Guests or Strangers? The Reception of Visiting Merchants in the Towns of the Baltic Rim, 1515–1559

Abstract

Long-distance trade brought merchants, skippers, and other visiting traders to the early modern towns of the Baltic rim. This chapter explores how they were received in the visited towns through the court protocols from the towns of Lübeck, Malmö, Stockholm, and Reval covering the period 1515–1559. A spatial perspective on the reception of merchants and traders shows that the level of hospitality granted to visitors depended on their perceived trustworthiness and social standing. The view on visiting traders was conflicted, as they simultaneously offered possibilities for lucrative trade and posed a perceived threat to the social order of the early modern towns.

During the sixteenth century, the Baltic Sea was teeming with ships connecting the towns around it through trade. Intense and expanding long-distance trade brought a variety of merchants, skippers, and sailors to busy port towns. This chapter investigates the reception of the people involved in long-distance trade across the Baltic when they visited foreign towns for trading purposes. I will argue that the traders’ social positions traveled from the home community with them, and affected how they were received in the community they visited. The two main legal constructs that determined a person’s legal identity and rights, burgher and guest, were closely related, and the privileges of the guest were bestowed by the hospitality of a burgher. Many of the visitors who were brought to the Baltic ports by the long-distance trade were not received as guests. This chapter will explore how variations in reception shaped the opportunities and practical circumstances of the visitors, and how visitors were associated with perceived dangers of vagrancy and established social hierarchies within the early modern towns of Lübeck, Stockholm, Reval (Tallinn), and Malmö.

Trade and Space

A spatial approach will be used in this chapter to better understand the position and reception of visiting traders in sixteenth-century Baltic towns. Spatiality is here understood as a tool for analyzing the mutual embeddedness of societal structures and physical space. According to Henri Lefebvre, a physical place cannot be conceptually separated from the social practices that take place in it, as the social practices and the physical scene for them are mutually constructed. The production of a social space can be understood through a conceptual triad: it encompasses the level of everyday spatial practices; the level of the representations of space shaped by power and ideology; and the level of the representational space where the lived experience of spatial practices and the rules and restrictions placed upon them by society come together and engage in discourse.¹ These three analytical levels will be used to interpret the interplay of the practical spatial organization of trade and the social, economic, and legal structures of urban society. Space is a key ingredient for understanding the role of the visitor. The visitor or guest is constructed by individuals physically moving from one geographic place to another, making them temporary visitors rather than permanent residents in the visited town. The three levels of the production of space can be understood in the sense of the physical presence of the visitor, the rules and legislation surrounding their presence in the visited community, and the interplay and adaptions that take place when these two aspects interact. In this chapter, the term visiting trader is used inclusively to describe persons who visit a town in which they do not reside for trading purposes. The terms guest and merchant, on the other hand, were both legally restricted terms that only applied to some of the individuals who traveled to the Baltic towns for trade.

An inspiration for this approach is Douglas Harreld’s interpretation of the relationship between space and trade during the ascent of Antwerp to reach its leading position as a trading city.² It was in Antwerp that the first bourses were constructed, inspiring other mercantile hubs like London and Bruges to follow suit. Bourses have been seen as the precursors of banks, providing a space where financial arrangements could be made.³ Douglas Harreld argues that the movement of large-scale economic transactions into the Antwerp bourse was preceded by the movement of the wholesale trade from the streets and open markets into the private homes of wealthy merchants. Harreld claims that the sixteenth century saw an increasing separation between retail and wholesale trade, where the former continued to be conducted in public, while deals involving larger sums moved into the separate, exclusive space of merchants’ homes. Here, the home would play multiple roles as a showroom, warehouse, and a space for privately entertaining prospective trading partners and closing deals. According to Harreld, this eventually led to the gentrification of the inner city of Antwerp, where common peddlers were banned from selling in the streets.⁴ Inspired by Harreld’s arguments about the central role played by private homes of burghers in the transition from a medieval economy of open trade in markets and streets to more exclusive dealings in bourses and later banks, this study pays particular attention to visitors’ accommodation, the use of private homes for trade, and attitudes towards visiting traders in the open spaces in the Baltic towns.

Research on Urban Social Structures and Trade Networks

It has been claimed that a shared economic culture united the Baltic region, despite conflicts between political rulers and the different languages and religious confessions of the region’s inhabitants.⁵ Researchers have attempted to create an understanding of this economic culture from two angles: that of long-distance trade connecting the different countries and ports, and that of the similarities in the internal organization of the trading towns. This chapter aims to fill the gap between these two perspectives, as they yield conflicting perspectives on the social structures of the communities involved in long-distance trade.

