Merchants and Guests: Laws and Conditions of Baltic Trade Hospitality, Twelfth–Fourteenth Centuries

Abstract

On the medieval Baltic Rim, foreign merchants staying in town for their trade were usually called “guests.” This linguistic connection between otherwise very different languages raises the question of whether, and how far, the medieval coastal societies around the Baltic Sea may have shared common conceptions of trade hospitality and securitization of foreign presence. This paper departs from a critique of the German/Catholic chroniclers’ guest-perspective division of the Baltic people into hospitable and unhospitable communities and argues that trade hospitality was an ambivalent enterprise that was never unconditional and always negotiated between the guests and their hosts. Indeed, from the latter’s perspective, treaties with foreign merchants raised the question of the level of safety they were prepared to provide. This meant considering not only in which ways they could benefit from their openness, but also to what extent they were ready to commit themselves toward the strangers and to protect them. In any case, trade hospitality was never unconditional, and the status of guests included rules and boundaries, such as reciprocity or peacekeeping that the rulers and the local populations expected the foreign merchants to abide by. If they did not, the hosts had to find ways to force them to comply with their expectations—if possible without them off.

On the medieval Baltic Rim, foreign merchants staying in town for their trade were usually called guests. Although speaking very different languages, the people of the Baltic not only used remarkably similar words to refer to strangers—gast in Middle Low German, gæster in Scandinavian languages, and гocть (gost’) in Old Russian: they also used these terms in similar ways. Such terms have received little comment, and the attention they have received has often been from narrow, national points of view.¹ Yet, the linguistic similarities underlying the term guest raise questions of whether, and how far, medieval coastal societies around the Baltic Sea might have shared common conceptions of trade hospitality.

This problem is too vast to be addressed in its entirety here, since it would, among other things, require precise comparative investigations on the evolution of the notion of “guest” within Germanic, Scandinavian, and Slavic languages and on their linguistic relations to each other.² For the purposes of this volume, the focus will fall on the issues that the reception of foreign merchants and the securitization of their trade raised within host communities. Indeed, trade hospitality has until now mostly been considered from the guests’ perspective. The dangers of traveling and staying within a foreign community have been well emphasized, although it is equally clear that such risks never prevented merchants from searching for profit abroad.³ On the other hand, scholars have paid scant attention to the threats that such guests posed to their hosts, nor to the hosts’ attitudes toward guests—even if such aspects are occasionally alluded to in studies on trade diplomacy.⁴ In this respect, introducing the notion of trade hospitality allows us to question the principles of such a diplomacy. To what extent were the Baltic communities prepared, able, and willing to provide safety to foreign merchants, and under what conditions?

Investigating trade hospitality from a legal point of view requires a few conceptual clarifications. First, this particular kind of hospitality was usually not directed toward individuals but toward groups of merchants; the collective dimensions of such hospitality must have had an impact on how communities perceived and provided it. Second, it must be emphasized that in contrast to the frequent references to “guests,” “hospitality” is almost never mentioned as such in the sources about foreign trade, which instead prefer to talk about “peace,” “security,” or “protection.” Trade hospitality was, indeed, quite different from hospitality in its narrow sense: most of the time, it was codified by oral or written trade agreements, and trade hospitality did not necessarily involve the provision of food, drink, and shelter to the guests. From a legal standpoint, we may therefore assume that, rather than being a right that foreigners—or groups of foreigners—would have been entitled to, hospitality toward merchant guests was either a moral principle or a political guideline that a community and its rulers could choose to follow when setting out their policies.

This paper focuses on the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, a time of major change within Baltic societies. During this period, the Baltic region experienced Christianization, urbanization, and the creation of increasingly centralized and extensive princely powers, all of which enhanced and were fueled by increased migrations and commercial relations.⁵ This period also coincides with the expansion of German trade and the progressive emergence of the Hanse, to which we will pay particular attention as German merchants are far better documented than their Scandinavian, Slavic, or East Baltic counterparts. Most examples will compare the Scandinavian and Russian communities’ conceptions of trade hospitality through their laws, trade treaties, and behaviors toward foreign merchants. Although Norway is not strictly speaking part of the Baltic Rim, it will be included in this investigation because the notion of guest was used in the same way there, and because its rich documentation sheds light on important aspects of this question.

Departing from a critique of the German/Catholic chroniclers’ guest-perspective division of the Baltic people into hospitable and unhospitable communities, this paper argues that trade hospitality was an ambivalent enterprise because it was never unconditional and it always required negotiation. After considering the actual protections and guarantees that Baltic communities were able and willing to offer to their merchant guests, this chapter will then highlight some of the conditions under which safety could be provided. It will end by illustrating some of the strategies that host communities could adopt when guests did not satisfy these conditions.

Hospitable and Inhospitable Communities?

When writing about pre-Christian Baltic openness to strangers, Catholic chroniclers tended to divide communities into either hospitable or hostile nations. Adam of Bremen stated that many of the pagan Slavs living in Fehmarn and Rügen were “pirates (pyratis) and very cruel bandits, who spare none of the people who pass by.” The Curonians were considered to be a “very cruel people,” and their dreadful reputation continued to be evoked in the thirteenth-century Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, according to which the Christians who came to their land “were robbed of life as well as goods.”⁶ On the other hand, the Bremen schoolmaster praised the equally pagan Sambians or Prussians for being “very human people, who present themselves to help those who sink in the sea or are attacked by pirates,” while “no people can be found who are more honest and benign in character and hospitality” than the Wends.⁷

May we speak of trade (in-)hospitality in all these cases? It is true that while Adam of Bremen uses the word hospitalitas in its strictest sense—i.e., as a reference to the food, shelter, and bed the Swedes and the Wends used to give to their visitors—other communities were described as helpful and friendly, but not explicitly as “hospitable.” However, the relevance of such a distinction remains doubtful, since the sources from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries confirm that intercommunity business relationships were frequently coupled with friendly personal ties. According to Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae, the German merchants were “bound by friendship” with the Livs from the Daugava region, which allowed them to support Bishop Meinhard’s (c. 1135–1196) efforts to convert them in the late twelfth century. This mission led to the Christianization of Livonia, i.e., modern-day Latvia and southern Estonia.⁸ The first statutes of the German settlers in Gotland start with extensive regulations about intercommunity marriages, which suggests that such unions must have been frequent.⁹ In 1331, the German merchants in Novgorod were informed by “Russians who were their friends” that a mob was gathering to besiege their yard amid a larger conflict between the guests and their hosts.¹⁰ Hospitality, when provided by a whole community to a guest merchant or a group of merchants, should therefore be considered, in a broad sense, as friendliness and openness to foreigners.

