20 Skilling Type I; impressed stamp

Greenland's wartime monetary improvisation at its starkest. When Nazi occupation cut Denmark off from its Arctic territory in 1940, the colonial administration in Godthåb found itself unable to obtain printed currency through normal channels. The solution was brutally simple: plain paper stock, handwritten or typed denominations, and an impressed (dry-stamped) seal as the sole authentication device. No ink printing, no engraver, no security paper.

Type I denotes the earliest configuration of this series, distinguished from later wartime issues by specific stamp placement and format details catalogued by Sieg. These circulated among a population of roughly 18,000 Greenlanders and Danish administrators with almost no alternative — refusal simply wasn't practical.