Guthrum Horizontal Type – Only Example at Auction Since 1951

CNG 97, Lot: 999. Estimate $5000. Sold for $8500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANGLO-SAXON, Anglo-Viking (Danish East Anglia). Æthelstan II Guthrum. Circa 879/80-890. AR Penny (18mm, 1.24 g, 2h). Horizontal (Two-Line) type. Mint in East Anglia (Ipswich?); Abenel, moneyer. X EL DE IΛ RE, small cross pattée / ΛBEL NLE in two lines; • • • between, pellet above and below. Blackburn, Supp. GH4A (dies E/e) = Coin Register 2009, no. 307 = EMC 2008.0027 (this coin); SCBI 1 (Fitzwilliam), 456 var. (legends); BMC 90 var. (rev. legend); North 479; SCBC 956. Good VF, toned, some edge chipping. Extremely rare, and the only horizontal type with Guthrum’s baptismal name to appear at auction since the Ryan piece in the 1951 Glendining sale.

From the Collection of an Underwriter. Ex Lockdales 76 (24 January 2010), lot 983. Found by metal detector near Freckenham, Suffolk, 1 November 2007 (PAS SF-E21D06).

In 878, the forces of Wessex led by Alfred the Great decisively defeated a large Viking army at Edington in Wiltshire. Under the terms of the treaty which followed, the Viking leader Guthrum was baptised with Alfred acting as godfather. The following year Guthrum led his army into East Anglia where he would later issue small coinage imitating Alfred's two line type but bearing his own baptismal name of Aethelstan. All other specimens recorded by Mark Blackburn in his corpus of the pennies in the name of Aethelstan Guthrum are in public collections, with the exception of a fragment that has not been traced since dispersal of the third part Carlyon-Britton collection in 1918 and the example offered here.