Issued during the reign of Magnus Barefoot, these anonymous pennings deliberately omitted royal identification at a moment when Norwegian kingship was contested and dynastic authority unstable. Magnus spent much of his reign campaigning in the British Isles — he died in Ireland in 1103 — leaving mint administration intermittent at best. The Skaare classification for this type reflects work done in the 1970s to systematically attribute previously unassigned Norwegian medieval coinage, much of which had circulated across Scandinavian trade networks far beyond its origin mints.
Issued during the reign of Magnus Barefoot, these anonymous pennings deliberately omitted royal identification at a moment when Norwegian kingship was contested and dynastic authority unstable. Magnus spent much of his reign campaigning in the British Isles — he died in Ireland in 1103 — leaving mint administration intermittent at best. The Skaare classification for this type reflects work done in the 1970s to systematically attribute previously unassigned Norwegian medieval coinage, much of which had circulated across Scandinavian trade networks far beyond its origin mints.