Thrymsa 'Oath-taking' type

The 'Oath-taking' thrymsa takes its name from the unusual figural arrangement on the reverse, interpreted by scholars as depicting a formal oath ceremony — a reading that remains contested but has stuck in the literature since Sutherland's work on early Anglo-Saxon gold. These coins were struck in the decades immediately following the Christianization of the southern English kingdoms, when Frankish monetary influence was still the dominant force shaping insular coinage. The thrymsa itself was an Anglo-Saxon adaptation of the Merovingian tremissis, the gold third-siliqua that had circulated freely across the Channel trade network.

Surviving examples are rare in any condition. The type belongs to a transitional phase before the sceat coinage displaced gold entirely from everyday English exchange in the late seventh century.