The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1959, Blaðsíða 14

12
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Winter 1959
committed to the earth in olden days
have so far come to light The only real
.silver hoard of which we may boast
-is the one that will now be briefly
described.
On 20th of June 1930 some men
from Arnessysla were busy extending
the boundaries of the churchyard at
Gaulverjabasr. In the course of their
work they took earthfill from a small
hillock in the tun south of the church
yard. While engaged in this digging
the spade of one of the diggers turned
up a horde of silver coins. He at once
cried out to the man next to him,
“Look here, John!" They began to
pick up the coins of which they found
a great number, the majority being
about the same size in diameter as the
Icelandic tvleyringur (about the size
of a Canadian twenty five cent piece)
but thinner. The coins lay about a
metre below the level of the sward.
The Curator of the National Museum
was now notified and he proceeded to
explore the site. It appeared to him
that this hoard had been placed in a
round wooden utensil, now so rotted
as to foe scarcely discernible, and
buried near a small out-building,
which probably had been a common
smithy or one used for the smelting
of iron. No more coins were found,
but those already discovered were re-
moved to the National museum.
A closer examination revealed that
the coins were 360 in number, but
that not all were whole. Their com-
bined weight is 495.81 gr. or a little
over a pound by English weight. They
appear to be made of good silver, but
some are much worn and others bent
as if bitten or pitted with sharp points
—both common methods of testing the
purity of silver in olden days. One
picks up coin after coin at random
and attempts to read the inscriptions
on those that shine the brightest. On
one side can be read TDELRzED REX
ANGLORUM, and on the other side
GODRIC, T.LFRIC, zEDELSTAN,
SUMERLIDA or names of others who
minted the coins together with the
name of the city in which they worked,
London, York or some other English
city. There can be no doubt that these
are English coins from the reign of
the English king Tthelred dating from
or about the year 1000. On still other
coins that are less well preserved we
read the name OTTO REX and con-
jecture that this may have been Otto
of Saxony who, Heimskringla tells us,
waged war with Harold Bluetooth of
Denmark late in the tenth century.
No further proof is necessary—these
silver coins are a treasure from the
early days of our settlement. Inscribed
on them are the names of kings known
from the records of the Viking Age
and we prepare to examine each coin
separately the better to grasp the tale
unfolded by this unique find.
It is soon apparent that the col-
lection is a most varied one In the
hoard are Arabian or Mohammedan,
German, English, Irish, Swedish and
Danish coins. .
We examine the Mohammedan
coins first and they turn out to be live
in number. These coins are known
as “Kufic mint” because they carry
inscriptions in the so-called Kufic
script, which derives its name from
the city of El-Kufa, southwest of Bag-
dad. These coins have come the farth-
est and are the oldest, indeed three of
them are fragmentary, and all are much
worn by their travels from hand to
hand and land to land. Their inscrip-
tions are barely legible and in one
case quite indecipherable. Of the other
four, one dates from the time of the
Caliph El-Mutamid al-Allah, one