At the production end of the many chains of maritime contact between the peripheral north and the populous core of western Europe during the pre-industrial era, seaport merchants played key roles in co-ordinating the supply and transport of staples. Unfortunately, most of the business records of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century merchants in the port of Luleâ in northern Sweden have been misplaced or destroyed. Alternatives must therefore be employed to investigate the patterns and organisation of trade in the Lule River valley. In the Regional Archives at Härnösand, estate inventories are preserved for a number of Luleâ's wealthier citizens; this is a useful beginning for a study of the role of the merchant in the utilisation of resources in the town's extensive hinterland. One such inventory is analyzed here to illustrate its scholarly value. Furthermore, an attempt is made “to see the universe in the locality” by drawing some general conclusions from the study of an individual.

Abraham Stenholm, a Luleâ merchant, died of dropsy (a rich man's disease) on 7 May 1821. According to his inventory, he left a widow, Elisabeth, and three young children-Adam, Carl Frederic, and Frederica Elisabeth-for whom the alderman Abraham Ruth and the merchant Anders Magnus Söderholm were appointed guardians. The fact that the children were still minors suggests that their father was not particularly old; indeed, the parish catechetical registers show that Abraham was born on 4 December 1773 and was therefore only fortyseven at the time of his death. The same sources also reveal that the surname “Stenholm” did not figure among Luleâ's merchants until 1806. Having moved to town from die neighbouring rural parish of Râneâ in 1790, Abraham Stenholm was first recorded as an assistant living in the household of the young merchant Abraham Ruth, who was only eight years his senior. There were several branches of Ruths living in town, and the family had mercantile traditions pre-dating the establishment of Luleâ in 1621. During the following two centuries the family name also featured prominently among the town's aldermen and mayors.