The narrative sources’ conception of hospitality as a natural feature that a community either possessed or not is obviously a one-sided view. Given that the aforementioned account of the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle was meant to announce—and justify—military campaigns against the Curonians, its depiction may have reflected the hostility of the latter toward Christians, rather than reflecting some fundamentally inhospitable nature. On the other hand, as most of these testimonies likely conveyed the opinions of German merchants and/or Catholic missionaries—two categories of actors who frequently followed each other’s tracks—we may assume that they also reflected the geography of German or—more generally—Catholic merchants’ trade agreements in the Baltic. Later comparisons have shown that the learned and abstract concept of pirate was usually not mobilized as a description of an objective social reality, but rather as a way of discrediting or criminalizing enemies.¹¹ When speaking out against Estonian banditry at sea, Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae also blamed the Gotlandic merchants for refusing to break their trade agreements with the pirates.¹² Although some communities might have been more open than others, most of them were probably hospitable to some extent, to some guests, and under certain conditions.

Moving from the guests’ to the hosts’ perspective, one may ask why a given community would open up to foreign merchants and intercommunity trade during the Middle Ages. Different actors may have had different interests and positions, although the sources usually do not reflect those clearly. Some rulers undoubtedly found openness profitable. In 1161, Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony (r. 1142–1182) confirmed the Gotlandic merchants’ rights in his duchy, but asked them in return to “visit [his newly re-founded] harbor of Lübeck more diligently” in order to increase its commercial revenues.¹³ A century later, the Swedish ruler Birger Magnusson (r. 1290–1318) used the support of the German merchants in order to strengthen his own domination in the region around Stockholm, which at that time was growing in prominence.¹⁴ Such policies may have benefited some social strata of the local communities, especially those involved in external trade. In some cases, they may even have been lifesaving, like when German merchants ended a famine in Novgorod by importing meals and supplies, as the First Novgorodian Chronicle reports s.a. 6739/1231.¹⁵

On the other hand, uncontrolled openness carried its own risks. Sverris saga reports that King Sverre Sigurdsson of Norway (r. 1184–1202) once expressed his appreciation of foreign trade in a public speech in Bergen in 1186. He praised English merchants for “bringing wheat and honey, flour and cloth,” that is, “such things that make this land richer, and we cannot do without.” But at the same time, he condemned the Germans,

who have come here in great numbers, with large ships intending to carry away butter and dry fish, of which the exportation much impoverished the land; and they bring wine in return, which people strive to purchase, both my men, townsmen and merchants.¹⁶

Sverre concluded by declaring: “If they wish to preserve their lives and property, let them depart at once; their business has become harmful to us and to our realm.”¹⁷ This was the speech of a king who defended the interests of his whole realm. At the same time, it gives the impression that while the land was impoverished, some elites—“my men, townsmen, and merchants”—may have found it beneficial to trade with the Germans. Within the host community, one may thus identify at least three different categories of actors: those who were willing and able to involve themselves in external trade, those who were not, and finally the rulers—sometimes backed by religious institutions—who negotiated with the foreigners in the name of the community, but may also have taken care of their own interests in the process.

Providing safety—But at What Cost?

One of the merchants’ main expectations as guests was for safety during their travel and stay. In the High Middle Ages, this was not self-evident. Travel stories and saga literature insist on the multiple dangers of mobility, and examples of shipwrecks, attacks by robbers, or outbreaks of xenophobia are plentiful in the sources.¹⁸ These sources often reflect the viewpoint of guests, and they have led scholars to conclude that without specific treaties, privileges, and trade peace agreements, the legal status of foreigners would have been very precarious within medieval societies.¹⁹ From the community’s and its ruler’s perspective, however, such treaties raised questions over what level of safety they were prepared to provide. This meant considering not only the ways in which they could benefit from receiving foreign merchants, but also to what extent they were ready to commit themselves toward the needs of the merchants.

Implementation was an especially crucial issue when considering the protection on offer to the guests during their comings and goings. The many uncertainties of the maritime Baltic environment and its sparse population may explain the hosts’ reluctance to guarantee their guests’ safety while traveling. When the German and Gotlandic merchants renewed their treaty with Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavich (r. 1266–1271) of Novgorod in 1268–1269, they claimed that princely protection should start from the moment the merchants passed the island of Berkö (Koivisto) in the Gulf of Finland. This claim was apparently dismissed, since the final treaty stated that princely jurisdiction would start only at Kotlin (Kronstadt), i.e., 60 kilometers to the east.²⁰ It seems that the prince refused to extend his protection as far as the merchants wanted him to, since this would have obliged him to guarantee their security in areas he did not actually control. The reluctance to protect may have been even stronger on the part of those princes whose lands did not form a stopping-point, but were instead only traveled through by merchants en route elsewhere.

Accordingly, the safety provided by princes to merchants en route through the Baltic region was different and, in some respects, less extensive than in other North European regions, although the terms used to refer to such safety were sometimes the same. For instance, in the Rhine valley, the thirteenth-century conductus referred to an extensive safeguard whereby a prince promised compensation for any loss that a merchant would suffer on his lands, provided that the merchant had paid the requisite tolls and, sometimes, a specific tax.²¹ Evidence of a similar system exists on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, but it is unusual and rather unrepresentative. In 1224, Vitslav I of Rügen (r. 1221–1250) promised the merchants from Lübeck that if they were robbed and the thief could not be arrested, he would “reimburse what has been robbed personally.”²² In 1254, Duke Wartislaw III of Pomerania-Demmin (r. 1219–1264) promised all merchants who wished to visit his newly founded city of Greifswald—probably in order to make it more attractive—that if anyone happened to lose goods by spoliation in a well-defined maritime area around Rügen, he would reimburse them with double the value of their loss.²³ Such guarantees may have influenced the claims made by German merchants for compensation in even more remote regions. In their complaints to an unnamed prince of Vitebsk (c. 1300), the consuls of Riga, whose merchants had been tied, beaten, and robbed, demanded that he “repay their goods to these people, to whom all this happened on your lands and in your city.”²⁴ However, such claims remained infrequent and were usually dismissed. The German conductus never became dominant in the Baltic basin.

