Paper short abstract:

rading between neighboring countries Estonia, Finland and Sweden had a long history when it ended by the World War II. The market had structures containing heritages of both barter and money trade. Mutual friendship trading also contained dependencies to leading trade-houses. What of today?

Paper long abstract:

A long tradition of barter trade exists between the peasants of Estonia and Finland over the Gulf of Finland. The trade was mutually beneficial as the parts could switch-trade their surplus means, exporting mainly salted herring from Finland and receiving grain products, mainly rye from Estonia.

The trade heritage had many variants in customs and the involved trading partners. In the eastern parts of the gulf, peasants traded directly with each other crossing the gulf in boats. In the western parts of the Gulf of Finland, peasants and fishermen mainly traveled to Tallin and sold or traded their salted herring to grain from local merchants, who in turn got it from peasants and manors in the Estonian inland. This resulted in complex networks and dependencies between merchants an peasants which also were incorporated in the cultural heritage of the Sepra-trade. In the first decades of the 20th century the trade become much more diverse incorporating exporting of wood, firewood, potatoes, apples and also whole new concepts as fish canning industries, sometimes including the cost line down to the Polish coast and to Sweden in west.

The First World War struck hard on this trading tradition and by the Second World War it had almost vanished. After the 1990ies the trading contacts were once again celebrated in a symbolical way as old marketplaces were revived and still living tradesmen met again. The trading between the countries is now massive, including tourism, working migration, mutual industries and a planned tunnel.