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1 Penny - Anonymous Long cross, one hand

Issuer Dublin, Hiberno-Norse Kingdom of
Year 1035-1060
Type Standard circulation coin
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Obverse description Crude helmeted bust facing left in the Hiberno-Norse style, derived from Anglo-Saxon prototypes, with a prominent conical helmet rendered in a stylized radiating pattern suggesting cheekguards and a nasal. The bust is depicted in low relief with simplified facial features characteristic of Dublin imitative coinage. A circular Latin legend surrounds the effigy within a beaded border, reading IHE REIX DIF LIN, a garbled rendering of a royal Dublin title.
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Reverse script Latin
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Additional information

Hiberno-Norse coinage from Dublin emerged not from any native Irish monetary tradition but from direct imitation of Anglo-Saxon penny types, following the commercial links Viking settlers had forged with England across the Irish Sea. This particular long cross type derives from Æthelred II's influential issue, copied so persistently in Dublin that local moneyers eventually dropped the original king's name entirely — hence the anonymous designation. By the mid-eleventh century, Dublin's mint was producing coins that had drifted far enough from their English prototypes that weight and fabric degraded markedly, a process numismatists call "degeneration."

Sp#6133 sits at precisely that transitional point where legible imitation shades into something distinctly local.

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