The socio-economic relations between Scotland’s northern territories and Scandinavia and the Baltic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

Traditional historiography has perceived the early-modern northern Highlands as a region that lacked dynamism and had little contact with the outside world. I propose to establish a mercantile framework between the region and the Baltic in a period of European conflicts, but also of commercial opportunities. I investigate the trading relations between an outlying society and Scandinavia, and explore the presence of northern Highlanders to add to the successful network of Scots and Gaels from other Highland areas operating across the Baltic commercial world. These trading exchanges demonstrate the integral location of the northern Highlands within international trade routes. It further illustrates the diversity of a Nordic trade with its multiple points of entry across Scotland, despite the limited scale of these exchanges. The role of the region in international trade remained marginal, but was not altogether non-existent, as assumed in traditional historiography. These commercial relationships can be primarily described as resource-led. The limited identifiable commercial diaspora of Scottish far northerners suggests that they invested the mercantile and burghal ranks of Baltic towns rather than consigned themselves to peddling activities. These northern Highlanders could be found in both itinerant and settled communities.