W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 375
German type of the reverse the two wild men as supporters
of the canopied escutcheon. The coinage for Norway
under Danish rule comprises many very fine specimens artistically
considered, but facile princeps the superb 6-mark piece
of Frederic IV.,
I 704, having on the reverse side the crowned
lion wielding in its claws an antique curved battle-axe, which
in the analogous issue under modern Swedish government
(i sp. of Oscar I., 1846) is reduced to normal dimensions, and
parts with its archaeological significance. This symbol had
been handed down from the autonomous Norwegian coinage
of the thirteenth century. The copper money of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries is of good fabric and metal ;
and that for colonial circulation has the characteristic reverse
of a ship in full sail, somewhat similar to the Dutch analogous
coinage and to the supposed prototype of 1658. The continuous
hostilities of the Danes against their neighbours, or
on German soil in the cause of Protestantism, or in defence
of dearly acquired dominions at a distance from home, placed
the country, as it has placed the numismatist of later times,
in possession of a tolerably large volume of money of necessity
for the payment and transport of troops, usually the
main or only sources of expenditure, when provisions and
shelter were obtained at the cost of the enemy nor were
;
cases unknown, as we are aware, in which an invading army
resorted to the most unscrupulous methods for levying even
the stipend of the soldiers from the districts through which
it passed. The earliest examples of this currency are placed