In 1957, an amateur archaeologist working at a Native American site in Maine discovered a perplexing treasure: a 900-year-old silver Norse coin that dated to the late Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066).
The artifact, sometimes called the “Maine Penny,” is now in the Maine State Museum. Its discovery has raised a number of questions — mainly, how did it get there, and does its presence in Maine mean the Viking reached the Pine Tree State?
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Norse sagas tell of Viking voyages to North America, including trips to a place they called “Vinland” (which means “wine land”), where grapes supposedly grew. While grapes do grow in Maine, archaeologists haven’t found any Viking Age settlements or artifacts there, except for the penny. But many experts, through scholarly journal articles and books, have weighed in on the issue.
What is the Maine Penny?
The coin, which researchers generally agree is authentic, was minted during the reign of Olaf III, who was king of Norway from about 1066 to 1093, Gordon Campbell, a professor emeritus of Renaissance studies at the University of Leicester in the U.K., wrote in his book “Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth” (Oxford University Press, 2021). In 1979, the Norwegian numismatist Kolbjorn Skaare dated the coin to sometime between 1065 to 1080, Campbell noted.
The coin is in poor shape and some of its engravings are hard to see. One side of the coin has a cross with what appears to be a circle surrounding it. The other side is badly damaged, with only a few visible lines. The lines might have once formed a human figure that depicted Olaf III.
The coin was found in the coastal town of Brooklin at what is now known as the Goddard site, a Native American trading center that was in use during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, Campbell wrote. The coin has a puncture mark through it, so it could have been used as a pendant. It’s also worn and chipped, suggesting it may have passed through many hands over a long period before ending up in Maine.
How did the coin get to Maine?
The scholars that Live Science interviewed tended to think the coin reached Maine through Native American trade networks.
“The position of the Maine State Museum is that the coin reached the Goddard site through down-the-line trade,” Andrew Beaupré, curator of archaeological collections at the Maine State Museum, told Live Science in an email. “Goddard has been determined to be a Native American trading center. The Norse coin is not the only artifact that has been traced to the Canadian Maritime sub-arctic,” a region that stretches from the Labrador Sea to the Northwest Territories. Other finds at Goddard from this northern area include Indigenous stone tools “that have been traced to Newfoundland/Labrador,” he said.
There “is currently no valid archaeological evidence that Norse peoples visited or settled Maine,” Beaupré said. However, he noted that the Vikings could have sailed down the coast of Maine from Newfoundland in the 11th century.
Svein Gullbekk, a professor in the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo who has studied the coin extensively, agreed that the likeliest explanation is that it arrived in Maine as Indigenous Americans traded with one another.
“I believe this 11th century Norwegian coin provides solid evidence for cultural and economic contacts between Native Americans and Inuits and Norse people,” Gullbekk told Live Science in an email. In “my view, I believe it followed Native American routes, presumably used as a piece of [jewelry], rather than a monetary item.”
Joel Anderson, an associate professor of history at the University of Maine, has a similar view. “I think that the ‘Native American trade route’ hypothesis is the most plausible,” Anderson told Live Science in an email. He’s not aware of any other evidence for Vikings in Maine. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” he said, “but the available evidence does not support such a conclusion.”
