Rise of Rurik

The ordinary farmers of the Ankras tribe, with their meager savings, rushed to Gould's home, eager to buy some high-quality leather.

Even if they were clansmen, Gould's price for deerskins was still six silver coins.

Clinging tightly to the few silver coins in their hands, the peasants gritted their teeth, and most of them bought one.

With this one piece alone, a farmer can tailor enough leather for two people. Although farmers usually wear sackcloth, in order to cope with the harsh winter, they need thick reindeer leather, because although this leather is expensive, it is much more resistant to the cold than cowhide.

Gould only sold 30 deerskins for a gross profit of 180 silver coins. He would have been very happy with such an income.

Now his mentality has changed dramatically, and he no longer pays special attention to such small income.

Those soaps, especially the ones mixed with sulphur, the net profit of this one piece alone is worth the sale of six deerskins!

In addition to the deer hides, some rusted iron tools that Gould bought cheaply in Roseburg he also sold to the farmers of Uncles. For example, some axe with rusted and broken wooden handle, which he sold for one or two silver coins. The peasants seem to get just a lump of scrap iron, but they are not!

Many peasants know how to build small stoves with mud, and then burn the scrap iron red. They can do the laborious forging on their own, and after the final grinding, they can become a hoe for digging the ground or an axe for logging.

This transaction is naturally a small sum of money, but this small sum is not ordinary! The farmers have benefited, and many people think that Gould is a complete profiteer. Only in this case, Gould has become a good leader.

Similarly, Gould also proposed to spend money to redeem the surplus grain in the hands of farmers. As for the price, as Gould told Grand Chief Ungriff, the purchase price was 20 higher than the market price

The farmers were excited, so that when the wheat harvest in August, wouldn't it make a lot of money to hand over the wheat to Gould? !

For this matter, Gould did not have such high expectations. The time coincided with the beginning of May, and the farmers' lives depended on the surplus grain in their hands. He felt that he could not get food from farmers immediately.

The geography of the Svealan plain makes it impossible to grow winter wheat here. In May, the surplus grain stock of farmers is not much. By June, many farmers have to start to frugal food, or go to nearby rivers and lakes to fish for hunger.

The locals don't make a spring famine, they make a summer famine.

Fortunately, summer in Svealand is the warmest season of the year, and the water and grass are abundant at this time, which is also a good time for them to catch big fish.

With a population of two or three thousand, Ankras is basically a large village in the Eastern sense.

The fact is that Ankras is indeed a big village, but the scale of farmland in this village is not small. In the era of rough farming, whether it is Novgorod or Svealand, farmers everywhere are planting seeds on a large scale, and in the case of extremely low yields per mu, they use larger farmland to earn as much food as possible.

The oat seedlings on the farmland are lush and green, and a large number of farmers and their families come into battle.

Go to your farmland and pull out weeds. After that, I look forward to the nectar from heaven to nourish these nurseries.

Farmers are fantasizing about selling their surplus wheat for a good price during the autumn harvest. The tenant farmers hoped that after paying a lot of rent, they could earn a sum of money from selling grain and buy some useful production tools to further improve their lives. Even to redeem the land that he had sold.

However, a purely man-made disaster struck suddenly.

The time had just arrived in May, and the great leader, Ungriff, gathered all the landlords in the tribe and issued a decree to them.

"Each of your households must hand me 10,000 pounds of grain within three days. I will buy it at the price of ten pounds and one silver coin!"

Ungriff is the leader of the clan! He has the power to give orders.

Many of the landowners who were summoned were businessmen who had discussed with Gould before.

Everyone realizes that Ungriff just wants to suck a pot of blood on the people's body, so what? You need to follow orders.

For ten pounds of oats or rye for a pound of silver is the acceptable market price in the Svealand region, and this market price has always been like this, and although it fluctuates, its fluctuations are never drastic. Moreover, in July, on the eve of the wheat harvest, the market price will rise a little bit. After the summer drought, after the new wheat was harvested, the price of grain plummeted!

Ungriff used his power to seize the surplus grain in the hands of the landlord. It was not that he never thought that after hoarding the goods, he would sell it to Gould with a smile when the market price rose.

Obviously this trick didn't work for the profiteer.

Ungriff didn't want to linger too much, he just wanted to get a lot of wheat at once, even if he used all the silver coins in his treasury to buy wheat! Because this guy Gould will always keep his promise in the face of white silver coins!

Ungriff has the ability to take out 10,000 silver coins, but he is not worried about whether the landlords can each take out 10,000 pounds of grain surplus.

So, the landlord's family has surplus food? !

