Historical Coins
The motivation for this little project was to be able to more easily look at historical prices. I had an interest in comparing wages in Britain, the US and Norway back in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Because currencies were based on silver and gold back then they were quite stable in value and thus we can actually do quite good comparisons because the exchange rates were quite stable unlike today.
The standard currency in Britain was the Pound Sterling which is defined as the a pound of silver at sterling purity.
In Norway from 1816 to 1875 the Species Dollar was used written Speciedaler in Norwegian. The modern Norwegian currency the Krone came in 1875 as part of a Scandinavian currency unions where everybody introduced Krone as a common currency.
British coin denominations
The old British system often written £SD or LSD is made up of pounds, shilling and pennies in the following relation:
- 20 shillings per pound
- 12 pennies per shilling
Norwegian coin denominations
- 5 ort per speciedaler
- 24 skilling per ort
Conversions
-
4 shilling 6½ pennies equals Norwegian 1 speciesdaler. Which is also equal to 5 ort or 120 skilling
-
1 speciedalar equals 1 Krone