Although the word conductus was used by the Slavic and Scandinavian rulers from the thirteenth century onwards, especially in their relations with the German merchants who may have imported this concept, the level of protection it offered seems to have been much more modest than its Rhenish equivalent. This safeguard was usually free of charge for the individual guests—although the beneficiary group or city may have paid the prince to ratify the agreement.²⁵ On the other hand, the ruler claimed no responsibility if his guests were attacked by his enemies or by bandits. At best, he would order his officials to help the victims recover their goods, as the Danish King, Erik Menved (r. 1286–1319), did in 1287 after some merchants from Lübeck had been robbed under his conduct in Estonia.²⁶ Similarly, the Swedish Duke Erik Magnusson (r. 1302–1318) wrote to Lübeck City Council in 1312 “about the goods that have been unjustly robbed from your burghers on the Neva river, under our conduct,” and promised to “intervene carefully in our lands and cooperate with you as well as we can.”²⁷ Repayment was an option only if the prince’s own officials were responsible for the loss, as suggested by Count Henry of Oldenburg’s (r. 1233–1271) promise in 1262 that “we and all those who are or were at our service will bring no harm to [the merchants’] and their friends,” or the duke of Wolgast’s promise of “free conduct without any demand from our bailiff or officials” in 1302.²⁸ In this respect, the mid-fourteenth century Hanse cities may be considered as an intermediary ground where both levels of protection coexisted.²⁹

The insufficiency of the conductus that the Baltic coastal communities were able to offer to their merchant guests may be explained by its maladjustment to a vast, scarcely populated, and mostly maritime environment. In the Baltic Rim, notions of conductus or protectio were frequently combined with more specific provisions, such as immunity in case of shipwreck, which granted survivors the right to keep salvageable goods. The customary ius naufragii, according to which stranded goods belonged to those who found them or to the local lord, was one of the most hotly debated legal issues in the thirteenth-century Baltic, and many rulers were urged by German merchants and by the church to abolish it in their lands.³⁰ In Livonia, immunity in case of shipwreck was usually associated with free access to the coast, the merchants being allowed to cut wood to repair their boats, to feed their horses in the nearest meadows, and even to search for, capture, and prosecute thieves.³¹

When it comes to the Novgorodians, they manifested their hospitality to their “winter guests” by taking them “on the prince’s hand” (uppe des koninges hant, according to the German translation of the 1269 treaty), i.e., by sending an escort to meet them at the mouth of the Neva.³² Such safeguards are mentioned in the First Novgorodian Chronicle, which states that Russian and German merchants interrupted their trade with the Novgorodians after they had been attacked by the Varangians in different places around the Baltic, and that “they sent no envoy to the Varangians, but they sent them away without peace.”³³ In contrast, Prince Andrey III Alexandrovich of Novgorod (r. 1294–1304) promised the German merchants that “if the way was not clear for them through the rivers, the prince would send his man to lead these guests and inform them.”³⁴ Such guarantees were appreciated and even requested by the German merchants; but from the hosts’ perspective, they may have been considered advantageous too, since they were easier to provide than compensation in the event of loss.

In comparison, safety may have seemed less difficult for the ruler to provide once merchants reached their target city. In this respect, the main objective was not to prevent trade conflicts between guests and local population, for such conflicts were almost unavoidable, but rather to prevent them from escalating by elaborating upon common tools of dispute settlement.³⁵ Most of the time, the main issue was whether and to what extent the ruler would allow local customs and legislation to apply to the guests to the same degree as they applied to the locals, i.e., whether the former would be entitled to fair trials. This principle seems to have been commonly granted by Scandinavian rulers. For example, in Sweden, Earl Birger Magnusson (r. 1248–66) promised the Lübeckers that they would be judged “according to the laws of the land” (secundum leges patrie)—a right that was soon extended to people from other cities as well. Similarly, in Norway, the thirteenth-century Law of Gulathing stated that “every man is worth a trial when it comes to his goods,” and that “all foreign men coming to this land shall be given the same legal treatment as peasants.”³⁶ Most of the guarantees that the princes of Novgorod and Smolensk offered their guests show a close affinity to Russian domestic law.³⁷ Trade agreements sometimes even adapted the law of evidence when it was deemed too unfavorable to the guests. The so-called “treaty of the unknown prince” of Smolensk, which may have been elaborated around 1240, declared that

when a Smolensker trades with a German, the Smolensker will not take only a Smolensker as a witness. And similarly, a German will not take only a German as a witness. They will have to take both a Russian and a German as witnesses, and so it will be about testimony for all quarrels between a Smolensker and a German.³⁸

Similarly, a privilege issued by King Erik Menved allowed Dutch merchants from Harderwijk to “freely use the German tongue or another that they know” when they had to take an oath before a Danish court.³⁹

A trickier question was whether the guests should be allowed to form autonomous associations and jurisdictions within the host community. Travel associations (Fahrtgenossenschaften) existed at different levels, and some of them were even a prerequisite to long-distance trade, since they helped the merchants to defend themselves collectively or arbitrate internal disputes.⁴⁰ But from the local ruler’s perspective, acknowledging autonomous guest jurisdictions could mean sacrificing some of his own authority and risking being perceived as unjust by his subjects. The responses to this question, in form of concrete provisions, varied significantly from one marketplace to another; indeed, they varied not only according to the communities’ level of hospitality, but also to the number of guests and their specific demands. In Gotland, the German merchants had their own church, which they had started to build in the late twelfth century and which was consecrated by the bishop of Linköping in 1225.⁴¹ In Novgorod and Smolensk too, the guests were allowed to build their own church, along with a courtyard where they could lodge and gather during their stay—the Peterhof of Novgorod—although some of them continued to find lodging outside.⁴² In 1298, Polish Duke Władysław I Łokietek (Ladislaus the Short, r. 1267/1320–1333) allowed the merchants of Lübeck to build a yard (pallacium) in his city of Gdańsk, “in which they shall store their goods and merchandise and judge all their judicial, civil, and criminal cases.”⁴³ In Scania, where thriving seasonal fairs developed around the herring fisheries in the late twelfth century, small land concessions (vitten) were given by the Danish kings to the many German cities involved in this trade. These agreements allowed the city councils to appoint their own bailiffs to settle internal disputes among the merchants, whose huts (boden) piled up in the vitte.⁴⁴ On the other hand, no such infrastructure is known in the Swedish kingdom except for Gotland, perhaps because the well-attested winter guests were few enough to be lodged by the trade cities’ inns and their burghers.⁴⁵

