Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg: Part II, Anglo-Saxon Coins 1016-1066 (Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, 60)

Book info: Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg: Part II, Anglo-Saxon Coins 1016-1066 (Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, 60) (Hardcover, 140 pages) – The British Academy, 2012. Language: English.

This volume completes publication of the Anglo-Saxon component of the rich and diverse coin collection built up in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. It lists and illustrates over 1,100 late Anglo-Saxon pennies now held in the Hermitage, the bulk of them found in Russian hoards deposited during the early Middle Ages. Among these fine and well-preserved coins are many important rarities representing short-lived types and ephemeral mint-towns. As such it is an important resource for scholars of late Anglo-Saxon history and coinage, and for those interested in the currency which circulated in northern and eastern Europe in the Viking Age.

Dr Vsevelod Potin (1918-2005) began working part-time in the Numismatic Department in the Hermitage while still a student in 1940, later becoming curator of West European coins in 1959 and Director from 1974 until his retirement in 1998. He published extensively on the large 10th-13th-century element of the collection, including its Anglo-Saxon coins, and was for decades one of the leading numismatic authorities in the USSR and Russia.