Money in Middle-earth

[Witch-king of Angmar]

z3.invisionfree.com/The_Northern_Kingdom/index.php?showtopic=21

Witch-king of Angmar

In creating his primal version of Middle-earth (Middangeard, or the real earth where we live), Tolkien didn't say much about the coinage of money. I suppose we could assume that Gondor was minting coins with the images of Mardil the Good Steward, perhaps, or coins of Isildur in either copper, silver or gold.

Here is a quote that is puzzling:

"[Frodo] suspected now that he had fallen in with a rascal, and he thought uncomfortably that he had brought only a little money with him. All of it would hardly satisfy a rogue, and he could not spare any of it." - Strider, Fellowship of the Ring, p. 175

In this instance, the hobbits had reclaimed the ponies that had wandered off from the Barrow Downs, so Frodo could conceivably have stored some money on them and used it after losing his clothes at the Barrow Downs.

All that said, as a writer of fanfic, I find the lack of any clear mention of denominations of a monetary system anywhere on Middle-earth to be very frustrating. Perhaps this money to which Frodo refers was left over from the dragon's horde, but still that does not explain who minted it in the first place, or was it pure gold? Could we assume that Tolkien meant that the people of Middle-earth used pure gold and silver and coinage was unknown? Perhaps this pure metal was used with a form of barter?

I have not read the entire Middle-earth HOME series, and for all I know, Tolkien outlined some of his ideas for minting there.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Gordis

Most unusual subject, Bravo, Angmar!

Here hobbits are buying a pony in Bree:

QUOTE
Bill Ferny's price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony's value in those pans. It proved to be a bony, underfed, and dispirited animal; but it did not look like dying just yet. Mr. Butterbur paid for it himself, and offered Merry another eighteen pence as some compensation for the lost animals. He was an honest man, and well-off as things were reckoned in Bree; but thirty silver pennies was a sore blow to him, and being cheated by Bill Ferny made it harder to bear.

So a pony costed 4 silver pennies - I would say a golden coin would be a fortune!

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Rian

From all I've seen, there's very little about money. Can't remember anything off the bat! Michael Martinez had an interesting write-up about it somewhere, though - I'll try to find the link.

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Witch-king of Angmar

It always amazed me how much like the British the hobbits were, even to the point of using the British system of currency. Based on this quote, however, a system of currency could be worked out for the Shire at least. However, I do not know how the system of pence and pennies works in England. If Tolkien based this system upon the current system of money at the time he was writing LOTR - 1954 - 1955 - then we would have to consider the fluctation of money values over the years.

This still leaves us with no currency for the other countries involved in the books. At the borders of each country, I can see a system of money changers (Dwarves, perhaps? ). With a little detective work, we can come up with a system of currency that could work. We know that the hobbits had coffee, which was first grown in Africa. So that implies a Southern connection somewhere. We know that Saruman was trading for tobacco in the Shire through channels. Lobellia has an umbrella, an ancient Persian invention (although I doubt Tolkien was aware of that). And where did all that tea come from?

Now if we only knew a Brit who would come to this forum who could translate pence and pennies (based on 1954 evaluations), we have a Middle-earth system of currency. *smiles*

Rian, if you can find that article from Michael Martinez, I would appreciate having the link. This is a fascinating subject to me.

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Nienna

I found a site about the coinage used in the Caribbean in the 17th to 18th centuries. This discusses the currencies of Britain, Spain, France and Holland.

Hope it helps.

www.kipar.org/piratical-resources/pirate-money.html

Rian

Here's one discussion: www.suite101.com/article.cfm/tolkien/28208

I think there's another one. I'll try to find that one, too

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Witch-king of Angmar

Elfhild and Rian, thanks for the links.

The Martinez article is extremely helpful. I have never read that section of Peoples of Middle-earth about the coinage. I will have to do that soon.

"Just prior to The Lord of the Rings' publication J.R.R. Tolkien was forced to condense the extensive material he had prepared for the appendices. Among the excluded passages which were only published in The Peoples of Middle-earth was a brief but fascinating section detailing the names of money used in Gondor. The tharni, we are told, was a silver coin, the fourth part of a castar. The tharni may thus have been equivalent to the silver pennies of Eriador."

An interesting bit of information that is useful in this RPG is the following. Now I am wondering how much would a tankard of ale cost, based on this system?