Yet, within the confines of the host community, providing safety to foreign merchants was never an easy matter. When giving legal guarantees to his guests, a ruler always had to consider not only his own interest, but also the interests of his population: to what extent were locals willing to provide hospitality to trading merchants? The evidence from Novgorod shows how easily conflicts could escalate and spin out of the prince’s control. For instance, in the late thirteenth century, a German embassy was dispatched to recover goods that had apparently been stolen from the merchants sometime before.⁴⁶ Although the emissaries never actually met the prince, the report they addressed to their home cities shows that he accepted no responsibility for misdeeds that had allegedly been committed against his will. In a meeting between the German emissaries, the Novgorodian alderman Symen, and four of the prince’s men, the alderman shifted liability on to the ruler, according to the “letter of justice that the Lord Prince had elaborated between him, us, and the Germans”—i.e., Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavich’s treaty of 1269. However, one of the prince’s men responded:

What does the Prince have to do with this? The Lord Prince does not have these goods, you Novgorodians have them and you shared them with your smerdis. The smerdis are yours and therefore you must respond by the law.⁴⁷

As no agreement could be reached, the Germans ultimately left Novgorod empty-handed. On their way home, they were overtaken by a princely emissary, who insisted that the prince had sworn his innocence in this case, and that although the Novgorodians claimed they wanted to keep their written agreements with the Germans, they had the spoils and were the only party responsible for the robbery. Therefore, the prince said, “‘if you are men, give them back what they have done to you, and reciprocate as well as you can.’”⁴⁸ This utterly surprising behavior suggests that the merchants may have been the collateral victims of an internal conflict between the prince and the Novgorodians. Unable to provide safety, he had no option but to encourage his guests to retaliate themselves.

It thus appears that the safety of guests could never be taken for granted. Although both the prince and the Novgorodians seem to have been aware of the commitments they had sworn and written down, and of the legitimacy of their guests’ claims—the only disagreement between them was about liability—they had failed to provide the protection they had promised. On the other hand, whereas safety on the way raised the question of a ruler’s ability to control his sometimes vast lands, the case makes clear that safety on the spot also depended largely on the various components of the host community’s friendliness toward the guests and its willingness to engage in trade.

Conditions of Trade Hospitality

Trade hospitality was everything but unconditional. As discussed in the introduction to this volume, the status of guests included rules and boundaries that rulers and local populations expected foreign merchants to follow. Most importantly, the presence of merchants was accepted only because it was judged beneficial or even necessary to the community.

Although economic interests must often have played an important role in how communities welcomed merchants, they were rarely spelled out in quite so much detail as they were in the above-mentioned speech of King Sverre, where English merchants were far more preferable to the troublesome and undesirable German trade.⁴⁹ Indeed, most trade treaties discussed in this paper were issued by rulers concerned with expressing their superior rank, which usually left little room for expressions of gratitude.

The host communities mostly made their economic expectations clear in periods of food shortage, as illustrated by the letter that the bishop of Polotsk sent to Riga in the late thirteenth century about a newly reached trade agreement:

I was not at home but with my father the metropolitan; but now I am back to my position and to St. Sofia, and I have heard of your lawful friendship with my son Vytenis. Just the same, my children, was your first friendship with the Polotsker, my children: all what you need shall be yours; and you, make sure that my sons will not lack of what they need. You may now bring grain to Polotsk.⁵⁰

Similarly, when Lübeck suspended its trade with Norway in the mid-thirteenth century, King Haakon IV Haakonsson (r. 1217–1263) had no choice but to ask them to “send us your ships in the summer as usual, with grain and malt, and allow our merchants license to trade, for there is a scarcity of such things in our kingdom.”⁵¹ The same vital need for foodstuffs appears in the background of King Magnus III of Sweden’s (r. 1275–1290) charter to the German and Scandinavian merchants of Gotland from 1276, which allowed them to go and sell their goods at their discretion, “unless there is such dearth that no one, wherever he comes from, may refuse to sell his grains and meat.”⁵² Although Western luxury cloths were undoubtedly highly appreciated, the Baltic communities could do without them; foodstuff, on the other hand, was considered much more necessary, especially in periods of shortage.

Regardless of the Baltic host communities’ commercial interests, we may identify at least four legal conditions that they imposed on their guests: reciprocity, observance of spatial and temporal boundaries, legal compliance, and peace-keeping.

(1) Reciprocity clauses have sometimes given rise to lively debates, since they were, quite inappropriately, considered as evidence that merchants from both parties must have taken part in long-distance trade. The most famous example of such discussions is the so-called “Treaty of Artlenburg” concluded by Duke Henry the Lion with the Gotlanders (1161), whose reciprocity clause has for a long time been interpreted in German scholarship as a sort of Trojan horse meant to help German merchants gain a foothold in Gotland, a claim Scandinavian research has fiercely denied. Most scholars now acknowledge that the sources do not allow for such readings.⁵³

Indeed, reciprocity clauses were frequent in twelfth- and thirteenth-century trade treaties, even in charters given by Scandinavian rulers to German merchants. At the end of his privilege to the Lübeckers, the Swedish ruler Birger Magnusson demanded “insistently that you honor those who would like to come to you from our lands as your people; and in return, we will honor those who come from your city as our people.”⁵⁴ Claims for reciprocity played a major role in the conflict between the Norwegian kingdom and the German cities in the late thirteenth century. In 1285, King Erik II of Norway (r. 1280–1299) offered some liberties to the German merchants, “provided that the merchants of our realm sailing to your cities will have and receive from you the rights, liberties, and other things they used to have in the past.”⁵⁵ One year later, Duke Haakon, later King of Norway (r. 1284–1299), informed the Germans that since a truce had been reached, they would be allowed to stay in Oslo again: “therefore,” he demanded “that you return the favor to our men crossing the sea to your places.”⁵⁶ In 1294, the king and the duke concluded their final treaties with the Germans by stating that its provisions will only be valid “if all liberties are granted by the same cities to our men.”⁵⁷

Reciprocity clauses were especially important in the trade charters granted by the Russian princes, especially those of Smolensk. Prince Mstislav Davidovich’s (d. 1230) treaty of 1229 stated this principle for the first time in its preamble: “a law was written, which must apply to the Russians in Riga and on the Gotlandic coast and equally to the Germans in Smolensk.” This was repeated in practically all of its almost 40 provisions, with sentences such as: “the same right shall be given to the Russians in Riga and on the Gotlandic coast.”⁵⁸ Most provisions contained in the treaty of the unknown Prince of Smolensk (c. 1240) were formulated according to the Russian guests’ perspective, though the provisions always specified that “the same [law] shall apply to the Germans in Smolensk.” This observation is all the more significant as some of these articles refer to a specifically Russian context. For example, Prince Mstislav Davidovich’s treaty specified that Russian carriers would have to help the Germans cross the so-called volok—i.e., to transport their wares from the upper Daugava River to the Dnieper:

