8 Mark 'Klippingar' - Karl as Duke of Södermanland

Karl of Södermanland struck these klippe-format pieces during the dynastic crisis that would define his career — the war against his nephew Sigismund III of Poland, who held the Swedish crown but had returned to Warsaw and whose Catholicism made him politically untenable in Lutheran Sweden. The klipp format, with its square or lozenge shape, was often associated with siege or emergency coinage, though in this case it signals something closer to deliberate political theatre: a duke asserting quasi-regal monetary authority before he had any legal right to do so.

Karl was not crowned King Karl IX until 1604. These pieces predate that by years.