The Sundering Basin Economies

TRADE AND COIN

The North mints nothing. What stamped coin moves through northern hands comes up from the Imperium by river and lake traffic, gold Crowns for contracts and bounties and dealings between holds, silver Marks for the work of merchants and skilled men. A common man may go years without holding gold.

Where coin runs short, the North does not wait on it. Hacksilver serves: cut pieces of silver weighed on a balance scale, an armband worth whatever the scale says it is worth. And under all of it runs barter, iron for furs, salt fish for grain, a winter's smoking for a spring's seed.

Trade towns hold the coin together. Skeldvik on the lake traffic keeps enough stamped silver moving that a man can sell in the morning and buy before dark without ever touching a scale. The rivers are the roads. What the North makes goes south on them, and what the North cannot make comes back.