12 Rigsbankskilling - Frederick VII Handelsstederne i Grønland

Greenland's mid-nineteenth century currency arrangement was deliberately isolated from the Danish monetary mainstream. The Handelsstederne i Grønland — the state-run trading post network holding a royal monopoly over Greenland's commerce — issued its own notes for internal circulation, not redeemable in Denmark proper. The 12 Rigsbankskilling fits within the transition period following the 1813 Danish state bankruptcy and the subsequent currency reforms that produced the Rigsbankdaler system; by 1853 that system was itself approaching replacement by the Rigsdaler.

Frederick VII had acceded to the throne in 1848, the same year Denmark acquired a constitutional monarchy. His name on a colonial trading-post scrip note is a small but pointed detail about how sovereignty was expressed at the margins of the realm.