1 Penning - Harald Hardråde

Harald Sigurdsson — Harald Hardråde, "Hard Ruler" — seized the Norwegian throne in 1047 after decades fighting as a mercenary commander in Kievan Rus and the Byzantine Varangian Guard, where he accumulated enough silver to fund his subsequent military ambitions. His coinage draws directly on Anglo-Saxon penny designs, a deliberate imitation reflecting both the prestige of English currency in Scandinavian trade networks and his own obsessive fixation on the English crown itself. That fixation ended at Stamford Bridge in September 1066, three weeks before Hastings settled the matter for someone else.