Business Methods in Norway during the Thirteenth Century

Extract

The usual approach to business or any other subject tends to emphasize the many changes that have occurred over a period of years and to neglect the fundamental factors that have remained constant. Evidence for this assertion may be found in a thirteenth-century Norwegian work, “Speculum Regale,” or “King's Mirror,” translated into English by Laurence Marcellus Larson. The purpose of “Speculum Regale,” written in the form of a dialog between a learned father and his son, was to provide a young man, planning a career in the higher professions, with a background of necessary information. In Volume III of Professor Larson's translation, there is a dialog on the commercial profession, containing bits of advice which might easily have been given by a modern father who was sending his son into the business world.