25 Penniä Kullassa / Penni i Guld / Penni Zolotom' (Gold Penny)

Finland's wartime economy in 1916 was hemorrhaging metal. Silver and copper coins vanished from circulation almost immediately as hoarding accelerated, forcing Suomen Pankki to issue emergency paper fractional currency denominated in gold pennies — a unit that existed primarily as an accounting fiction by this point, since Finland had suspended specie payments years earlier. The trilingual title, Finnish, Swedish, and Russian, reflects the constitutional awkwardness of the period: Finland remained an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Tsar while Russian imperial pressure on Finnish institutions was intensifying.

These small-format notes circulated hard and survived poorly. Pin holes and folds are nearly universal on existing examples, the result of the Finnish habit of bundling fractional notes with thread.