The artist on this Swedish 50 Kronor note was a singer. Who was she, and what was her connection to U.S. numismatics?

I think she's Jenny Lind, but as a kiwi I haven't a clue on her connection, unless she was the collector.

The 50-kronor note from Sweden features Jenny Lind. My co-author Ann M. Zakelj, gave me one of these when she returned from one of her many visits to Europe. A couple of weeks later, at the Curious Bookshop in East Lansing, I found Jenny Lind: Songbird from Sweden by Elisabeth P. Myers (Champaign, Illinois: Garrard, 1968); and now the note (in a mylar sleeve) is with the book.

Searching the Internet revealed a second somewhat tangential numismatic reference. "The Songbird and the Huckster," (The Washington Post, February 4, 2002) tells of an performance by the Library of Congress, Libby Larsen's Barnum's Bird (a Choral Opera). See http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-323047.html

The subject of the 50 Kronor note is Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale." Johanna Maria Lind was a very popular operatic soprano of the mid-nineteenth century. I'm not quite sure what the connection to U.S. numismatics is, but I will give it a shot with two somewhat oblique connections.

In 1850 she embarked on an extraordinarily popular tour of the eastern United States, a series of concerts organized by P. T. Barnum. There is a medal, made by Allen & Moore of Birmingham, England, that was probably sold in the U.S. in conjunction with the Barnum tour.

As well, there is a Jenny Lind, California, a village on the road from Sacramento to Stockton, that saw active placer mining during the Gold Rush. I'm certain that some of that gold ended up in circulating U.S. coins.

I think the artist on this Swedish 50 Kronor note is Johanna Maria Lind (6 October 1820 – 2 November 1887). She toured America (1850) doing concerts. The gold-rush town of Jenny Lind, California the named after her.

I'm sure you'll get all sorts of answers about the numismatic link to Jenny Lind. We don't have any examples of the tokens and game counters at the MFA, but we do have a French fan from 1850 that shows several images of her—one of which is strikingly similar to the one on the Kroner. So I thought I'd share.

A female singer on a Swedish note has to be Jenny Lind, "The Swedish Nightingale." (Yup - I just looked it up in the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money - it's number 62 in the Modern Issues volume, same portrait continued on number 64 with more security features). And of course, she's also identified at the cited website.

Leonidas Westervelt compiled a list of Jenny Lind tokens and medals published by the American Numismatic Society in 1921 as No. 5 in their series Numismatic Notes and Monographs. This monograph does not mention the Swedish 50 kronor note. At one time I thought about collecting Jenny Lind medals but the topic was too large and availability too small so I abandoned my quest.