31 January 2020

Ten years of Sound Toll Register Online


Location Rijksuniversiteit Groningen/Campus Fryslân, Wirdumerdijk 34, 8911 CE Leeuwarden
Start/end 10.00 hours - 17.00 hours

The symposium marks the completion of the Soundtoll Registers Online project and at the same time the transfer of the data to Huygens ING, which will keep the database and associated information up and running in the coming years so that access is guaranteed for everyone.

A group of volunteers is currently finalizing the input of the data from the Sound Toll Registers into the computer. The result of that work can be consulted by anyone on the website www.soundtoll.nl, which will soon contain all data from the 1.8 million passages that are registered in the Sound Toll Registers.

The Sound Toll Registers are the administration of the toll that the King of Denmark charged from 1497 to 1857 on the ships passing through the Sound, the sea route between Sweden and Denmark, which connects the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The Sound Toll was located in Helsingør at the place where the Sont is the narrowest. All ships that sailed to and from the Baltic Sea had to anchor here. The skippers then went ashore to pay the toll.

The Sound Toll Registers are a famous and widely used source for historians to study the history of economics and trade in Europe. Partly because of the length of the series, they are a valuable source for the economic history of the whole of Europe. All flows of goods by sea between the Baltic Sea region and the rest of Europe can be mapped with these registers.

The Sound Toll RegistersOnline project is an initiative of Tresoar and the University of Groningen.