Description and research notes
This complete nine-note ensemble represents the entire internal monetary system of Stockholm’s Spinnhus, the women’s correctional institution and workhouse operating on Långholmen Island during the late eighteenth century. Produced circa 1785, these engraved pollett notes functioned as closed-economy institutional currency, issued exclusively for use within the prison environment. They served as a controlled medium of exchange through which inmates were compensated for labor, particularly the spinning and processing of flax and wool. Internally, the notes operated as proto-fiat currency, enabling regulated transactions, discipline, and subsistence within a self-contained penal micro-economy.
The monetary system consists of nine denominations: one half öre, one öre, two öre, five öre, six öre, seven öre, sixteen öre, twenty-four öre and one daler. Each note was engraved with a distinct ornamental frame and printed anopisthographically on eighteenth-century Swedish rag paper. All examples remain unissued and uncirculated, with several retaining archival tape residue from long-term institutional storage. Individual denominations are exceptionally rare, and the higher values—particularly seven öre, sixteen öre, twenty-four öre and one daler—are almost never encountered in private collections.
No Swedish institutional archive is known to hold a complete original set. Existing examples, when found, appear singly and often in lesser condition or as later restrikes. This privately assembled nine-note system, accumulated over nearly half a century, is believed to be the only surviving complete original series. Individually these notes measure at the highest rarity levels (R9+). As a unified and intact monetary system, the set attains R10 rarity, representing a uniquely preserved eighteenth-century institutional currency structure of profound historical and academic significance.