The Aberdour Penny: a coin of Malcolm the Maiden, the boy king of Scots, found in a Fife field

In 2020, an amateur metal detectorist searching a field near Aberdour, on the south coast of Fife, found a small silver penny. The finder's name has not been published. As Scots law requires for every archaeological find, it was reported to the Treasure Trove Unit, and it turned out to be a penny of Malcolm IV, King of Scots from 1153 to 1165. The coin is about 20 millimetres across and weighs less than 1.5 grams. On the front is a crowned bust of the king facing forwards between sceptres, worn so that, as the museum put it, his ghost-like face is just visible. On the back is a decorated cross. It was probably struck at Roxburgh or Berwick, then the most important towns in Scotland. Coins of Malcolm IV are rare, and the museum described it as only the fifth find of this coinage recorded. Malcolm was only the second Scottish king to issue coins, after his grandfather David I, who introduced Scotland's first coinage. He came to the throne at the age of twelve and died at twenty-four, and he was nicknamed "the Maiden" because he never married. His short reign was a struggle: he had to give up Northumberland and Cumbria to Henry II of England, and he faced revolts in Galloway and the north. He was succeeded by his brother, William the Lion, and was buried at Dunfermline Abbey. The coin was claimed as Treasure Trove and allocated in 2023 to OnFife, the Fife Cultural Trust, which bought it with help from the Art Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions; under the system, the finder receives a reward. From May to June 2023, to mark the coronation of King Charles III, it was displayed at the Carnegie Library and Galleries in Dunfermline, close to the abbey where Malcolm lies. The curator, Kirke Kook, called it the oldest Scottish coin in the collection. Written for Global Finds from OnFife (2023). Photo: another penny of Malcolm IV on display at the Museum on the Mound, Edinburgh, not the Aberdour coin, Alf van Beem, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.