The man in the display case

In one of the graves a leather pouch was found containing 385 coins. An unexpected finding. It is likely that the dead were looted of anything valuable. But the coin pouch remained.

The combination of coins supports the theory that they belonged to one of King Valdemar’s soldiers. A third were minted in Lund, which was Danish at the time. The rest, with the exception of a few German ones, are Swedish single-sided coins, “bracteates”.

Perhaps the soldier brought the Danish coins as travelling funds. He may have come across the Swedish ones when the Danes attacked Öland on their way to Gotland.

Calculating the value of the money from medieval times in the modern equivalent can be done in various ways. Based on the development of the retailer price index, the coins would today be the equivalent of about SEK 32,000.