Research on long-distance trade tends to focus on issues such as opportunities, risks, and legal rights at sea and in foreign ports. Emphasis is placed on Baltic merchants as free agents in search of profit in loose, non-hierarchical networks of mid-level merchants.⁶ Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks describe the long-distance trade around the Baltic as different from that of other important regions, like the Mediterranean and southern Europe, because of its small-scale and flexible trading partnerships. They argue that larger companies were rare, and that most merchants would prefer to spread their risk by entering into multiple, separate partnerships rather than organize themselves in large corporations. This created a system that lacked both a narrow elite and large numbers of subordinates, which was a more common way to organize trade in other regions.⁷ The various conflicts between groups of merchants have been studied and understood as reflecting a reality where merchants from different political realms fought over privileges and business opportunities in the Baltic towns, positioning Hanseatics against the Dutch or Scandinavians.⁸ According to Carsten Jahnke, current research remains influenced by an older research tradition that attempted to view the political units of medieval and early modern Europe as the predecessors of later nation states, and therefore only published sources that lead towards such a view, further describing the Hanseatic League as a German federation and military power.⁹ More recent research depicts merchants’ interests in primarily economic rather than political terms, and the agenda behind their cooperation focuses on dealing with threats and obstacles to a successful trade.¹⁰

The second angle of research focused on networks and social positions within the towns, describes the increasing hierarchization of social relations, with the urban population divided into burghers and non-burghers, and the social and political elite of wholesale merchants gradually closing ranks against less affluent burghers.¹¹ Medieval town life revolved around the inclusion or exclusion from sworn brotherhoods and communities. The most important such community was the burghership, whose members were sworn in through a guarantor, and who were expected to pay taxes and help defend and run their town in exchange for the legal rights and privileges bestowed on burghers. At the apex of the hierarchy was the town council, which managed the town’s political and legal system (together with some form of oversight by a representative of the local prince).¹² The guilds were a similar form of community, organizing merchants and craftsmen, although some of them were torn apart by the Reformation during the period covered by this study. In the case of long-distance traders, Anu Mänd has shown that the merchants’ guilds of the Hanseatic towns operated with clear distinctions between burghers and non-burghers, married and unmarried merchants, investors, and wage-earners.¹³ Mänd, as well as Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan, regards the differences between burgher and non-burgher merchants in terms of a life-cycle system, where a young merchant would move into burghership, marriage, and membership of the Great Guild at successive stages of his life.¹⁴ A common characteristic of the fellowship of the guilds, the burghers, and the town councils was that they created trust by how their members were accepted, and through the oaths they all swore: namely, to protect their communities, help the members of the fellowship and obey its rules. John Padgett, examining the politics of the city-state of Florence, argues that the main requirement for election into the ruling group was to be well connected and settled, with social ties within the community, making the individual more likely to live up to his obligations and less likely to cut ties and run from debts and responsibilities.¹⁵

Using spatial analysis to understand the reception and position of visiting traders in the Baltic port towns can help bridge these two different approaches. How does the view of the equal and free mid-level merchant fit into the hierarchical social structures of the early modern towns? What spaces were available to the visiting merchant or trader in communities where one either was or was not a sworn member of a fellowship?

Sources for the Status of Visitors in the Baltic Towns

A starting point for understanding the treatment and reception of visitors can be found in the medieval laws that regulated trade in the early modern towns, as presented in Tobias Boestad’s chapter. Stefan Ullrich has compared the Lübeck law with the laws of the Scandinavian countries in order to establish the extent to which later Scandinavian laws were influenced by earlier Lübeck law. He finds that the terms guest (gäst/gast in Scandinavian and Low German) and guest law (gästrätt/gastrecht) are central to the codes regulating long-distance trade, and that similar content is found in all the legal codes on this subject. The main aim of the laws was to confine guests to wholesale trade and to protect the position of local, resident burghers as middlemen who enjoyed exclusive rights to the retail trade. Guests were limited to selling in bulk to local merchants, and were only allowed to trade with one another under certain circumstances. While guests were subject to limitations in comparison to local burghers, within these confines they did have legal rights and were permitted to trade and file complaints to the court, just like local burghers.¹⁶ Ullrich also claims that the laws that regulated guests’ conduct were introduced to facilitate trade by protecting visiting merchants, as foreigners had previously lacked any legal rights when visiting other communities.¹⁷ The term “guest” was evidently used to describe an individual involved in long-distance trade, since it is mainly mentioned in relation to this activity. But not all traders or visiting foreigners were guests. As Ullrich points out, the laws of the Baltic towns recognized no category of free, independent guests. A guest was a person who was received in the home of a host. Receiving a guest, in the sense used by the law, meant not only providing them with bread and board in your home, but also accepting legal responsibility for their conduct and obligations.¹⁸ In relation to the wider town community, hosts would vouch for their guests. This can be viewed as a security measure: the host would assume the risk that their guest posed to the community by accepting responsibility for any deeds committed by the guest or for any business left unfinished.

