Johnni Langer/Victor Hugo Sampaio Alves (NEVE)
A coin found in England has been causing a stir in the media. It has been discovered by a metal detector near Norwich by 2024, and it has recently been analyzed in a paper by numismatist Adrian Marsden. The reason for all the fuss is the fact that it contains the symbol of a valknut, as well as its date, the 7th century (640-660 AD).
First of all, we must point out that the term valknut is contemporary - we do not know its original name and most Nordic geometric symbols are not mentioned by name in the available written sources. A second aspect worth mentioning is that there had already been evidence regarding the valknut’s probable Anglo-Saxon origin. This hypothesis has been defended by Pesch, 2023; 2024 and by us, in Langer, Alves, 2024.
The obverse of the coin, showing a person holding a cross and a valknut just below. The reverse of the coin, containing a central symbol, Solomon's Knot.
The first problem with Marsden's interpretation of this coin is that he considers that it contains both pagan symbols (the valknut) and Christian symbols, based on the discovery of Sutton Hoo (dated to the 7th-8th century, which in addition to the clearly pagan content of the burial, contained Christian objects, such as spoons and bowls with crosses). These, however, are different contexts: the coin is the same medium - and like any coin, it has clear ideological connotations of propaganda and message. It is very difficult to find a crossover between different religious symbols in the same coin.
Marsden's article attempts to demonstrate that all valknuts had a pagan meaning, something we disagree with, as their dating is incorrect. On the other hand, the German archaeologist Alexandra Pesch (2024) has made an extremely opposite argument: according to her, all valknuts would have a Christian meaning (even those represented on the painted stones of Gotland), which is also a mistake in our opinion. Without a shadow of a doubt, the Saxon coin with a valknut is Christian context, but the Gotlandic stelae of GP 390 Stenkyrka Lillbjärs III and especially GP 253 Lärbro Stora Hammars I are undoubtedly pagan. On one side of the new coin (the obverse), a person in motion holds a Latin cross above the valknut. On the other side, a Solomon's Knot centers the reverse - this is a typical Christian symbol, existing in European art since the 4th century AD (and which Marsden is unaware of, as he thinks it is a type of 'swastika').
Another problem with Marsden is that for his reference to consider this symbol a pagan valknut, takes the dating of Gotlandic stones as also being the 7th century - but we know today that the most 'famous' ones that contain the valknut were made between the 7th and 8th centuries (more probably the latter) - in a dating more contextualized with recent Scandinavistics analysis.
In other words - the valknut, as everything indicates so far, was created in the Anglo-Saxon area (as already indicated by swords and rings with the aforementioned symbol) in the 7th century, in a Christian context, and ended up being assimilated and reappropriated by the Scandinavians in a pagan context (on coins from Ribe, Hedeby, objects of material culture and on Gotlandic stelae) between the 8th and 9th centuries. It disappeared completely from northern Europe from the 10th century onwards - we remember that almost all the geometric symbols that already existed in Scandinavian Antiquity (such as the swastika and the triskelion) and the new ones (the triquetra with points), remained in Christian art after the 10th century, both in the British Isles and in Scandinavia, with the exception of the valknut.
Bibliography:
LANGER, Johnni; ALVES, Victor Hugo Sampaio. The return of viking symbols. Scandia Journal of Medieval Norse Studies 7, 2024a, pp. 324-334.
LANGER, Johnni; ALVES, Victor Hugo Sampaio. Sacred signs, divine marks: geometric religious symbols in Viking Age Scandinavia. Medievalis 13(1), 2024b, pp. 1-33.
MARSDEN, Adrian. A new 7th century shilling from Norfolk. The Searcher, july 2025, pp. 16-20.
PESCH, Alexandra. What’s in a symbol? Some thoughts on the enigmatic triquetra. Primitive tider, Spesialutgave 2023, pp. 11-21.
PESCH, Alexandra. Vom Zauber der Zeichen: Die historischen Hintergründe von graphischen Zeichen, Symbolen und Ornamenten in der modernen Wikinger-und Mittelalterszene. Rosenbach: AntikMakler, 2024.
PRICKETT, Katy. One of a kind 7th Century gold coin found in field. BBC, June 8, 2025.
