Maine penny

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The Maine penny is a Norwegian silver penny dating to the reign of Olaf Kyrre. It was allegedly found in 1957 at the Goddard site, the extensive archeological remains of an old Native American settlement at Naskeag Point, Brooklin, Maine on Penobscot Bay. The coin is the only pre-Columbian Norse artifact claimed to have been found in the United States that has been generally regarded as a genuine Norse artifact. Other Norse artifacts have been found in Canada, at L'Anse aux Meadows.

After excavation at the site a collection of 30,000 items was donated to the Maine State Museum. The coin was at first thought to be a British penny from the 12th century. In 1978 experts from London became suspicious it might be Norse. Kolbjorn Skaare determined the coin had been minted between 1065 and 1080 AD, more than 50 years after the last of the Vinland voyages described by Norse saga accounts. The Goddard site has been dated to 1180-1235 and the people living there at the time are generally considered to be ancestors of the Penobscot.

By some accounts the penny was found with a perforation, hinting it was used as a pendant. This area of the coin is said to have since crumbled to dust from corrosion.

The penny's coastal origin has been offered as possible evidence Vikings traveled further south than Newfoundland and that the coin might have been lost or traded locally. However, the penny was the only Norse artifact found at the Goddard site, which according to substantial evidence was a hub in a large native trade network. For example, an artifact generally identified as a Dorset Eskimo burin was also recovered there, hence the penny could plausibly have come to Maine through native trade channels from Labrador or Newfoundland where it may have first been traded with the Vikings, or either stolen or found at a Viking settlement. However, this explanation is unsatisfactory, as no coinage has been recovered from other North American Viking sites.^{[citation needed]} The most plausible explanation is that the coin was purchased by a collector and planted at the Goddard Site.^{[citation needed]}