In the Scandinavian sources an association of “merchants”, willing to trade overseas, was conducted in two steps. In the first step a merchant who wanted to sail abroad could ask the captain of the ship, skipdrottin, to be taken into it. The trade between the Jutian peninsula and Novgorod alone illustrates the problems and developments of monetisation in the Baltic Sea area, because here merchants from different systems and development stages met. In the case of the city of Slesvig the bylaw from around 1200 stated that the lord of the town owned the pre-emption right and the laudaticum for marten-fur, which was converted into a onetime fee of the furriers. Marten furs were a symbol of status and an important trading good in the Baltic Sea area, especially in the trade with Novgorod. In the Lubeck chronicle of Arnold of Lubeck, the mark pennies appear for the first time at the end of the twelfth century.