50 Rigsdaler / 50 Kroner - Christian V Thormøhlen notes

These notes occupy a genuinely unusual position in Scandinavian monetary history. Jørgen Thormøhlen, a Bergen-based merchant who had grown wealthy on timber and fish exports, received authorization from Christian V to operate what amounted to a private bank of issue — a privilege with almost no parallel in the Danish-Norwegian realm at the time. The arrangement collapsed badly. Thormøhlen overextended, his commercial empire unraveled, and by the late 1690s he was bankrupt and imprisoned.

Surviving examples are extraordinarily rare. The wax seal, where present, was the primary authentication device — handwritten execution on paper with no engraved plate printing in the modern sense.