The laws on trade are not very detailed: the Lübeck law, which was used in most Hanseatic towns, contains only a few sections dealing with foreign merchants. The interpretation of the relative lack of detail in the laws varies. In Ullrich’s opinion, Lübeck had a more lax and openminded attitude towards visiting traders than did the Scandinavian countries, and this was because the town was so dependent on attracting them that it could not afford to be otherwise.¹⁹ Carsten Jahnke, on the other hand, claims that Lübeck did not have many regulations for foreign visitors because the town did simply not receive many; the port was used mostly for transit and its dealings were mainly run by the local Lübeck merchants.²⁰

As the old medieval laws did not cover the complexity of sixteenth-century trade, and the interpretation of laws and charters varies among scholars, the daily dealings of the local courts provide a fuller account of the reception of guests and other visitors. The primary sources for this study are the court records of the town councils of Lübeck, Stockholm, Reval, and Malmö, covering the period 1515–1559. The records were produced by the local town courts, the running of which was the responsibility of the town councils, and dealt with a variety of cases, big and small.²¹ While the laws and legal structures that produced the sources were similar in all the towns studied, there are some differences worth mentioning. They vary in size, with Lübeck at c.25,000 inhabitants being far larger than Stockholm at about 7000, Reval at 6500 and Malmö at 3000–5000 inhabitants.²² All four towns were, however, active participants in the Baltic long-distance trade occupying strategic positions. Differences in size have one important effect on the source material: Lübeck’s larger population of merchants who were involved in long-distance trade meant that the court of Lübeck was more experienced in dealing with cases about this kind of trade, and this shows up in the records with their more formulaic ways of describing complicated trade relations and transactions involving large sums of money in comparison to records from the other towns. The records from Stockholm and Malmö deal with all sorts of criminal and civil cases, while the records from Lübeck and Reval primarily concern trade law, inheritance, litigation, and foreclosures—most criminal cases there were dealt with in a lower court and did not come before the council unless they involved aspects difficult for the lower court to solve.²³ For this study, the focal point has been cases concerning visiting traders and merchants, which are similarly presented in all the materials. As the laws regarding guests are similar and the Baltic towns have been claimed to share a common economic culture, this study attempts to describe the practices and features that can be found across the region, rather than provide a comparison and discuss differences between the towns. What is analyzed here is the practical realities visible in the court cases, not the views of local rulers on trade or those involved in it, which varied between regions and over the time period of this study.

Naturally, the examples of visitors and their accommodation that appear in the court records capture problems and conflicts, and not the smooth running of daily business. In the cases involving visiting traders, the issues to be addressed might have been raised by the authorities themselves, by local residents or by the visitors, all providing different perspectives on the practices involved in the reception of visiting traders. In this chapter, the visitors will be discussed in two categories: those who stayed as guests in the homes of local burghers, and those who did not and instead lodged on their ships or in rented temporary accommodation. The sources reveal that these two groups were composed of individuals from different social strata, and that the forms of accommodation each group used intersected with established town hierarchies, access to business opportunities, and the perceived threat that the visitors posed to the community.

The Host–Guest Relationship

The positions of host and guest were created when the host provided hospitality to a guest by housing him. The ownership of property within the town walls was important to burghers, as demonstrated by a steady flow of court cases about sales, inheritance, pledging as security, and the foreclosure of real estate. Owning a house in town was not only a matter of having somewhere to live, but also served as the hub of the resident merchant’s business. Most of the work would be conducted from the writing chamber, and goods could be stored in and sold from the house’s cellars. Owning property within the town walls provided the basis for entering the town community as a burgher, and the property could be pledged as a security to facilitate larger investments or pay off debts.²⁴ The possibility of entertaining guests was yet another important aspect made possible through home ownership. The host–guest relationship in the context of daily life can be understood much as it is practiced today: we find mention of food and drink, keeping company by the fireplace, and being offered accommodation for longer or shorter stays.²⁵ However, the relationship between guest and host had another dimension in that providing hospitality to guests was tied to business arrangements and shaped by the legal framework governing trade.

As mentioned above, providing hospitality to a guest was not without its risks, and hosts had reason to carefully consider to whom they extended their hospitality. Hosts were responsible for their guests’ conduct, and in the case of the guest leaving before paying their expenses, the host was at risk of having to pick up the tab. In the court of Reval, Hans Scheper was asked to take responsibility for the debts of the guests he had offered housing to and for whose conduct he was thus the guarantor.²⁶ In an example from Stockholm, the young guest of the merchant “Little” Erik, named Alff, had gone around town making rather shady deals, selling the same hops to several people and using the advance payments to settle his debts, while leaving the buyers with receipts and instructions to come by Erik’s house to pick up their hops. By the time his misconduct was discovered, Alff had left the country.²⁷ Nor were guests safe from the hazards of leaving their wares with a host. In Lübeck, the skipper Hans Barcke filed a lawsuit after some locked chests containing gold and coins had been broken into and emptied at night from a joint storage space where he had left them. The court decided that because the keys to the chests had not been left in the care of the custodian, he was not liable for the missing contents.²⁸