"The rise of the realm of Angmar in the north would actually have helped to stabilize the situation among the Dunedain in some ways. Rhudaur was soon destroyed and Cardolan so weakened it became virtually reintegrated into the kingdom of Arnor (Arthedain). Arthedain's influence thus increased with the intervention from Lindon and Rivendell (Elrond even enlisted aid from Lothlorien in the wars against Angmar). A single Dunadan coinage would thus have been restored to the north and it's doubtful that Eriador ever again experienced a diverse coinage. Hence, the pennies that Bilbo and Butterbur gave out were probably equivalent in value and form."

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Gordis

If a pony costed 4 silver pennies, does it mean it costed 4 tharni? or one costar? And costar, is it a gold coin?

I would say a tankard of ale should have costed less than one tharni - so we have to introduce a copper penny, it seems

CAB

Interesting question Angmar, but it looks like Mr. MM didn’t leave too much for us to wonder about. Nice links Rian and Elfhild.

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Witch-king of Angmar

"I would say a tankard of ale should have costed less than one tharni - so we have to introduce a copper penny, it seems." - Gordis

In the roleplay I was running a couple years ago, I introduced the concept of copper pennies and followed that use since. Now with something more concrete to go on, I want to try to come up with a better system than my own suppositions.

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Valandil

I don't know if we can conclude that a pony was worth only 4 silver pennies. For one, Bill was a rather broken-down, scraggly-looking pony. So - he might have been valued less (at 4 silver pennies) than a normal pony would be. It might just be that the 30 was all Barliman Butterbur felt he could spare over the thing - and after paying 12 for Bill, that left 18 to compensate for the others (5 - correct?). Besides - doesn't Tolkien go back and make it sound like he got a good deal for his 30 pennies when he got those other 5 ponies back?

Keep in mind too - coins may have been less, or more, common in 3018 TA than in 1346. My guess is less.

I agree with MM that each kingdom likely coined their own. I imagine Arnor coined something for a long time - perhaps with Elendil's image on one side and his emblem on the other (or - if he was modest - maybe a tree on one side and a star on the other, while he was still living). I suppose coins would have been quite rare early in Arnor's history - but grew more and more common as time went by.

A "tharni" being a fourth part of a "castar" - reminds me of an American idiom of calling a quarter "two bits". Historically, a dollar coin might be cut pie-shape wise into 8 even pieces or "bits" - the origin of the US quarter is being two of these 1/8th dollar bits. So - maybe in Gondor at least, the castar was the main currency - and the tharni a lesser coin - with a similar orgin to the modern US quarter.

Even if the Shire had money similar to the English penny, shilling. pound and guinea (I looked all that up once - but forget it now - you could probably Google it, Angy) - the Numenoreans generally favored decimal numbering systems (unless money is an exception - with the example of the tharni).

I would think we could go with some basic rules of thumb:
1. Copper coins are pretty common and of low value - they are normally sufficient for taking care of basic needs - some food and drink, a few nights lodging, maybe a simple tunic.
2. Silver coins are not so common, but not totally rare - and are of moderate value. You might need these to really outfit yourself - with weapons, horses, provisions for a journey, etc.
3. Gold - now you're talking big money - rare and very valuable. Probably entirely in the hands of the upper classes.

How does that seem?

[Witch-king of Angmar]

Alcuin

In his Letters, Tolkien said on several occasions that he was Mercian. Offa, King of Mercia 757-796 AD, is credited with creating the English penny. Prior to this, there had been attempts to create a common gold coinage (Bishop Liudard about 561 AD in Kent; Bishop Mellitus issued gold coins from a mint in London 604-616 AD, Saxon mints in southeastern Britain from about 630 onward), but it was Offa’s standard penny of 24 grains (1.555 g; by the time of the Normans this was reduced to a standard 22.5 grains, or 1/240 of a Tower pound; 24 grains, however, remained a “pennyweight”; a Tower pound is 27/35 of an avoirdupois pound, still the common measure of weight in the United States; Offa’s coin was 1/20 of a troy ounce, which is 1/20 of a Troy pound: hence the old English (pre-decimalization of 1971) coinage system of 240 pence = 12 shilling = 1 pound; Troy pounds are 5760 grains = 24 grains x 240 pence/pound; Tower pounds are 5400 grains or 22.5 grains x 240 pence/pound). Offa’s coinage was of extraordinary fineness and reliability, and Anglo-Saxon coins rapidly spread throughout Europe, and the fact that they minted the preferred standard European coin might be one reason the Vikings began their raids upon the English first, and in Northumbria and East Anglia (both next door to Mercia and easily accessible to raiders from Denmark and Norway). Silver pennies based upon these Anglo-Saxon coins were ubiquitous through the British archipelago and western Europe for centuries. The Anglo-Saxons sometimes also called their early pennies “sceat,” although I believe this term might be properly assigned to another coin; other folks think they’re pennies. (sceat is from the old Saxon word for “wealth”)