Pooh! The landlord's house has no surplus food.

The landowners of Anklas, while they received rent from the tenant farmers, would also bring their entire families to farm. Simply as a vampire exploiter? With the current agricultural production capacity, it is not particularly realistic.

The landlords grow some food rations themselves, collect the rent in kind for the wheat, and then row boats to do business in the slack season to keep their wealth above that of ordinary people.

The big chief issued an order to buy wheat by force, what else could the landlords do.

They secretly scolded the big leader for being obsessed with money, and after that, they took their own people and ran to the tenant farmers' house and ordered them to hand over the surplus food.

For this matter, it is definitely not possible to rob it.

The landlords were businessmen, so they would not do business at a loss, so they took out the silver below the market price and ordered the tenant farmers to hand over the surplus grain.

For a time, because of Ungriff's decision, the entire clan was in turmoil!

A large number of peasants cried and grieved, and reluctantly took out their surplus grain, and in the other hand held the little money given by the landlord. Some people were unwilling to hand in food, so they were naturally beaten up by the landlord's thugs.

Faced with this situation, farmers who have not gone bankrupt can't help worrying about their future. And for those tenant farmers who lost a lot of surplus grain, the only thing they can do is to go to the peasant farmers and exchange their money for some grain at a high price.

The accumulation of capital is full of blood and tears, and Ungriff would rather abuse his own people for profit.

The same is true of the yeoman farmers. Since they can sell their small surplus at a high price to the tenant farmers who have lost most of their rations, why not do so?

Life is so cruel, the bottom-level residents of Ankras are struggling, and the middle-level and upper-level people are trying everything for their own interests.

Who is the biggest winner?

It was Gould, the big businessman who had been pampered for a while after returning to his hometown! This ball of suet!

Let's talk about the state of agriculture in Anklas.

The population of this tribe is more than 2,000 people, among which there are 400 strong men. These people are basically farmers. On average, each farmer independently takes care of approximately 20 acres of land in the east. They just turned the soil with iron hoes, and then sowed seeds at will. They didn't even have time to set up an irrigation system, even though there were many streams and lakes near Ankras. Therefore, it is not particularly difficult for a farmer to take care of 13 hectares of farmland.

Compared with Novgorod, Svealan uses iron farming tools for all staff, and the climate on the coast of the Baltic Sea is milder.

Here, where there is no deep ploughing, no chemical fertilizers, or even no irrigation system, the yield per mu can only be like this.

A strong farmer eats one pound of wheat a day, and a family of four or five consumes about three pounds of wheat a day. And as far as the consumption of wheat is concerned, the peasants in the Svealan region are similar to the peasants in Novgorod.

Eventually, the entire tribe consumes about 300 tons of oats every year.

And the grain output of the entire tribe is around 800 tons all year round, and occasionally in extremely good harvest years, the grain can be as high as 1,000 tons! But out of the 800 tons, 160 tons were used as planting crops, and the entire clan's disposable grain was always barely more than 600 tons.

From this point of view, apart from the rations, farmers still have abundant grains equivalent to the rations.

Food can't be counted like that.

Farmers will sell their grain for other daily necessities during the harvest season. Three hundred tons of wheat is equivalent to 760,000 pounds.

Just by selling all the wheat, the tribe could theoretically earn at least 70,000 silver coins.

It was this money, most of which went into the pockets of landowners, wealthy merchants, and great chief Ungriff. More than a dozen large households share this cake with hundreds of farmer families. The large households eat the largest cake. The money they sell purely for food is on average four or five thousand silver coins in the hands of each large household.

The most common farmer may only use forty silver coins a year for meals. Children and women consume much less.

The wealthy hold large sums of money, and they will engage in some special pleasures.

The agriculture of Unkrath is like this, and the whole Svealan region, even the richest Meralen tribe, is in the same situation.

However, the Danes, who are further south, have a better geographical environment, and their food production capacity is much better than that of the Svealan Plain controlled by the Siya tribal alliance.

The Vikings needed to rob hard currency such as gold and silver to enrich their wealth, but the most important material that could support their expedition was food.

On the tenth day of the fifth month of the Julian calendar, Gould had been in his own home for some time.

Others are at home, fully aware of the troubles that happened in the tribe during this time.

And everything that was going on was exactly what he expected.

"You said that I was greedy for money, but it turned out that you are not the same. Ungriff, are you caring for your own people? No! You and I are actually the same." Gould did not comment on Ungriff's behavior. , since they are desperately searching for surplus grain, they should count the money and accept this batch of wheat.

