1 Rigsbankdaler Backprint on Danish note

Rigsbanken was established in 1813 as a state-controlled successor to the failed Kurantbanken, itself a casualty of the Napoleonic Wars and Denmark's ruinous national bankruptcy of that same year. These notes, issued in the immediate aftermath, circulated at a fraction of their face value — the bankruptcy had wiped out public confidence in Danish paper money so thoroughly that specie equivalents commanded enormous premiums.

The backprint designation in the catalog reference points to a specific overprinting variant, distinguishing these from face-only impressions of the same series. That distinction matters for attribution, as the two types entered circulation under slightly different administrative circumstances during the bank's earliest months of operation.