Penny of Cnut the Great from Lincoln

An English penny struck in Lincoln (1017–1023) by King Cnut the Great, with Leofinc as the moneyer. The coin is called the Quatrefoil type because of the four-leaf clover shape on the front and back. The inscription on the back indicates in whose mint and where the penny was struck (LEOFINC MO LINC). On the front of the coin is the king in profile facing left inside a four-leaf clover shape, and the inscription reads CNVT REX ANGLORVM (Cnut, King of England). On the back is a double cross with the arches in the corners forming a four-leaf clover shape.

Cnut the Great was the King of England, Norway and Denmark, and the pennies he struck, together with the coins of King Æthelred II the Unready, constitute a key part of the English Viking Age coins found in the region of Finland.

This coin was included in a hoard found in 1895 in Nikkilä, Nousiainen, which contained more than 1,600 coins and other objects. A significant number of the coins in the hoard were German pennies, of which more than 1,100 were found, but there were also many English and Scandinavian coins as well as some Italian, Irish, Byzantine and Islamic coins. The hoard also included jewellery, such as rings and buckles. The objects had been hidden sometime after ca. 1045.