crippled their power at
home, as it brought with it disaster and disgrace in the field.
We are not immediately concerned with these political
questions beyond the influential bearing which they had on
the monetary production of the kingdom and it is ; certainly
worth notice that a considerable portion of the Danish coinage
from the ninth or tenth century carries the impress of
that irresistible impulse to seek places of settlement or
objects of conquest at a distance, \vhich distinguished the
Swedes from the epoch when adventurers from that inhospitable
region enrolled themselves in the Varangian guard
at Constantinople, to the days of the wild exploits and
ruinous policy of Charles XII. (1697-1718).
We have to recognise in the Danish numismatic records
two powerful factors then :
i, a chronic tendency to
aggression or conquest 2, a lengthened experience of internal
disunion (1232-1376), followed by the revolt of the
;
Swedish house of Vasa against Christian II. The former
accounts for a wide variety of coins, of which the country of
origin, in the case of the pennies of Canute I. of Denmark
and Northumbria, is sometimes disputed while the civil
;
commotions from the reign of Eric Ploupennig to that of
Valdemar IV. naturally gave rise to a multifarious and
obscure currency of base alloy, of which new examples are
from time to time brought to light. Students and critics
have probably no richer field for speculation than this, as, in
common with the Swedish and Norwegian, Danish soil
formed the common ground during generations for the
money of so many nationalities, with which the inhabitants
were interconnected, as well as for a century's yield of all