The arrangement that hosts were responsible for their guests lowered the risk that temporary visitors posed to the community, but only at the expense of the individual host who took on the risk instead. Still, there were good reasons for merchants and traders to assume the roles of guest and host. It is clear from the court records that extended hospitality brought advantages to both parties. New charters and cases show that officials considered it problematic when the businesses of the guest and the host were not kept as separate as they should be for taxation purposes. For example, hosts were suspected of housing guests and taking advantage of this position by buying all the goods carried on their ships before they were brought to market, or moving goods into houses or cellars by night, depriving others of the opportunity to make bids on the goods.²⁹ Guests were accused of leaving goods with hosts to sell retail over the year, aiming to collect the earnings later, thus finding their way around the ban against visitors participating in retail trade.³⁰ From the remaining accounts of the Malmö merchant Ditlev Enbeck, Emilie Andersen draws the conclusion that his incomes were largely based on acting as a host for visiting merchants and buying their unsold cargo at a fixed price upon their departure, to sell at profit over the rest of the year.³¹ Despite concerns over guests cutting corners with trade legislation, the town councils were lenient towards visitors considered as guests. In Lübeck, the council judged in favor of the right of guests to equal shares of assets in the case of bankruptcy, so long as they had evidence of the debt.³² In Stockholm, the council forgave illegal actions when a guest, supported with an oath by local burghers, claimed not to have known the law due to not understanding the language.³³

The host–guest relationship sometimes takes the appearance of a long-standing business partnership used by merchants to provide a local base for their business. This could be mutually beneficial, with trading partners sending goods back and forth between their residences. As long as a guest was registered as such with the local officials, and appropriate fees were paid for staying over the winter when the sailing season was over, the guest did not need to stay in town to maintain such an arrangement.³⁴ Trading partners abroad are sometimes described as “hosts,” such as when the merchandise was sent from one town to the other, to the host’s house, while the guest clearly remained in their own hometown.³⁵ It seems the host–guest relationship enabled more efficient partnerships, making it possible for guests to use hosts as covers for getting around the regulations on their trade, evading some fees and enjoying the practical benefits of having a base for trade abroad. To offer hospitality through housing, a house was needed, and to offer the legal privileges for local trade, burghership was required. This is partially in keeping with the intention of the law to reserve the position of middlemen to local burghers, but it meant that only those burghers who had the means to extend hospitality to the right kind of guest would reap the benefits.

The relation between the spatial practices, which involved offering hospitality to visiting trade companions, and the legal framework for handling the risk of outsiders in the community produced an interesting development in the representational space where they met. Merchants appear to have used the concept of a visitor’s need for basic hospitality to bend the legislation to their own best interests by securing exclusive arrangements for burghers and merchants, while keeping those who lacked the same social standing out. By using the exclusive space of their homes to maintain power over who to include or who to leave out, profitable business arrangements could be secured. The physical presence and needs of a visiting guest, over time and through innovative practices, moved through the inflexible letters of the law to be infused with new purpose and meaning in the increasingly complex early modern trading networks.

Allowing visitors into the exclusive space of the merchant’s home could, however, pose risks other than being burdened with the guest’s debts. On October 15, 1547, emotions were running high in the town hall of Stockholm. The widow Anna had been ordered to present herself to the court to “lay off her reputation for a whore.”³⁶ This reputation had been spread by Anna’s recently deceased husband, the iron-merchant Peder Matsson. Before his death, he had spread the word that he suspected Anna of having had relations with a guest who had stayed with the couple previously, a man named Rasmus Jute (from the Danish region Jutland). According to the records, Peder “had a bad thought about this Jutlander, that he had come too close to his spouse, as he always complained to many of his friends,” and the court thought that Anna needed to answer these accusations before she could marry again. What upset the council was that Anna had not obeyed this order, but instead sought refuge with the queen in the castle; the queen offered Anna her support, and forbade the town council from taking any further actions. Anna married Rasmus Jute at church the next day. The town council was outraged that Anna had married her late husband’s “worst enemy.” It seems as if the idea of a guest in a burgher household entering untoward relations with the burgher’s wife was perceived by the council as very problematic, given that they included an account of these events in the records, even though they were not really legal or political matters since there had been no proper trial or formal sentence.³⁷ Marital status was generally one of the differences between journeymen and burghers. The domestic life of a burgher brought status as the head of a household, which would usually include a wife. Accepting a guest into the household was a matter of trust, which in this case appears to have been broken, showcasing again the risks to which hosts were exposed.

The idea of a wife having relations with a guest emerges clearly from Rosa Salzberg’s study of lodging houses in Venice. Salzberg claims that women were often responsible for the day-to-day practical work of offering hospitality to guests. As Venice grew into a mercantile hub, this meant more trade-related visitors, and the increased demand for lodging provided opportunities for women to earn an income. Offering lodging was a way for widows and single women to earn a living while remaining in the domestic sphere, and Salzberg shows that when licenses were introduced for renting out rooms, 60% of the permit-holders were women. Even in households that were headed by a man, it was probably the wife or other women of the household who managed the practical aspects of tending to guests: both male and female hosts had an important role as mediators between visitors and the visited community.³⁸

Although the cases found in the present study are limited in number, there is evidence that widows and other women offered lodging to visitors in sixteenth-century Baltic towns as well. As our material comprises court cases, such evidence is mainly found in lawsuits where widows sought payment from guests. The town councils were generally keen to protect the widows and children of late merchants. In Lübeck, the burgomaster himself paid an outstanding amount owed to two widows, Rykel Kannen and Anneken Knollen, for the debt that Anneken’s late husband had incurred by lodging at Rykel’s house.³⁹ In Stockholm, a man from Gävle had stolen a substantial amount of money from “his own hostess,” the widow of a burgher in town, and the court examined all the ways he had spent it to find out there was nothing left, before they convicted the man and sent him to the gallows.⁴⁰