I think that Tolkien is probably thinking about these late Dark Age silver pennies when he’s talking about Butterbur and the ponies, for example. The will of King Alfred the Great, who died in 899 AD, included his sword, reckoned to be worth 100 gold mancuses or 3,000 silver pennies. A more typical sword might sell for anything from 60 to 240 silver pennies. Depending upon where you were, a horse in those days might sell for 120-240 silver pennies. A cow might sell from 20-70 silver pennies. These are rather high prices compared to those for the ponies that Butterbur paid Bill Ferny. If the fair price of Bill the Pony when he was underfed and dispirited was really 4 silver pennies (1/5 the minimum price of a 900 AD cow or 1/15 the minimum price of a horse), while Barliman paid Merry 18 silver pennies for 4 ponies (4 ½ silver pennies apiece), I think we’re dealing with a pretty seriously depressed economy, as might well be imagined with little trade, no strong legal system, and no standing army to protect the people or enforce that system. It rather sounds as if most people did without money, or that many people bartered for the things they needed: even Butterbur might have bartered for grain to brew his beer and feed the animals stabled at his inn, or for much of the food to feed his guests. It is likely that he and the local purveyor were the primary sources of hard currency in several communities that might consist of many hundred if not a couple of thousand people altogether.

The old symbol for an English penny, d, comes from the Latin denarius. Two denarii were about a day’s wages during Roman times. The s for shilling comes from the Latin solidas, a “solid” gold coin. (The solidas also typically had a sun image on its face: some argue that is the origin of its name.) In the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages, silver traded for gold at a ratio of about 12:1, hence the penny to shilling ratio in England. (The gold coin in the illustration below was 3 times the weight of a silver penny: the pictures are not to scale. The silver to gold ratio has been climbing for thousands of years; yesterday afternoon, it was 55.43:1, and that’s well off its highs from about 8 or 10 years ago.) Wages were not commonly paid in Anglo-Saxon England (they were being paid in Byzantium during that period, but Byzantium was a far more advanced and more highly civilized society). If we use 2 silver pennies for a day’s profits for Barliman Butterbur, then the 30 silver pennies was a half-month’s profits; and similarly if we say that he made more, it might be the loss of a week’s worth of work. In either case, it was painful.

I can’t find anything that would relate the prices Tolkien quotes to ancient documents I can readily find on the Internet. But I’d wager to say that Butterbur was out at least a week’s profit and probably 2 or more weeks.

BTW, you should be aware that different kingdoms might mint coins with the same name, and within a given kingdom might demand they trade with the same purchasing power as a finer coin from a neighboring kingdom, but adulterate the coin with base metal. I do recall that Lenin once wrote that, in order to foment revolution, provocateurs should seek to enter government service and cause inflation, because inflation more rapidly impoverished the people than almost any other method, but they almost never understand it, and they are almost always absolutely opposed to the only means to stop it, tying the hands of politicians to fight it off. The experiences of any Americans and Britons over 35 or 40 years of age, as well as Latin American of any age, will bear this out as absolutely true. Keeping this in mind, be aware that the US is withdrawing all the old currency it can get and replacing it with new because North Korea and Iran in particular are counterfeiting American money at an astonishing rate. (Pres. Carter sold the Shah of Iran two Intaglio printers identical to those used by the US Treasury to print American money. The Shah never got to turn them on. The Ayatollahs did, though. The Nazis attempted a similar scheme against the British during World War II; a lot of the counterfeit pound notes were eventually found where they were dumped to get rid of them when the war ended, at the bottom of a lake in Austria, if I remember correctly.) If the Witch-king were really financially savvy, he’d counterfeit Arthedain and Cardolan coinage by substituting base metals in order to debase it. The easiest means of doing for him this would be to take 1000 real coins, add a base metal (bronze, copper, tin, pewter, etc.) and turn out 1200 or 1500 counterfeit coins. That would cause real chaos in the Dúnedain kingdoms, with people accusing one another of thievery, and folks trying to determine some means of verifying the authenticity and grade (fineness) of the coins they received. (English minters caught doing this during the reigns of the Norman and Plantagenet monarchs faced penalties from losing their right hands to being hanged or beheaded.)

Finally, even if all the minters are honest (and there is no good reason you should assume that they were all honest, particularly in Rhudaur and Angmar), different kingdoms’ coins should trade at different rates, just as Canadian dollars and US dollars and Australian dollars all trade at different rates, although they all started at 1:1 ratios 30 or 35 years ago.

Hope this is helpful to your RPG.