1/2 Penning - Sigurd Jorsalfare

Sigurd I's reign marked the first time a Norwegian king returned from a crusade — he led an expedition to the Holy Land from 1107 to 1111, earning the epithet "Jorsalfare" (Jerusalem-farer). The half penning issued under his authority belongs to a coinage so crude and irregular that attribution debates persisted well into the twentieth century, with Schive's mid-nineteenth-century classification remaining the foundational reference. Dies were locally cut with minimal standardization, which accounts for the significant typological variation across surviving specimens cataloged under Brekke 11.1.