This essay examines Norwegian monetary policy under the final decades of the classical international gold standard regime prior to World War I. While the evidence clearly demonstrates that the commitment to gold convertibility was the overall objective, the character of monetary policy was...

This article sketches the origins of paper money in Norway back to the last half of the 18th century and asks why there was no circulation of full-bodied coins even after notes had become convertible into silver at par in 1842. The argument put forward is that the choice of fiat paper money...