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Privileges of the Germans. SWEDEN IN THE MIDDLE AGE. Coinage; its depreciation. 91
threw open to the former, avenues of commerce
with Russia. Early in the thirteenth century was
founded from Gottland the great commercial
settlement of Novogorod, the most ancient
guild-statute of which, in the many Swedish terms it
contains, shows traces of Swedish influence 2. In
the year 1229, the same in which the Pope forbade
through the bishop of Linkoping the Russian trade,
a convention was formed in Gottland between the
traders ofWisbyand Riga, and the Grand Duke of
Sinolensko, regarding the trade on the Duna, from
which the wares were conveyed overland to the
Dnieper. From this treaty we learn that the
Russians also traded from Gottland to Lubeck.
The German commercial association on the island
was so powerful, that even the league of the Hanse
towns appears (from recent investigations) to have
sprung mainly out of the connexions formed in
Gottland between the traders of the different cities.
There was a time when Wisby itself excited the
jealousy of Lubeck, but its power was broken by the
invasion and sack of the Danish king Waldemar,
in 1361. The island was soon entirely severed
from Swedish dominion, and Gottland, whose
maritime law had furnished a model to Northern
Europe, continued for a long time to be a haunt
for pirates.
In Sweden all trade, both internal and foreign,
was confined to the Germans. The first
commercial privileges of Lubeck were granted by Earl
Birger about 1250, and the charter refers to others
which the town had enjoyed since the end of the
preceding century, and the time of king Canute.
These privileges were afterwards extended to
Hamburg, Riga, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, and
generally to all the Hanse towns. Their clerks
and agents 3 obtained the right of settling in
Sweden and living under the Swedish laws, of
importing their wares toll-free, and of transporting them
from the Baltic, if they thought fit, by the land
road across Sweden to the North Sea, of selling
salt and travelling with their wares through the
interior. One consequence of the commercial
power of the Germans was shown in the authority
they exercised in the Swedish towns, and in their
tyranny in Stockholm, in the time of king Albert.
Even under the reign of Christian I. complaints
were made that all the municipal offices of the
capital were so crowded with Germans, that
hardly one was left for a Swede, unless he chose to
be a beadle or a gravedigger 4. On the other hand,
the corresponding rights which were stipulated for
Swedish traders in the treaties with the Hanse
towns, were it is plain never available for them.
Some attempts were made to abridge the
commercial immunities of the Germans, but these had
no other effect than that of temporarily interrupting
the traffic. Charles Canuteson indeed, when
application was made to him for their renewal, is said
to have replied, that if the Hanse association
would not come to Sweden, they might stay at
home ; but that the restrictions imposed did not
answer their purpose is manifest from the
ordinance of the council at Telge in 1491, in which they
declare, that upon perusing the " register of the
kingdom," they had observed what advantage and
profit the realm obtained at the time when the
Germans had licence to trade in the country,
themselves buying up in the places of staple the wares,
which then there was no need to carry abroad, a
course that had led only to confusion and the gain
of the Danish towns. For this reason free markets
were now appointed to be held every year for six
weeks, at Calmar, Soderkoping, and New Lodose,
(which with Stockholm and Abo, were the chief
trading towns,) where both natives and foreigners
might freely traffic with each other. This was
regarded of the more importance, as the toll formed
one of the principal means of rectifying the
coinage.
Sweden did not possess a coinage until a late
period. If the goods of the buyer and seller were
not of equal value, the difference was made up by
pieces of gold or silver of the size required on the
occasion, usually shaped into larger or smaller
circles, such as are often found in the soil with
marks of abrasion. Trade and piracy brought the
precious metals and foreign coins into the kingdom.
The little silver coins which our elder antiquaries
ascribed to heathen kings are all more recent5.
Among a multitude of foreign coins found in the
earth, a few only have here and there been met
with, which are referred by modern inquirers,
although not unanimously, to the first Christian
sovereigns of Sweden, Olave the lap-king, and Anund
Jacob, although even these appear to have been
struck by English mint-masters. Coins of the
Folkunger kings are found, which may safely be
pronounced of domestic mintage 6. The coinage
was divided into marks, ceres, of which eight went
to a mark ; oertugs, whereof three to an oere; and
pence, of which in Gothland sixteen, in Swedeland
eight, went to an oertug7. Originally a mark of
money corresponded to a mark of silver, but they
soon became so widely distinct in value, that about
the middle of the fifteenth century, a mark of
silver was equal to eight and a half marks
currency. For the restoration of the standard, we
find Magnus Ericson ordering that all traders
bringing specie into the country should carry to
the mint, for every forty marks value of goods, one
mark of silver, and receive in return five of coined
money, deducting half a mark. From the
minute-book of the town of Calmar for 1384, we learn that
this toll was paid on all goods imported, amounting
to more than ten marks in value, with the
exception of provisions 8. In 14/6, was abolished an
abuse prevailing in several of the staples among
those charged with the collection of the tolls, of
receiving beer instead of silver 9.
2 See the document itself in Sartorius, ii. 16.
3 Termed Sveni in the original charter granted by Earl
Birger, preserved in the archives of Lubeck (Sartorius ii.
52), not Sueci, as we read in several copies, even that printed
in Swedish Diplomatarium. Sveni means servants (svenar),
or apprentices, answering to the knapar, as they were called,
who in the guild of Novogorod were subordinate to the
masters.
4 See the letter of the Dalecarlians, enumerating their
complaints against Christian I. in Memoirs for the History
of Scandinavia, vol. v.
5 Compare Observations on the oldest Swedish Coins, by
J. 11. Schroder, in Transactions of the Academy of Science,
History, and Antiquities, vol. xiii.
6 The Law of Upland speaks of stamped oertugs.
? Towards the end of the Catholic period, whole and half
certugs, with smaller change, were the only pieces struck in
Sweden.
8 MS. in the Library of Upsala.
9 Hadorph, Appendix to the Rhyme Chronicle, ii. 299.
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