Staying on the Ships

Not all visitors were received as guests by a burgher or a burgher’s widow. The visiting traders that are represented in court cases are oftentimes instead said to have stayed and lived on their anchored ships or in simple, temporary lodgings. Forming communities of their own, the harbors come across as rowdy places with a range of disturbances, such as drunkenness and fighting, as well as hijacking and piracy on the open waters nearby.⁴¹ This space, constructed by the temporary presence of ships that came and went, existed on the borderline of the town. Some visitors were evidently able to stay for extended periods on the anchored ships, a practice not appreciated by town officials, who repeatedly called on them to attend court where they were told to finish their business and leave.⁴² In Stockholm, a group of such visitors were called to the town hall on November 22, 1550 only to be told that they should conclude their business within six weeks and then leave. This is somewhat remarkable because late November was well past the normal sailing season and not generally considered a safe time to set sail on the stormy Baltic. However, come March the following year they were still in Stockholm and were again called to court, where they were fined, much to their discontent.⁴³ Since people were banned from constructing fires on the anchored ships, it seems a rather uncomfortable way to spend a Nordic winter.⁴⁴

Nor did the ship always offer safe accommodation. For example, two Rostock ship-owners, Jacob Niekarck, and Jacob Föge, had anchored their ship in Malmö harbor. On the morning of September 9, 1558, Jacob Niekarck, accompanied by his coxswain, came to the Malmö customhouse to inform officials that when they awoke on the ship that morning, they were unable to find Jakob’s partner. A group of merchants followed him to the ship and searched it and the belongings of the missing man, before finding him dead in the water a few meters from the ships, wearing only his night garments. After examining the body, the group swore that they could find no signs of violence and it was judged that he must have fallen off the ship.⁴⁵

The men staying on the ships were described by the courts as “jungen knechten,” “kóbswener” or “peberszuenne,” sometimes also skippers.⁴⁶ These are words often used to describe journeymen merchants or merchants’ servants. In the system of long-distance trade, they were usually employees or junior partners of more established merchants, although some of them might have been working entirely independently. While clearly holding responsibility for ships and cargoes, they did not hold burgher status in any town. In the hierarchies of the early modern towns, such men are comparable to journeymen in the craft guilds: i.e., men with some skills and responsibilities, but not (yet) accepted into the burgher community or settled with a household of their own. A journeyman within a craft guild would usually live in his master’s household, but this was obviously not an option available to the traveling journeymen. Some merchants owned houses abroad to house servants and journeymen, or they paid for lodging for their visiting journeymen.⁴⁷ Unlike settled merchants, these journeymen and servants remained on the threshold of the community, socially as well as spatially, traveling from town to town.

Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan depicts this as a life-cycle event, where traveling with ships and goods to foreign ports in the employment of or in partnership with a more senior merchant was a learning process for younger merchants-in-the-making, taking them around the ports of the region to learn the ropes and tricks of the trade in different places and helping them build networks of their own.⁴⁸ However, by this period, very few of the journeymen within the craft guilds could become masters themselves, and many were kept in subordinate positions for a long time, a cause of considerable discontent.⁴⁹ There is an absence of research looking at how many of the merchants’ servants or journeymen merchants eventually became settled as wholesale merchants. However, considering that entry to this community would require both financial resources and support from established burghers, it cannot be taken for granted that this door would swing open for anyone wanting in.

The Pyramid of Trust: Visitors and Security

Visiting traders who were received as guests in the household of a local burgher would be integrated into the legal and social hierarchies of the town, which were based on belonging to a household. When the community could place the responsibility for a visitor’s actions on a reliable burgher, the potential threat to the social order that the visitor posed could be managed. The group of young or unsettled men who stayed with their ships or in taverns and brothels did not fit into this framework. Their presence in such places, as well as in the streets and open spaces, was viewed with suspicion, and the records include numerous complaints about unlawful trade, criminal behavior, and general disturbances, such as drunkenness, fighting, and making noise. In Reval, traveling merchants and merchant’s servants were accused of harming the burghers’ livelihoods by selling goods in the street in open shops and gateways, and for trading with strangers outside the harbor.⁵⁰ In Malmö, this group was accused of drinking in the streets and behind the chapel during mass, and visiting traders were ordered to take up lodgings with burghers.⁵¹ Without a local host and mediator with the community, the risk that such men posed fell on local society and the town councils. The gentrification that Douglas Harreld described in Antwerp, where trade moved into merchants’ private residences and the streets were cleared of peddlers and petty traders, appears to have been an ambition of the town councils of the Baltic region as well, although judging by the court records, it seems to have been rather unsuccessful.

