Origin of holes in coins

[sunbear]

Danish coins, the 1 2 and 5 crown ones, have rather small holes in the middle. Various European coins have had holes. I asked about it in a discussion group and got this reply:
The real reason is that in the Viking age the man who wanted to
buy a bride, had to collect a significant sum of money for the purchase. When all the coins with hole in them were collected in a string, the bride's mother got a pretty new necklace. Later, this habit was adopted also by taxmen, who rattled around the country with enormous necklaces,
alerting people by the sound those coin necklaces made. Because this was Catholic time, those necklaces were used by bishops during their obligatory prayer ceremonies. When Protestantism won, Swedish king deleted the cursed Catholic faith and its customs, and ordered that from now on, no coin may be able to carried away so easily. So began the era of 'plotu' money, when copper 'coins' were so heavy and ugly that not even the strongest enemy could carry the treasure out of country, which was very good thing. The modern era of holes in coins began when Danish King practised shooting with coins as target. He became so good in it that he won Olympic gold medal in rifle shooting in Stockholm Olympics 1912. The whole Danish nation was so enthusiasted that
all the small coins carried holes from that year, commemorating the royal achievement in sports.
Absolutely.

Tekno-Kekko
Lahti

Others said the Nordic people got it from the Middle East who got it from China. Was there ever a practical reason?Clear cultural reason?

[sunbear]

Well, really now. somebody here must know all about coins. And the rest, use your imagination.

[Zyada]

Humans have experimented with all sorts of shapes for coins. We've pretty much settled on the round shape with occasional 6+ sided polygons, since other shapes have points which can break or wear off easily or be hard to make without any reciprocal advantage.
Having a hole in the coin can make for easy storage, as was noted in your viking story. In nomadic groups, wealth tends to be worn as decoration. (This is the origin of the coin covered costume in belly dancing) In addition, some cultures consider it lucky to find a stone or coin with a hole. IIRC, this is the specific reason why Chinese coins have a hole.
OTOH, if you're an emporer & want to have your picture on all of the coins minted, a hole would definitly interfere. Since American coins and (I'm guessing) most European coins have a picture on them, the hole is not so popular in these areas.

[sunbear]

The holy coins are the medium value coins. There's even smaller ones, two, that have no holes. The bigger coins that have profiles or fancy artwork don't have holes.

[AuraSeer]

According to my old AD&D Oriental Adventures sourcebook, coins have holes so they can be strung together for easier handling of large sums. This is about all the input I have on this topic. =B^)

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I'm not a warlock. I'm a witch with a Y chromosome.

[Omniscient]

I suppose the stringing theory is not too far fetched, but I suspect that its just a rosy story concocted to hide the less romantic reason. I wager that the true reason is not more interesting than to reduce the amount of metal in the coin. In ancient times it likely was originated to save valuable metals (when the coin was worth the metal its made of), and to make smaller denomonations larger and more manageable.

The only way the stringing theory holds water is if every coin in those systems had a hole, and I don't think thats the case. second if this method was so efficient more countries would have adopted it. I don't argue that folks likely strung them together once the holes were there, but its merely a beneficial side effect than the motivation.

[sunbear]

One idea someone suggested in the Denmark case was blind people. With 7 coins in common use, you have to be able to tell them apart. None of them have the same diameter.
Some of the bills are of different size, too. Let's see what they will do with the Euro. Denmark is outside of that for now.Guess they like their holy coins.