In three days, those big households did not scavenge ten thousand pounds of wheat as ordered.

Although he did not complete the task, Ungriff was full of sacks of wheat, and he did not mean to blame.

More than a dozen big households scavenged 80,000 pounds of last year's oats in the tribe, but only paid the farmers a total of 6,000 silver coins.

The wheat was first transported to the mansion of the great chieftain in Ungriff, and the great households got as many as 8,000 silver coins of their own.

In any case, although the big households were dissatisfied with the fact that they were the villains and were ordered to abuse the tribal civilians, since the big leader had spoken, the task fell to them, and they could not lose anything.

The big players have earned a total of 2,000 silver coins.

Well now, at noon on the tenth of May, Ungriff organized some people, pulled a two-wheeled cart, and carried a large number of sacks full of grain, and rushed to Gould's house.

The outdoors suddenly became noisy.

Gould, who drank a lot of mead at noon, lay on a bearskin mat, and waited on the feet of the two Breton women, couldn't stand the noise outside.

As it happened, a mercenary hurried into Gould's bedroom.

"Sir! A group of people came outside."

"I see." Gould was a little impatient. "I don't want to do business today, let those farmers go away."

"No, my lord. It's the big chief, and he's here with a load of goods."

"Cargo?" Gould's slightly drunk head started to think, and immediately asked: "What kind of cargo?"

The mercenary speculated: "Maybe it's a pile of wheat. Your lord, you know, in the tribe these days..."

"Okay! You don't need to say anymore, you go and tell Yevro that you can open the door." After that, Gould twitched his feet and kicked the two women lightly.

"Anna. Vera. Get my clothes and dress me."

Gould had changed into his voluminous and flamboyant outfit, and today he was really dressed in a ferret coat to look extravagant. A snow fox fur hat with beautiful feathers was worn on the top of the head, and a cowhide bag with a gold ring was fastened firmly. He also brushed his beard a little with a wooden comb, and ordered the two maids to follow him.

The thick wooden door was opened, and he came to Gould's house again, and Ungriff was in high spirits this time.

For 80,000 pounds of wheat, he had paid the merchants a hundred pounds of silver in advance.

He's here today to make a fortune with Gould. To this end, Ungriff even placed his own large scale on a trolley and brought it with him.

Ungriff was dressed in fancy clothes, but he was still not as rich as Gould. Because Gould's family members also walked out of their residence one after another, and came to watch with many maids and mercenaries.

Living in this mansion surrounded by wooden walls, even the maids, their dress is simple and gorgeous.

The two distinguished people met, and after some courtesy, Ungriff warmly introduced his wheat.

"You see, here are eighty thousand pounds of wheat. Now, what's your promise?"

Gould looked again at the large number of sacks on the trolleys, then stared into Ungriff's eyes and asked knowingly, "It's all wheat? Where did you get it?"

"This? Leave it alone."

"Well, I'll buy it at the agreed price. That's twelve silver coins for a hundred pounds of wheat."

"Yes." Ungriff nodded with a smile.

"Before that, I have to inspect the goods first."

"Oh? You don't believe me?"

"No! I believe in you, great leader. This is a rule, I must inspect the goods." After that, Gould shook his neck and ordered, "Yavlo, take your brothers to see."

There is no such tool as "food scouts" in Northern Europe, but mercenaries like Yevro have their own methods.

The ten mercenaries drew out their swords. The quality of their iron swords was far inferior to that of steel swords, but the swords had a bloodletting slot. They poked their swords into the sacks and pulled them out, so that the two bloodletting tanks were full of food.

Yevro hurriedly turned around: "Sir, it's all food, no problem."

Gould was relieved and heaved a sigh of relief.

"So you're relieved?" asked Ungriff.

"Don't worry! We like your food, so start weighing it now."

Gould saw that the other party even brought the scales, which was fine, because he had no intention of being short on weighing.

After some weighing, all the wheat, together with the sacks, weighed 82,000 pounds.

Faced with this data, Gould shrugged: "It stands to reason that your sack also has weight, so let me suffer here! It should have been more than 9,800 silver coins, but I'll round it up for you, 10,000 silver coins! "

"Hey! This is good." Hearing the price, Ungriff's face blossomed with a smile.

All the grain was quickly moved into his own warehouse, and Gould also paid for the goods with a hundred pounds of silver coins from his own silver vault at the first time.

The tribal farmers who sold a small amount of surplus grain to the tenants made a small sum of money, the merchants of the tribe also made a fortune, and the chief Ungriff made two thousand silver coins! And what about Gould? With Rurik as a big seller, he Gould is the biggest winner.