A case registered in the records of the Malmö town council in October 1554 illustrates the sort of behavior that was perceived as problematic. The young servant Peder Iude was sent by his master to settle a debt in Malmö. Upon arrival, the young man first settled in with his host, the burgher Hans Hess, but after having a meal there, he left his host and continued to another burgher’s house, where he spent long hours drinking. Later, he departed from this place as well to wander off to the harbors in the company of two prostitutes, with whom he spent the night in the town inn, bragging about how much money he was carrying with him. Meanwhile, the local bailiff had grown suspicious as there had recently been a number of robberies in the vicinity of the town, thinking that perhaps the young man had not come into his money in an honest way. Thus, Peter Iude was picked up and allegedly beaten up quite badly before his errand was clarified and he was delivered by the bailiff to the house of Hans Hess again. Hess was provided with money for his board and was instructed to keep the young servant inside the house until he had finished his errands. In effect, it seems that the burgher who was the intended host of the young man was held accountable for keeping him off the streets and out of trouble, and the burgher’s home was effectively used as a jail until his young guest left town.⁵² In this case, the spatial practice of receiving guests and the legal framework of making hosts responsible for their guests transformed the space of the host’s home into an ad hoc jail.

In Stockholm, several cases of merchants and journeymen merchants visiting taverns or open houses where drinks were sold ended up in violent court cases. In 1545, two traveling journeymen merchants from Lübeck, Jost Vikman and Bertil Bruntorp, accused a soldier of murdering their colleague, Hans von Kampen, in a house where he was buying drinks alongside a group of soldiers.⁵³ Similarly, in 1553 the merchant Hans Gammal and two of his friends were called to court to defend themselves against the allegation that they, following a night of gambling, had ambushed and attacked another gambler, taking back the money they had lost.⁵⁴

Apart from staying on the ships, paying for lodging in taverns or brothels appears to have been an option for some visitors. In a murder case in Stockholm, several temporary visitors were described as staying in the “house of young Sybil.”⁵⁵ The journeyman merchant Hans Skotte (the Scot) was the prime suspect. On the morning of February 23, 1551, a piper was found dead on the street outside of Sybil’s house, where he had been drinking the night before. Sybil was described as the property owner, charging the visitors for their stay; but it was also said that she had some of the men visit her bed at night. The description of the household includes men of various origins drinking, looking for more beverages, visiting the beds of women in the house, and sleeping piled up together. The residents testified that the piper had been sitting at a window drinking, but would or could not say if his demise came from falling out of the window or from being subjected to some sort of violence. However, they could testify that Hans Skotte had been out on the street late at night. Hans Skotte admitted to having been outside on the street that night and claimed that he saw the piper in the street and kicked the man a few times to find out if he was sleeping or dead, but that he had then returned to the bed of a woman in the house. The woman he slept with supported this testimony. Hans Skotte and the other residents were ordered to attend the court within a fortnight and bring witnesses who could swear to their innocence and good conduct in order to free themselves of suspicion.⁵⁶ The records contain no indication that this happened; instead, there is a note that Hans Skotte married a local woman within a week of the incident and that he became the owner of a property in town and of shares in a ship as part of the marriage settlement.⁵⁷ It is difficult to say whether the marriage had anything to do with the accusation of murder, but it is possible that marrying into the community helped Skotte’s case. He receives no further mention in the case of the dead piper.

An examination of the court records shows that the descriptions of visiting merchants usually included their names, their places of residence, and their positions in their home community, for example, “Valentyn Jerichow, burgher of Wismar.”⁵⁸ Rarely are visitors from other Baltic towns described as strangers or foreigners, nor with epithets like “Germans” or “Danes.” The cases where such terms are used typically describe those individuals for whom no hometown or parish of origin was known. Nor do we find any examples of religious confession being used to distinguish individuals or groups. Individuals engaged in trade were usually described as burghers (borger), councilors (radman/ratsherren) journeymen merchants (köpgesäll/kopgesellen) or servants (sven/diener). Town councilors and burghers from other towns were often referred to as honorable or honest, while the other categories of person usually appear in the sources without any further description.⁵⁹ When dealing with visitors, the town court clearly saw their places of residence and their social standing within their own home communities as the most important attributes.

Although a high level of mobility would appear to be a natural concomitant of the concept of long-distance trade, the transient nature of unsettled visitors appears to have been a concern for the settled burgher society. An example of the conflict between the mobile nature of long-distance trade and the expectations to be settled and loyal to a community is showcased in an incident from the records of Stockholm. In April 1546, a knife fight broke out in the Stockholm customhouse. The journeyman merchant Oluff Larson had complained about the high customs duties, saying that he would henceforth move to Lübeck and instead enroll himself as a journeyman merchant there, where the customs duties there were much lower. He would then be able to come to Stockholm and remain at the docks with the other German journeymen merchants, and no longer bother with Swedish taxation. Erik Swenson, the man responsible for collecting the customs duties that day, told him that because he was born in Sweden, it was his duty to pay his customs duties there, and not in Lübeck. Insults were exchanged and the incident ended with both men drawing their daggers and with both being slightly injured.⁶⁰ This conflict puts into relief the microcosm of the trading world around the Baltic; on the one hand, it displays a greater interest in economic success than in respecting political boundaries and entities, and, on the other, it demonstrates the importance of staying settled and connected and of fulfilling the obligations that came with a social position.

