Välismaa mündid Tallinna pärandiloendites kuni aastani 1560
Foreign coins listed in the probate inventories of Tallinn up to 1560

Summary/Abstract: The history of coins and money in Estonia has been researched in some depth in recent decades. We now know what currencies were minted at what times, and the large numbers of hoards of coins mean we also know about the composition of the coinage that was circulating in everyday use. It is evident that local coinage was in circulation in Estonia, as was usual throughout medieval Livonia, and that it was temporarily supplemented with foreign coins only when there was an interruption to the local supply of coins and a shortage of them. These conclusions only apply to the local people in the countryside though. No coin hoard has yet been uncovered in the Estonian towns, and only a few individual coins have been found. We consequently have an idea of the size and type of the stocks of money in the towns only from the exchange rate tables for coins and from individual publications that record the wealth of private individuals. Nobody has yet been able to produce a comprehensive summary from this of the state of money in the towns. It is obvious though that the scope of activities and contacts of the townspeople, especially the merchants, were much broader than those of the people in the villages. This inevitably meant that they had entirely different financial and monetary means and opportunities, and we may consequently ask firstly whether foreign gold and silver coins circulated in medieval and early-modern Tallinn, and if so which; secondly who owned those coins and how many of them; and thirdly whether the selection of foreign coinage owned by people in Tallinn illuminates any social patterns. This article does not address the ownership of local coins for everyday use.

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