Talk:Birk (market place)

The Norse word for a market place was Kaup. Market towns (such as Novgorod) were called kaupbaer. Anyway, the article should be moved to wikidictionary. -- Ghirla -трёп-  10:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Kaup and related köping were later terms that eventually replaced earlier birk/bjärk based terminology. --Drieakko 13:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know Swedish, but Björkö seems to be related to English "birch". Primorsk (Leningrad Oblast) was known as Björkö during the times of the Swedish Empire. -- Ghirla -трёп-  14:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not sure about birk, but biærk is believed to have meant "merchandise", in Old Swedish, and is the origin of Birkarl. In Old Icelandic, Biærk appears as bjark, in the case of Bjarkeyjar-réttr.--Berig 16:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I think there could be a better article than the current stub (which might be badly headlined as well) about the early Scandinavian birk related trade terminology. --Drieakko 08:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I have checked the entry Birk in Nationalencyklopedin and it gives Birk as an allomorph of bjærk in Old Danish, which suggests that Birk was indeed a form used in Old Swedish too. It has a good article that could be translated into English. However, as its entry Bjärköarätt concerns mainly Norway and Sweden, and the entry Birk concerns mainly Denmark, the two notions Birk and Bjärköarätt should probably be treated in the same article on WP. It is simpler that way, as Birk and Bjärköarätt were closely connected and a general Scandinavian phenomenon.--Berig 13:49, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Birk, björk and birch
Any known speculations on the background of the name "birk" and why it had become a trade term? Was it already originally connected to the word meaning "birch" ("björk") or did it just evolve to that direction because the words just sounded similar? Nevertheless, in Finland and in Russia the old Scandinavian "birk" related names of coastal trade posts have often been translated to "birch", like "Koivisto", meaning "place of birches". --Drieakko 09:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Coming to my mind as the first probable speculation derives from the nature of the earliest trade posts. They were nothing but coastal places from which trees were cut so that at a certain time of the year traders could gather there, practise their business and then leave. As these areas were mostly abandoned outside the market season, vegetation would attempt to resume in the off-season and the place be in the need of additional clearing from time to time. In Scandinavia, the first trees to surface on that kind of open plains are birches which might later become a synonum for the more sophisticated trade regulations that later followed. --Drieakko 09:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

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Bjarkey laws
Most of the text concerns Danish birks, a kind of liberties, where certainly not the Bjarkey laws were applicable. Creuzbourg (talk) 17:55, 8 January 2017 (UTC)