Scandinavium #6: Currency, Part 1

{750 words, 7 figures, 5 minutes}

You can add currency design to the long list of civilized aspects of Norwegian. There are five types of bills of Norwegian kroner ("crowns", or also "NOK"): 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000. For U.S. readers, you can divide by 10 and roughly get the same $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills, although the true approximate values are, at current exchange rates, $6, $12, $25, $62, and $125. Of course, those values still have to be modified by the price index, especially given Norway's 15%-food/25%-goods value-added tax (VAT). For comparisons to the Euro, dividing by 10 (and adding 10% if mental math allows) yields a very accurate exchange value (€5.5, €11, €22, €55, €110).

Here are the five bills pictured together:

The front "face" side of the Norwegian kroner bills.

According to Norges Bank (the central bank of Norway), which manages the design and issue of currency notes and coins, each note features a famous Norwegian:

50 kroner: Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, a writer, particularly of Norwegian folk tales.
100 kroner: Kirsten Flagstad, an opera singer, considered one of the best or the best of the 20th century.
200 kroner: Kristian Birkeland, a scientist credited with creating the theory explaining the aurora borealis or "the northern lights".
500 kroner: Sigrid Undset, a novelist and Nobel Prize winner of Literature.
1000 kroner: Edvard Munch, a famous artist, perhaps most notably for his "The Scream" painting.

The reverse side of the Norwegian kroner bills feature schematics and drawings of things of importance to the famous people on the obverse side of the bill. Norges Bank does more justice to the symbolism of the more abstract motifs than I could here, but the 100 kroner is a bit special to me since its design features the layout of the Folketeateret (lit. tr. "the People's Theater") which I recently visited to see Regina Spektor live.

There are a few things I noticed:

Size corresponds to value. The largest bill is the 1000 NOK and the smallest by significant margin is 50 NOK. Besides making organization and recognition easier, variability in size helps the blind and visually impaired with handling their money (although that may become less important with the digitization of currency).
Color coordination also corresponds to value. This also adds value to normal and visually impaired users.
It should also be mentioned that Norwegian royalty, who remain active in public life, are not on the paper currency.
For those interested in gender balance, three of the people are men and two are women.

Many of these aspects are not surprising and are common design features of many foreign currencies that I have encountered. Many of these features are absent from the U.S. currency, and I presume for a few reasons. First, lowest cost is usually the strongest factor in U.S. values; having currency printers of different sizes and colors most likely requires increased cost in printing currency. In fact, Norges Bank's newest currency note series will feature notes of the same height but of varying widths and ascribed price and efficiency as motivating factors. Also, with so many notes in circulation, particularly since notes can be used as a safe haven for fluid investments, I think there's a desire to maintain the status quo and significant political inertia to having to exchange old bills for new ones. Again, cost and the perception of government waste are major obstacles.

On the topic of counterfeiting, Norwegian bills have the common security measures of embedded line, metallic holographic foiling, and a watermark of the person's face. Interestingly, the security tape contains the text "Norges Bank" repeatedly flipped so that half of the occurrences can be read on each side of the bill, but it doesn't contain the value of the bill like U.S. security tapes. There are finer security details, such micro-printing and ultraviolet light-sensitive markings, and like the U.S. dollar, likely some security features that are not publicly known.

The ultraviolet light markings are a particular joy for me for their meaningful design and symbolism.

50 kroner: Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, the writer, has a fluorescent old-fashioned pen nib.
100 kroner: Kirsten Flagstad, the opera singer, has a fluorescent G-clef symbol.
200 kroner: Kristian Birkeland, the scientist, has a fluorescent comet.
500 kroner: Sigrid Undset, the novelist, has a fluorescent flower.
1000 kroner: Edvard Munch, the famous artist, has a fluorescent paintbrush.