Preface

Summary

The writing of this book actually started many years ago when a senior policymaker at Norges Bank, Jan F. Qvigstad, was inspired by the work published at the Bank of England around the time of their 1994 tercentenary, covering hundreds of years of monetary history. He then initiated work at Norges Bank to collect and provide documentation of a similar set of historical time series for Norway. This resulted in three books published by Norges Bank on Historical Monetary Statistics, 2004–2007.

A Monetary History of Norway 1816–2016 provides a historical narrative which places these two hundred years of historical data in perspective. This book presents a broad overview of monetary developments in Norway over two centuries, using a rich variety of graphical illustrations, and we have endeavoured to put these illustrations in a broader historical narrative, providing the necessary institutional context in some detail. The extended set of historical monetary statistics which is a by-product of writing this book will be documented and made available at Norges Bank website. We hope this dataset, together with similar historical datasets for other countries, will be viewed as valuable additions to be applied in future research. The availability of such datasets will certainly encourage a host of modelling exercises and applications of modern econometric techniques to be undertaken.

For the authors the publication of this study constitutes – at least for the time being – the end of a collaboration on monetary history that in various forms and with varying intensity spans more than a decade. Our collaboration – in particular the writing phase during the last few years – has challenged us to derive insights and qualities which go beyond what we brought to the table at the outset. As authors we all have an equal stock in this book. We share responsibility for its weaknesses as well as for whatever praise it might receive. Stating this is more than mere form, but genuinely reflects how we as a team have approached the project. Together we have discussed the data and how to assess the insights they provide, developed the overall analytical framework and formed the narrative outline. In the process we have read (and reread many times over) each other's drafts, given extensive comments and provided, at times quite substantial, text contributions to manuscripts drafted by the other(s).