And when a Voloker loads German or Smolenskian wares in his carriage to take them over the Volok, and if some of the wares are lost, then all the Volokers shall pay. The same right will be given to the Russians in Riga and on the Gotlandic coast.⁵⁹

Examples like these have led commentators to conclude that such reciprocity clauses were most likely of only symbolic value, since the German-Russian treaties are thought to have fostered German trade in the Rus’, rather than the opposite.⁶⁰ While the merits of such a conclusion are debatable, for the present purposes such provisions illustrate the importance of reciprocity in Baltic conceptions of trade hospitality.⁶¹

(2) Guests had to comply with the spatial and temporal provisions of hospitality. These limitations, however, differed from place to place, and guests were sometimes given the option of negotiating them. Thus, most Russian and East Baltic princes accepted the German merchants’ requests to go further inland and trade with Karelian Finns and other Russian principalities, so long as they did so at their own risk.⁶² But the most important concern was that their guests remained on well-established and secure tracks, as expressed by their promise to provide a “clean way” (Rus. пyть чиcтии; Ger. reyne weg). The guests heading to Novgorod were required to find and take on an envoy for their journey. In the letter that the prince of Novgorod sent to the German cities in 1300/1301, he promised them “three land ways through my lands and a fourth one through the rivers.”⁶³ In 1338, a treaty concluded by the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order and the city of Riga with the Lithuanian prince granted safety to the merchants on both banks of the Daugava and “as far as they can throw a spear.”⁶⁴ The purpose of the last condition must have been to secure a space specifically dedicated to trade in the context of recurring raids.⁶⁵

By comparison, the Scandinavian boundaries of economic hospitality look different, both in shape and in purpose. Most of them were not aimed at securing trade routes, but rather at protecting the realm and its consumers against the negative effects of uncontrolled foreign trade. This is why in Norway foreign trade was prohibited north of Bergen, and the ordinance adopted by the burghers of this city in the name of their king in 1282 denied their guests the right to buy cattle from the inland farmsteads.⁶⁶ In Sweden, the town legislation elaborated by King Magnus Eriksson around 1360 specified that “no guest shall ride up into the land to trade or to require payment of a debt.”⁶⁷ Such limitations may also be explained by fiscal considerations. In any case, even if one cannot exclude that similar limitations had long existed at the local level, most such provisions found in the sources from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—be they in Scandinavia or in the Rus’—seem closely related to the consolidation of princely authority and the constitution of large-scale political entities.

(3) A third condition of economic hospitality was compliance with local laws and customs, even if it was admitted that some of those needed adapting in order to apply to foreigners. In Scandinavia, this aspect was considered a natural counterpart to the legal protection enjoyed by foreign merchants: since the guests were to be protected by the “laws of the land,” they were also expected to abide by them. This condition seems to have been straightforward for the German merchants themselves, according to the principle that the ruler should “make a full complement of justice [‘plenum iusticie complementum’] according to the laws of the land,” which is expressed through very similar formulas in many of their Scandinavian charters.⁶⁸ The Swedish ruler Birger Magnusson’s much-discussed provision allowed Lübeckers to “stay some time with us and live in our realm” if they agreed to “use and be ruled by the laws of our land and henceforth be called Swedes” should therefore be considered as two-sided. It was neither a simple guarantee of safety nor just a means of preventing the creation of autonomous alien communities in the Swedish realm, as has frequently been argued,⁶⁹ but both at the same time, as suggested by the double verb “use and be ruled by” (utantur and regantur) and by the reciprocity clause that immediately follows. Legally speaking, such longer-term immigrants were supposed to cease being guests.

From the Scandinavian rulers’ perspective, such conditions were particularly important for those guests who planned to stay for an extended period of several months, if not years. This type of guest ought to participate in some of the tasks, burdens, and activities that were essential to community life. Admittedly, King Magnus III’s privilege of 1276 exempted all merchants of Gotland planning to winter in Sweden from paying two ordinary taxes, byargäld and allmänningsgäld. These taxes seem to have been paid by all local men, even if their exact nature remains uncertain⁷⁰; but since this provision is not mentioned in any other privilege, Magnus III’s exemption may be the exception confirming the rule. Around 1360, Magnus Eriksson’s Town Law still stipulated that guests had to pay the ordinary taxes “if they stayed in town for Christmas and Easter.”⁷¹ In Norway, Magnus Lagabøte’s Town Law (1276) specified that all men could be summoned to take part in the night patrols, and that merchants were expected to help haul large ships ashore if they stayed in town for more than three nights.⁷² These obligations were deemed to be excessive by the Germans; they quickly negotiated a privilege stating that these obligations would only apply to those merchants who wintered on the spot. After renewed conflicts, the privilege of 1294 exempted all German guests (hospites) from night patrols, but in 1320, a new ordinance insisted that “foreign winter residents” had to abide by the town law just “like other Norwegians” (sæm aðrer Norðmenn).⁷³ Thus, despite the concessions that some merchants managed to obtain, guests remaining in Scandinavian realms over winter were generally expected to contribute to communal life and were liable to the same sorts of duties—including the requirement to defend the realm against external aggressors—as were the regular subjects of their host realm.

(4) Many charters that addressed trade hospitality stressed the importance of upholding of peace, which in its broadest sense meant the absence of war, danger, and violence.⁷⁴ This was especially true for the German-Russian trade treaties. Rather than emphasizing their strong connections with Russian domestic law, they usually expressed their ambition to “restore peace” by creating a law “that would be held by the Russians with the Latin tongue and by the Latin tongue with the Russians.”⁷⁵ However, the notion of peace also recurs throughout the preambles of German-Scandinavian trade treaties, such as Henry the Lion’s treaty with the Gotlanders (1161), which sought to “replace the bad dissension between the Germans and the Gotlanders with the old unity and concord,” and to put an end to “the various wrongdoings – which are aversions, enmities, homicide – caused by the dissension of both people.”⁷⁶ Birger Magnusson’s charter to the Lübeckers similarly insisted on the necessity of restoring a former peace, for “if the quarrels and disputes wisely settled by our ancestors must be revoked again and again in vain, men will never be able to find the secure concord of peace.”⁷⁷ Vague statements such as these were, of course, especially prominent in those treaties aimed at ending a period of conflict. The principle they express may, however, be seen as the base of all other conditions of trade hospitality.