Perceptions of an individual’s honor and trustworthiness mirrored the social hierarchies of the early modern towns, with members of the council on top, resident burghers close on their heels, followed by unsworn members of the community like servants and journeymen, and, at the bottom of hierarchy, were the strangers. Ideas of trustworthiness were closely tied to forms of spatial belonging. Those who had a clear connection and sense of belonging to a certain place, even if not in the town they visited, were perceived as far more trustworthy than were those who did not clearly belong to a specific place. Here again, we can apply the triangular concept of space: inhabiting a home was a spatial practice, but it also had implications within the legal framework of urban society, since those with a fixed address and ties to their community were identifiable and able to be held to account, producing a situation whereby the settled person was viewed as trustworthy and the unsettled as unreliable. However, there is one final group that appears to have been regarded even less favorably than strangers, namely, those individuals who had been members of a community but had later fled to avoid their obligations or had otherwise been excluded from their community. For example, in reference to a burgher who had fled town, leaving others to bear his by debts or legal obligations, the town council of Malmö said that he “has gone and deserted, with no regard for his own obligations, debts or honor, thus placing the poor men, his fellow citizens, who had stood bail for him, in such indebtedness, harm and ruin.”⁶¹ Another case, this one in Stockholm, concerned Jacob Lehman of Danzig/Gdańsk, whose reputation preceded his arrival: his claims to collect money owed to his wife were rejected because it was already known that he had fled his own home to evade his debts.⁶² This pyramid of trust echoes John Padgett’s claim that trust was closely linked to the ties that bound an individual to a community, with burghers and councilors tied to their community through households, sworn oaths, and the ownership of property, while servants and journeymen had weaker ties, strangers had no ties, and those who had been expelled or escaped had severed or destroyed all ties to the community.⁶³ The extended hospitality that created the privileged position of the guest was linked to trust, and trust was based on the bonds to the community that made the visitor less likely to cheat or cause harm.

Concluding Remarks

This chapter has shown that the reception of visiting traders was based on a balance between the potential for lucrative trade they offered and the threat that temporary visitors posed to the social order. Local burghers were willing to accept the risk and responsibility posed by such visitors, but only when they saw opportunities for personal gain in doing so. High-ranking burgher merchants would thus be provided with hospitality in a local burgher’s home and thereby receive social standing and a level of respect in the visited community. Low-ranking journeymen and unsettled traders, on the other hand, might have to stay on their ships or pay for lodging in places of ill repute. The visitors who were not housed with a burgher were viewed as problematic by the local authorities, since no host assumed responsibility for their behavior, nor did their presence fit into the household-based social structure.

Even though the world of long-distance trade was built on geographical mobility, this study shows that there was a strong connection between the concept of a property-owning burgher and the notion of a guest. Burghers were legally privileged permanent residents, while guests were legally privileged visitors. Burghers had access to the property that was required to perform the role of the host, and thereby to turn their visiting trade partners into guests, a mutually profitable arrangement. The embeddedness of spatial, social, and legal structures becomes apparent in how burghers’ homes formed the foundation for the physical reception and handling of visitors and goods, the social position as a burgher in the town community, and the opportunity this provided to endow business partners with the legally privileged status of guest. Guests were granted access to townhouses and shops, which opened up exclusive business opportunities. Journeymen merchants were mostly restricted to staying in rowdy and uncomfortable lodging on ships in the harbor, or in taverns and brothels, excluding them from the business opportunities of those visitors who were accepted as guests by local merchants. Their position outside, or, at most, on the threshold of the burgher community, was spatial as well as legal and social.

These findings do not undermine the concept of equal trade relations between mid-level merchants that has often been presented in previous research. Rather, the point is that the terms merchant and guest do not encompass everyone involved in the trading networks, but instead refer only to the privileged elite of this community. The relations between two resident burgher merchants, sending goods back and forth between their respective residences, is one of the trade arrangements visible in the court records. Such people were members of sworn communities, owned properties, and were considered trustworthy and attractive partners in the trading networks. However, much of the actual traveling and trading was conducted by other groups of people who had not yet achieved this status—and might never do so. The partnerships of the Baltic region might have been smaller in scale than those of the Mediterranean, but there was no shortage of subordinates. Individuals who had not attained full membership of the community of the trading networks of the Baltic are not fully captured through terms like guests, merchants, or burghers, as they often did not belong to any of these groups. Those who did fit into these descriptions held the political and legal power of the towns, and with it, the power to regulate and monitor the use of space. The distinctions observed between burghers and others can be interpreted as a means of protecting the exclusivity and privileges of the former group against people who were below them on the social ladder. This was done through the legal and economic construct of the guest, which was spatially performed by utilizing the rights of the property holder to invite in desired company while excluding others.

