The Baltic Trade 211
budget of the year 1501/02.61 From 1550 on and for the next one hundred years,
the family Koehn von Jaskis held nearly a monopoly in the amber-trade among
the Prussian dukes, paying for this privilege between 20.000 to 30.000 m.pr.
annually to the ducal treasurer.62 After the Reformation, the sale of amber met
a market break. Subsequently, amber was used solely for the creation of luxury
items and even then was rivaled by other raw materials.
Baltic Herring
By the year 1000, salt and herring, (salt eđa síld), had already become two of
the main trading products in the Baltic Sea. In the autumn, farmers from all
over Scandinavia assembled at the shores of Scania, the Danish islands, the
islands of Bornholm and Rugia, to catch clupeus harengus, the herring, for win-
ter stock. The best method to prepare and to conserve this fish is salting, a
process known since the Viking age.63
61 Lothar Dralle, “Der Bernsteinhandel des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen, vornehmlich zu
Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts.” Hansische Geschichsblätter 99 (1981), 61–72.
62 Tesdopf, Gewinnung, 14f.
63 Ingrid Bødker Enghoff, “Denmarks’s first fishing industry?” Maritime Newsletter from
Roskilde, Denmark 6 (May 1996), 2–4; Ingrid Bødker Enghoff “Fishing in the Baltic
Regions from the 5th century bc to the sixteenth century ad: Evidence from Fish Bones,”
Archaeofauna 8 (1999), 41–85.
42387831
7179(^55594941)
10347 10761
0
2750
5500
8250
11000
13750
1499/1500 1500/1501 1501/1502
Budget year
Mark lübisch
1504/1505 1507/15081508/1509 1509/1510
figure 6.2 Proceeds of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in the sale of amber.
Figures by L. Dralle, Der Bernsteinhandel des Deutschen
Ordens, 70.