A single silver coin, small and badly worn, has spent decades at the center of one of North American archaeology’s more persistent debates. Discovered in 1957 by an amateur archaeologist at a Native American site in the coastal Maine town of Brooklin, the artifact is a genuine Norse coin roughly 900 years old, and nobody disputes that. What remains contested is how it got there.
The coin, widely known as the “Maine Penny,” now resides at the Maine State Museum. It was minted during the reign of Olaf III, king of Norway from approximately 1066 to 1093. In 1979, Norwegian numismatist Kolbjorn Skaare dated it more precisely to between 1065 and 1080. One side carries a cross apparently encircled by a ring. The other is badly damaged, with faint lines that may once have depicted Olaf III himself.
The coin also has a puncture through it, consistent with use as a pendant. Its worn, chipped condition suggests it passed through many hands over a long stretch of time before arriving at the site now called Goddard, a Native American trading center active during the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
Trade Networks, Not Viking Boots on the Ground
Most scholars lean toward a straightforward explanation: the coin traveled to Maine through indigenous trade routes, not aboard a Viking longship.
Andrew Beaupré, curator of archaeological collections at the Maine State Museum, stated the museum’s position plainly. “The Norse coin is not the only artifact that has been traced to the Canadian Maritime sub-arctic,” he noted, referring to the broad region stretching from the Labrador Sea to the Northwest Territories. The Goddard site was a trading hub, and objects moving through such networks across vast distances was not unusual.
Gordon Campbell, professor emeritus of Renaissance studies at the University of Leicester and author of Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth (Oxford University Press, 2021), has written extensively on this question. His analysis points to the coin entering Native American exchange networks, likely originating from a Norse contact point farther north, rather than reflecting any direct Viking presence in Maine.
What the Vikings Actually Reached
The Vikings were capable of extraordinary maritime range. Their settlements in Greenland ran from the late 10th century through the 15th century. Their outpost at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, Canada, dates to the 11th century and remains the only archaeologically confirmed Viking site in North America.
Norse sagas describe voyages to a place called “Vinland,” believed to be somewhere along the North American coastline, where grapes grew. Grapes do grow in Maine. But no Viking Age settlements or artifacts have been found in the state apart from the penny itself.
The coin’s age places it at the very tail end of the Viking Age, which ran from A.D. 793 to 1066. If it traveled south through Native American trade networks from a contact point like L’Anse aux Meadows, its presence in Maine tells a story about indigenous commerce rather than Norse exploration.
The Goddard site’s identity as a regional trading center makes that reading credible. Objects moved. The coin moved with them.
Photo by Aleksi Partanen on Unsplash
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