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5 Markkaa
| Issuer | Suomen Pankki (Bank of Finland) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1897 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | SUOMEN PANKKI maksaa tästä setelistä VIISI MARKKAA KULLASSA FINLANDS BANK inlöser denna sedel med FEM MARK I GULD (Translation: Bank of Finland will pay for this banknote Five Marks in Gold [Finnish above, Swedish below]) |
| Reverse description | The Finnish Lion coat of arms, engraved in a fine intaglio style, is centred within a wreath of spruce branches, with the denomination numeral repeated at multiple points around the design. Trilingual text in Russian, Swedish, and Finnish surrounds the central vignette in concentric registers, with a smaller circular legend in Swedish and Finnish enclosing the arms. |
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| Comments |
Finland's monetary system in the 1890s operated under the gold-backed markka, which the country had managed independently since 1878 despite remaining a Russian Grand Duchy. The Bank of Finland's ability to issue currency with no Russian imperial iconography was a practical concession Moscow never fully rescinded, giving Finnish notes a distinctly separate administrative identity from rouble-zone paper.
The P#2 5 Markkaa series is among the earliest surviving small-denomination Finnish issues in collector hands. Many lower-value notes from this period were used hard and discarded; bank archives suggest redemption rates were high, and surviving examples with intact margins are genuinely uncommon.