Indeed, although the responsibility for keeping the peace lay with both parties, the hosts clearly expected their guests to attend to this closely. This was explicitly stated by the Novgorodians in 1331, after two Russians had been killed in a night-time scuffle with a small group of armed and, apparently, drunk Germans in Novgorod. The next day, according to a merchant representative who reported this episode in a letter to Riga City Council, a mob gathered in front of the Peterhof and demanded compensation. Lengthy negotiations then ensued between the Germans and the Novgorodians and their officials, who allegedly threatened to kill all the guests. To settle the case, the Germans were finally summoned to “kiss the cross”—i.e., to take an oath—affirming a letter that reported the incident by presenting the Russian behavior in a very favorable light. Although humiliatingly biased, this account is of interest because of how it idealizes the Novgorodians’ reaction. They apparently told their guests: “Come and see the wounded and the dead. Why did you run out with an army in the night? You are not our lords, you are guests!”⁷⁸ One cannot discount the possibility that this account had been forged or exaggerated by the German merchants themselves, since they were trying to defend their position. At any rate, it seems clear that endangering the peace by brandishing arms and fighting with them constituted a severe offense against this fundamental condition of hospitality. In fact, a violation of this condition would most likely lead to an interruption of hospitality.

Expelling the Guests—Or Retaining Them?

This raises the question of how the local population and authorities reacted when they thought that their guests did not abide by the conditions of their hospitality. What resources did they have to punish guests who violated peace, or who refused to comply with the local customs or submit to local justice? Arguably, the severity of the hosts’ response to violations of such conditions depended on the gravity of the guests’ offense. We may, however, highlight some typical strategies adopted by the host communities in order to solve this type of problem.

The most extreme way to deal with hostile guests was to expel them. As foreign merchants could hardly maintain themselves within a host community in which they had no support, the revocation of hospitality appears to have been a frequent consequence of more serious conflicts between hosts and guests. The Novgorodians expelled the so-called Varangians after their attacks on Russian and German merchants in 1188. This conflict seems to have lasted for twelve years, since in 1201, the First Novgorodian Chronicle states, “they let the Varangians go over the sea without peace.… And in the autumn the Varangians came by land for peace; and they gave them peace at their own will.”⁷⁹ As a much later example, in 1397, the Lithuanian Prince Vytautas the Great (r. 1392–1430) suspended the trade peace (kopvrede) that the German merchants enjoyed in Polotsk and gave them four weeks to leave.⁸⁰

In the twelfth century, such interruptions of hospitality were especially frequent when merchants were suspected of colluding with missionaries. According to Helmold of Bosau (c. 1120–after 1177), German merchants staying on Rügen in the autumn of 1168 were expelled by the Slavic prince after the pagan population had been warned that a priest had accompanied them and was preparing to hold a mass on their territory.⁸¹ According to Henry of Livonia’s Chronicon Livoniae, the pagan Livs decided that all clerics who stayed in Livonia after Easter should be killed, and that “the [Christian] merchants who remained there would be killed” as well. This decision was a consequence of the battle that had opposed Bishop Berthold of Livonia (d. 1198) and his men to the local population during the winter of 1197/1198. In both cases, merchants were, rightly or wrongly, accused of supporting the host community’s enemies. In the latter case, however, the merchants, “taking thought for their lives, gave gifts to the elders” and thus saved their lives.⁸²

Indeed, the unconditional expulsion of foreign merchants seems to have been rather unusual, and it often served as a last resort. So long as foreign trade was perceived as beneficial to the community, terminating all commercial interactions seemed counterproductive. Instead, when the Novgorodians were in conflict with their German guests, they consistently tried to force them to stay, all the while searching for the most favorable compromise possible. This was the case in 1331: the Germans remained confined in their yard for the duration of the conflict to the extent that their customary place of hospitality became as much a prison as a shelter. When a new conflict broke out six years later, the Novgorodians posted their people in front of the yard “and let no man out without their permission.”⁸³ And in 1406, the Peterhof managed to inform Reval that the Germans had been denied the right to leave Novgorod, thereby warning merchants on their way to the city of the danger.⁸⁴ From the Russian perspective, this strategy must have seemed rational, since as long as the guests were kept on site, so to speak, they remained a minority at the mercy of the ruler and/or the mob; conversely, once the guests departed, they gained a bargaining advantage and could negotiate their return more effectively. Such power relations were perfectly understood by the German merchants themselves, who weaponized long-lasting and effective trade blockades for political and economic purposes.⁸⁵

This guest-detention strategy was also a common way to deal with individual criminals. The Swedish town laws make clear that local authorities were concerned with preventing the culpable guest from leaving without first paying compensation for his offenses. When it comes to homicide, the thirteenth-century Bjärköarätt specified that a burgher who had committed such a crime would have forty days to leave town if he did not pay compensation. But, “if a guest kills a man and is found guilty with six witnesses, he shall not leave the city before he has paid the penalty for the murder,” which meant he was to be locked up in order to prevent him from escaping or from being killed by the victim’s relatives.⁸⁶

If successfully implemented, the guest-detention strategy was undoubtedly a softer and preferable alternative to the principle of collective liability that local communities sometimes tried to enforce when the suspect could not be found. This principle was expressed by the Novgorodians in their conflict with the Germans after a Russian merchant was robbed and killed on the Narva river in 1337. According to a German account, the Novgorodian emissaries to the Peterhof declared that the two suspects—merchants named Velebracht and Herbord—were members of the German community, which made the community collectively liable. Because the Germans stated that all those present were innocent, the emissaries declared that “all the Novgorodians have sent us to you, and want you, as a pledge, to lay out as much good as what has been taken from our brothers.”⁸⁷ In some cases, this principle of collective liability could also serve as a justification for the reprisals that the local community might take against a missing suspect’s countrymen. Despite recurring German protestations, retaliation and the seizure of goods remained viable techniques of conflict management, although recent approaches suggest that aims behind such strategies were less about solving conflicts and more about forcing negotiations, and that they were often used in this way by the German cities themselves.⁸⁸ On the other hand, the feuds that might result from retaliation often turned out to be harmful for both communities, which may have made this option undesirable.

