The Trading Networks of the High North during the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The aim of this article is to sketch the main features of the trading networks that dominated northern Fennoscandia and part of northwestern Russia during the period when the Reformation was introduced in the North, and the following century. By drawing a broad picture of the various actors that were engaged in these interactions in the borderless region in the North, I hope to highlight some of the motivating forces that lay behind their actions, and the kind of “space of action” they had at their disposal. Thus, the focus will be not only on the producers and traders taking part in the exchange of commodities and valuables within the three separate, but partly overlapping, trading networks. The policy of the surrounding states will also be taken into consideration as well: how aspiring government authorities tried to influence and regulate trade, in order to gain more unilateral control over territories and population groups in these regions, and extract some of the production surplus from various parts of the region.