What is "grzywna"

Grzywna may refer to:

• grzywna (unit), a medieval weight and currency unit
• Grzywna, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, a village in Poland
• Grzywna, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, a hamlet in Poland

The grzywna (from Polish) was a measure of weight, mainly for silver, commonly used throughout medieval central and eastern Europe, particularly in the Kingdom of Poland and Kingdom of Bohemia .

Grzywna was also a unit of measure of a unit of exchange, and as such used as money in the 10th–15th centuries. Silver ingots acted as commodity money before the widespread use of minted coins. Several different grzywnas developed with their own system of weight and exchange, such as the Kulm grzywna and the Krakow grzywna.