Scandinavian Monetary Union

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of the
Scandinavia series
Geography
The Viking Age
Unions
History
Sports

The Scandinavian Monetary Union (Swedish: Skandinaviska myntunionen, Danish: Skandinaviske møntunion, Norwegian: Skandinaviske myntunion) was a monetary union formed by Sweden and Denmark on May 5, 1873 by fixing their currencies against gold at par to each other. Norway, which was in union with Sweden, however with full inner autonomy, entered the union two years later, in 1875 by pegging its currency to gold at the same level as Denmark and Sweden (.403 grams [1]). The monetary union was one of the few tangible results of the Scandinavian political movement of the 19th century.

The union provided fixed exchange rates and stability in monetary terms, but the member countries continued to issue their own separate currencies. Even if it was not initially foreseen, the perceived security led to a situation where the formally separate currencies were accepted on a basis of "as good as" the legal tender virtually throughout the entire area.

Upon acceding to the union Sweden had the name of its currency changed from Riksdaler Riksmynt to Krona. Krone was already the name of the Danish currency and when Norway joined they also had a Norwegian Krone. The name literally means Crown and the differences in spelling of the name represent the differences between the Scandinavian languages.

In 1905 the political union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved, but this did not affect the basis for co-operation in the monetary union. It was instead the outbreak of World War I in 1914 that brought an end to the monetary union. Sweden abandoned the tie to gold on August 2, 1914 and without a fixed exchange rate the free circulation came to an end.

Sweden, Norway and Denmark still use the same currencies as during the monetary union, but they lost their peg, one to one, in 1914. The Icelandic Króna is a derivative of the Danish Krone, after the island gained independence from Denmark in 1918, and then full sovereignty in 1944.

These countries are not part of the Eurozone, and at present use their own currencies.

[edit] See also


Pre-euro and other EU currencies EU Flag
Eurozone Austrian Schilling | Belgian franc | Dutch gulden | Finnish mark | French franc | German Mark | Greek drachma | Irish pound (punt) | Italian lira | Luxembourgish franc | Monegasque franc | Portuguese escudo | Sammarinese lira | Spanish peseta | Vatican lira
ERM II Cypriot pound | Danish krone | Estonian kroon | Latvian lats | Lithuanian litas | Maltese lira | Slovak koruna | Slovenian tolar
Other EU British pound | Bulgarian lev | Czech koruna | Gibraltarian pound | Hungarian forint | Polish złoty | Romanian leu | Swedish krona
This box: view • talk • edit
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/c/a/Scandinavian_Monetary_Union_7b5c.html"