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5 Kroner

Issuer Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel
Year 1911
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Value 5 Kroner
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Obverse description Single-colour green note with an intricate guilloche border framing the entire design; the central vignette presents a circular cartouche enclosing a polar bear standing on an Arctic ice field, with a distant coastal landscape in the background. The Danish Royal coat of arms appears in the upper corners, and the denomination legend FEM KRONER is set in large display lettering across the centre. Two manuscript signatures appear below the central vignette, with the issuer name DEN KGL. GRØNLANDSKE HANDEL and place-date KJØBENHAVN 1911 inscribed along the lower register.
Obverse lettering DENNE ANVISNING GÆLDER VED HANDELSSTEDER NE I GRØNLAND FOR
FEM KRONER
NOTERET
DEN KGL. GRØNLANDSKE HANDEL
KJØBENHAVN 1911
5 KRONER 5 KRONER 5 KRONER 5 KRONER 5 KRONER
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Comments

Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel — the Royal Greenlandic Trade company — operated as a Crown monopoly controlling virtually all commerce in Greenland from 1776 until well into the twentieth century. Its banknotes were trade tokens in the purest sense: usable only within the Greenlandic settlements it administered, with no value beyond those shores. The 1911 series, of which Pick 10 is part, was printed in Copenhagen and shipped north, functioning less like a national currency and more like company scrip backed by a colonial trading authority.

These notes rarely left Greenland through normal channels, which makes survivors uncommon outside Scandinavian collections.