From a conflict-management perspective, guest-detention may therefore have been a way of preventing the advantage that foreign merchants could gain from their mobility by forcing them to negotiate from a weak position. As such, it also helped to prevent escalation. On the other hand, the severe conflicts to which the sources bear witness should not overshadow the less serious disputes that often go unmentioned. Trade agreements suggest that minor violations of the conditions of hospitality generated proportional responses. Most of the time, the hosts must have relied on their ability to solve such cases through arbitration or before the local courts.

Concluding Remarks

Baltic trade hospitality from the twelfth to the fourteenth century abided by legal principles and conditions that were often shared across different regions and communities. The most widespread of these principles was reciprocity, which remained customary in Baltic trade agreements even when mentioned it may have been merely symbolic. Another recurrent condition of trade hospitality was the upholding of peace, and more generally the compliance with local laws and customs: foreigners’ presence was accepted as long as it did not jeopardize a community’s security or its internal social order. Other expectations were more community-specific, such as those touching on how guests were to be involved in communal life and duties, which seem to have been especially important in Scandinavia. Trade hospitality often seems to have taken place within specific temporal and spatial boundaries, but those seem to have been thought about differently from one marketplace or principality to another.

Although many Baltic communities were in principle open to foreign merchants, the conditions of trade hospitality were subject to a number of legal, political, and economic considerations that fundamentally revolved around the question of the risks and benefits that the guests’ presence brought to the hosts. Trade agreements and negotiations show that communities and their rulers were concerned with their ability to securitize the presence of foreigners and trade, be it en route or on the spot, and were reluctant to promise protections that they might subsequently be unable to enforce. While the guarantees conceded by Baltic rulers may seem somewhat unambitious compared to those from other regions, the relatively low level of securitization of Baltic trade seems to have been adapted to the specificities of its maritime and scarcely populated environment. In this respect, the limited vocabulary of securitization should not obliterate the significant differences between the effective instances of peace and protections that were granted to strangers.

Altogether, the constant (re-)negotiations of the conditions of trade securitization leave little room for a moral economy of hospitality, where foreign merchants would have been welcomed in accordance with a set of moral values and principles. Instead, commercial openness appears to have been a political choice that a community made after having carefully assessed the profits that it stood to gain.

Notes

• 1. For instance, Swedish scholarship usually considers that foreigners were called “guests” since they were supposed to be lodged by local members of the community (Holmbäck and Wessén 1966: 147–148, n. 182). However true this observation may be for Sweden, it does not apply to the Russian principalities, where many Gotlandic and German merchants remained гocти (gosti) while they gathered in their own courtyards.

• 2. Benveniste (2016: 61–73).

• 3. Fell (1984), Lund (1987), Müller-Boysen (1990), Reuter (1996), Lestremau and Malbos (2013).

• 4. E.g., Grohse (2015).

• 5. For general context, see Blomkvist (2005), North (2011).

• 6. Adam of Bremen: lib. IV, c. 18, 244; LRC, v. 354–356, 9, Jezierski (2020).

• 7. Adam of Bremen: lib. II, c. 22, 79; Adam of Bremen: lib. IV, c. 18, 244–245.

• 8. Henricus: lib. I, c. 2, 2. On the Livonian crusades, see Bysted et al. (2012), Selart (2015).

• 9. Schlüter (1908: 492–499).

• 10. HUB, vol. 2, no. 505.

• 11. On the concept of piracy and how it appears in late medieval sources, see Prétou (2016: 93–116), Höhn (2019: 127–144).

• 12. Henricus, lib. VII, c. 2, 19–20, Henricus, lib. XXX, c. 1, 215–216, Blomkvist (2005: 344–345), Mägi (2018).

• 13. HUB, vol. 1, no. 15.

• 14. Dahlbäck (1998: 22).

• 15. Chronicle of Novgorod, s.a. 6739, 71.

• 16. Sverris saga, c. 104.

• 17. Ibid. Grohse (2015: 67–68, 71–73). Accordingly, the King Hákon Hákonarson’s privilege to the Lübeckers (1247–1248) specifies that “we do not want our merchants to import any Lübeck beer” (DN, vol. 5, no. 1).

• 18. Le Jan (2005), Lestremau and Malbos (2013: 36–44).

• 19. Schultze (1908), Schultze (1911), Thieme (1971), Jahnke (2014: 27), Nedkvitne (2014: 300). Trade peace agreements were frequently issued by host communities and their rulers since the Viking Age in order to provide their guests with some form of legal protection (Fell 1984; Lund 1987). See too Benham (2013). A trade peace (kopvrede) is mentioned in German-Russian trade relations as late as in the 1390s, see HUB, vol. 5, no. 247.

• 20. Goetz (1917: 93).

• 21. This system may have been inspired of the conductus implemented by the count of Champagne to foster the growth of their fairs in the twelfth century, see Dubois (2001), Evergates (2016: 75–79). About the conductus in general, see Craecker-Dussart (1974), Kintzinger (2003), Haferlach (1914), Müller (1991), Rothmann (1998: 81–101).

• 22. UB Lübeck, vol. 1, no. 27.

• 23. Pommersche und Rügische Landes-Urkunden, no. 35.

• 25. E.g., UB Lübeck, vol. 1, no. 215. On the system of customs in the Scandinavian realms, see Jahnke (2019).

• 24. LECUB, vol. 6, no. 3059.

• 26. DD, vol. II: 2, no. 409; DD, vol. II: 3, no. 276.

• 27. DD, vol. II: 6, no. 473.

• 28. UB Lübeck, vol. 1, no. 53; HUB, vol. 2, no. 17.

• 29. On the conductus in the Hanseatic cities: Haferlach (1914).

• 30. On the ius naufragii: Niitemaa (1955), Huschner (2017, 2018).

• 31. LECUB, vol. 1, no. 453.

• 32. Goetz (1917: 93).

• 33. Chronicle of Novgorod: s.a. 6696, 39, Lind (1994), Blomkvist (2005: 461–465).

• 34. LECUB, vol. 6, no. 3061.

• 35. Cordes and Höhn (2018).

• 36. Gutathingslov, c. 34, 20; c. 200, 71; SDHK, no. 629. Nedkvitne (2014: 300).

• 37. It has been argued that some German-Russian trade treaties may have reflected an early Scandinavian legal tradition—supposedly dating back to early Gotlandic-Russian or Swedish-Russian trade treaties—rather than a genuinely Russian one (Yrwing 1940: 208–210; Blomkvist 2005: 447–459). Although the existence of such agreements is very likely, the argument is unconvincing: see Boestad (Forthcoming).