Douglas Harreld described the sixteenth century as a transitional period, when the bulk trade and more substantial trade deals moving away from the streets and into the private homes of merchants. This was a step on the way towards the use of more formal institutions like bourses and banks, creating a separate, exclusive space where the chosen few could conduct their business.⁶⁴ The same concern for individuals who were not part of the established merchant community, conducting illicit trade on the streets and open spaces, can be seen in the Baltic towns, though the towns do not appear to have successfully eliminated these activities. Interestingly, in parts of the Baltic, as well as other parts of northern Europe, this transition coincides with the Reformation and thus with the demise of the religious guilds. While some traders’ guilds remained in the Baltic region, their position had been more prominent during the medieval period, when they are described as places where connections and partnerships were formed through the act of commensality. The guilds were exclusive in the same way as the burgher community, requiring oath-taking and recommendations from a member, but were not as exclusive as an invitation to a private home.⁶⁵ The sixteenth century can be seen as period of transition for the trading communities, during which civil society and its social networks were relied upon in the interval between the demise of medieval guilds and the rise of early modern institutions like bourses and banks. Reframing the concept of the host–guest relationship, once a way of providing housing for visiting traders, into a legal and economic concept enabling the provision of favorable terms for business partnerships between settled merchants, can, in this light, be viewed as an element of the development towards increasingly advanced financial arrangements and more exclusive spaces for trade.

Notes

• 1. Lefebvre (1991).

• 2. Harreld (2003).

• 3. Calibi (2017).

• 4. Harreld (2003: 657–668).

• 5. Brand and Müller (2007: 7–8).

• 6. Wubs-Mrozewicz (2013).

• 7. Jenks (2013), Wubs-Mrozewicz (2013: 10–12).

• 8. See, for example, Kumlien (1953), Sicking (2007), Wubs-Mrozewicz (2007).

• 9. Jahnke (2017).

• 10. Wubs-Mrozewicz (2017).

• 11. See, for example, Gustafsson (2006), Hauschild (1997), Isenman (2014), Lamberg (2001).

• 12. Gustafsson (2006).

• 13. Mänd (2013: 229–250).

• 14. Pelus-Kaplan (2013).

• 15. McLean and Padgett (2011: 2).

• 16. Ullrich (2008: 119–123).

• 17. Ullrich (2008: 104–105).

• 18. Ullrich (2008: 105–108).

• 19. Ullrich (2008: 111–115).

• 20. Jahnke (2017: 241–242).

• 21. Kallioinen (2012: 6, 55).

• 22. Hauschild (1997: 346), Lamberg (2001: 21, 206), Kämpf (2013: 26).

• 23. Kallioinen (2012: 55), Hauschild (1997: 236–237), Gustafsson (2006: 82–85), Kämpf (2013: 40–46).

• 24. Stark (1993). See, for example, STb 2:2: 181–182; RUB: nr. 332.

• 25. See, for example, STb 2:2: 69; RUB: nr. 241; STb 2:1: 216–217.

• 26. RUB: nr. 784.

• 27. STb 2:1: 120.

• 28. LRU 3: nr. 510.

• 29. See, for example, STb 2:1: 19; MSb 1: 236–239; LRU 3: nr. 651; RUB: nr. 993.

• 30. See, for example, STb 2:1: 173; LRU 3 nr. 229.

• 31. Andersen (1954: 122–123).

• 32. LRU 3: nr. 199.

• 33. STb 2:2: 173–174.

• 34. Ullrich (2008: 106–107).

• 35. See, for example, STb 2:2: 52; STb 2:1: 24–25.

• 36. STb 2:1: 259.

• 37. STb 2:1: 259.

• 38. Salzberg (2019).

• 39. LRU 3: nr. 332.

• 40. STb 2:1: 252.

• 41. See, for example, STb 2:2: 140; RUB: nr. 477; LRU 3: nr. 482; MSb 2: 35–36, 407.

• 42. See, for example, STb 2:2: 95, 127; MSb 2: 35–36; RUB: nr. 381, 382.

• 43. STb 2:2: 127.

• 44. Hallerdt (2006: 33).

• 45. MSb 2: 407–408.

• 46. See, for example, STb 2:2: 95, 127; MSb 2: 35–36; RUB: nr. 381, 382.

• 47. STb 2:2: 69.

• 48. Pelus-Kaplan (2013).

• 49. Mazo Karras (2003: 109–151).

• 50. RUB: nr. 381–383.

• 51. See, for example, STb 2:2: 95, 127; MSb 2: 35–36; RUB: nr. 381, 382.

• 52. MSb 2: 210–212.

• 53. STb 2:1: 71–72.

• 54. STb 2:2: 232–234.

• 55. STb 2:2: 104.

• 56. STb 2:2: 104–106.

• 57. STb 2:2: 111.

• 58. LRU 3: nr. 645.

• 59. See, for example, STb 2:1: 10, 173, 295; STb 2:2: 10–13; RUB: nr. 380, 792; LRU 3: nr. 386; MSb 2: 404.

• 60. STb 2:1: 177.

• 61. MSb 2: 44.

• 62. STb 2:2: 174.

• 63. McLean and Padgett (2011).

• 64. Harreld (2003).

• 65. Haugland (2012).