Abstract
Abstract According to the Sound Toll Registers (STR), and to one of their interpreters (W.S. Unger in Economic History Review1959/60), Finland was, in the 18th century, the leading area exporting boards (‘bredder’, in Danish) westwards through the Sound. But this is somewhat misleading statement, based on the calculation of numbers of boards as opposed to their total cubic measurement. It is true, as I revealed at the gathering of economic historians in Copenhagen in 1974, that at quite an early date Viborg and Fredrikshamn deals found a ready market in Holland and France.1 But the exports to those countries consisted of ‘thin’, pieces compared with the planks from Swedish Norrland and western Finland. The ‘heavy’, varieties of timbers from the Gulf of Bothnia first found a good but restricted market in Stockholm, or perhaps within the Baltic area,2 and only later on on the British and Mediterranean markets.
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