• 38. Goetz (1917: 310), Ivanovs and Kuzņecovs (2009: 516). The Smolensk documents are quoted according to their edition by Aleksandrs Ivanovs and Anatolijs Kuzņecovs, which is the most recent and precise available edition. However, the dating of these charters and especially of the so-called “treaty of the unknown prince” are still debated. As Ivanovs’ and Kuzņecovs’ arguments on this matter are contested, this paper will follow the apparently dominant scholarly opinion, as expressed by Kučkin (1966: 105–106) and Petrukhin (2012: 394–396).

• 39. DD, vol. II: 7, no. 375. Such an adaptation of domestic law should not be interpreted as a form of rationalization of evidence, as often suggested (Cordes 2013: 295–296), but rather as an adjustment to inter-community conflicts.

• 40. Müller-Boysen (1990), Hammel-Kiesow (2015), Jahnke (2017).

• 41. SDHK, no. 434, Jahnke (2011: 29–47).

• 42. These aspects are addressed more specifically in Pavel V. Lukin’s contribution to the present volume. On the Novgorodian trade yards, i.e., the German Peterhof and the Gotlandic Gotenhof, see Rybina (1986). The oldest manuscript of the 1229 treaty of Smolensk (ms. E) mentions a “German church” (нeмeцьcкoи б[oжни]ци), where the guests could keep their own weights. A later addition to this manuscript even mentions “the German houses and yards that were bought in Smolensk” (Goetz 2017: 284–285, 293; Ivanovs and Kuzņecovs 2009: 534, 536). Rybina (2001: 209–210).

• 43. HUB, vol. 1, no. 1288.

• 44. Jahnke (2000: 207–212; 2009: 173–175), Sicking (2016).

• 45. E.g. SDHK, no. 1000.

• 46. Lukin (2017: 525–527), Lukin and Polekhov (2018). This episode has usually been dated to 1292, although an alternative date of the early 1270s has been also proposed: Rowell (1992: 13–16).

• 47. HUB, vol. 1, no. 1093. On the problematic term smerdis, see Lukin and Polekhov (2018: 191–193).

• 48. HUB, vol. 1, no. 1093.

• 49. Sverris saga, c. 104.

• 50. LECUB, vol. 6, no. 3056. The Lithuanian prince Vytenis ruled from ca. 1295 to 1316.

• 51. DN, vol. 5, no. 1; Grohse (2015: 73–76). It may similarly be referred to King Eric II of Norway’s (r. 1280–1299) ordinance of 1282, which forbade German merchants from buying butter or stockfish during the winter, unless they had grain to sell in return (Norges Gamle Love, vol. 3, no. 2, § 2). In 1316, a new ordinance complained about German imports of “strong beer and cloths which our land does not need,” while exporting “what we need most and cannot do without, which is stockfish and butter” (Norges Gamle Love, vol. 3, no. 47); Nedkvitne (2014: 305).

• 52. SDHK, no. 1000.

• 53. HUB, vol. 1, no. 15. The German point of view has been defended, inter alia, in Rörig (1940: 4–13), Brandt (1956), Kattinger (1999: 85–109). For the Scandinavian criticism, see Yrwing (1940: 109–137), Blomkvist (2005: 415–441), Jahnke (2011: 32–36).

• 54. SDHK, no. 629.

• 55. DN, vol. 5, no. 13.

• 56. DN, vol. 5, no. 15.

• 57. DN, vol. 5, no. 23.

• 58. Ivanovs and Kuzņecovs (2009: 529–536), Goetz (1917: 235–236, 259).

• 59. Ivanovs and Kuzņecovs (2009: 532), Goetz (1917: 264–265) (quoted after ms. E), my emphasis.

• 60. Goetz (1917: 165, 247, 262, 273, 303).

• 61. It should be emphasized that this aspect was not specifically Baltic, since reciprocity clauses were also employed during the German merchants’ negotiations with the countess of Flanders in 1252–1253 (Stein 1902: 74, no. IV).

• 62. Goetz (1917: c. 6, 84), c. 1a, 95.

• 63. LECUB, vol. 6, no. 3061.

• 64. HUB, vol. 2, no. 628 § 5.

• 65. Mažeika (1994: 71–72).

• 66. Norges Gamle Love, vol. 3, no. 2.

• 67. Magnus Erikssons Stadslag, Köpmålabalken, c. XXX, § 1.

• 68. This formula recurs with slight variations in Sweden (SDHK, no. 629), Denmark (DD, vol. II: 3, no. 111) and Norway (DN, vol. 5, no. 13), which may be explained by intertextuality.

• 69. Ahnlund (1929: 3–4), Dahlbäck (1998: 22), Gustafsson (2006: 20–21), Kattinger (1999: 438–439), Kumlien (1988: 9–10).

• 70. Line (2007: 231).

• 71. SDHK, no. 1000, Magnus Erikssons Stadslag, Konungabalken, c. XIX.

• 72. Magnus Lagabøtes bylov, lib. VI, c. 3 and 17.

• 73. DN, vol. 5, no. 10, 23; Norges Gamle Love, vol. 3, no. 64.

• 74. About the complexity of the medieval notions of peace, see Fell (1984), Lund (1987), Benham (2011, 189–191).

• 75. Quoted after the treaty of Smolensk, ms. A (Ivanovs and Kuzņecovs 2009: 563). Similarly, Alexander Nevsky’s charter to the Germans (ca. 1259) “put all [disagreements] aside and concluded peace on this law,” on which see Boestad (forthcoming).

• 76. HUB, vol. 1, no. 15.

• 77. SDHK, no. 629.

• 78. HUB, vol. 2, no. 505. My emphasis.

• 79. Chronicle of Novgorod, s.a. 6709, 45.

• 80. HUB, vol. 5, no. 247.

• 81. Helmold of Bosau, c. 108, 374–375. Jezierski (2015: 148–150).

• 82. Henricus, lib. 2 c. 10, 11. Brundage (2003: 34), Jezierski (2020).

• 83. HUB, vol. 2, no. 599.

• 84. HUB, vol. 5, no. 751.

• 85. Poeck (2000), Nazarova (2005).

• 86. Bjärköarätt, c. 14, § 9–10.

• 87. HUB, vol. 2, no. 599.

• 88. There is no room here for a thorough investigation of this legal problem, see, however, Höhn (2021: 294–333).