Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, expert computer hacker, finds a crooked lawyer in Malta to manage her stolen millions.
Niels Jonsen in Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children approaches a bishop who explains publicly that Niels has come into an inheritance and has found the bishop's favor.
They are centuries apart but Scandinavian.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But I don't think the wealth gained by Niels and his mer friends were obtained by questionable means. Legally speaking, I think the wealth found at Averorn would be considered abandoned property, which anyone who discovered it could rightfully take and make use of. The problem Niels and his friends had was how to make use of that wealth in ways that would not arouse suspicion.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes. It is the arousing suspicion that would be the problem. Stealing the gold from a kraken would sound like a tall tale. The means were "questionable" in the sense that people would question them, not in the sense that there was anything wrong with what they did.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That clarifies what you meant. Albeit, you can't steal anything from an animal like the kraken.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Wasn't it intelligent?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, I don't consider the kraken to have been a non human PERSON.
Ad astra! Sean
Note the shrewdness of the cleric they used to "launder" the money -- he points out that the gold cannot help the poor beyond a certain point, because it cannot buy more than the land can produce.
Up to that point, it can help, by "bidding away" food and other materials from the more affluent, and the Church can then use it for charitable purposes.
Beyond that point, it would just cause prices to rise.
The main concern is someone in power hijacking the money. There would be a shadow of legal plausibility for that, because most European countries had a "treasure trove" law -- that is, wealth found was Crown property, and had to be split between the Crown and the discoverer.
The Church, which was always vastly wealthy in medieval times -- it was usually the largest single landowner or landowning institution -- was the perfect way to turn the gold into actual, respectable -wealth-. For one thing, it was under a different set of legal restrictions and had its own independent court system.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
As always, you make very interesting points. I remember just enough of that bishop consulted by Niels to understand what you say here. I was esp. interested by your explanation of why there were limitations on what could be done with that gold from Averorn. Trying to use it to buy more than what land in Denmark could produce forcing prices to rise reminded me of the inflation Europe saw in the 16th/17th centuries from the gold/silver imported from Spain's Empire in the New World.
I'm not quite sure you were correct, in this case, about the applicability of the laws of treasure/treasure trove. Yes, those laws basically split discovered treasure found on LAND between the Crown and its discoverers. But did they apply to treasure found at sea? While I know Wikipedia has to be used with extreme caution, this is what I found in the Wiki article on treasure/treasure trove law: "If an object was simply lost or abandoned (for instance, scattered on the surface of the earth or in the sea) it belonged either to the first person who found it or to the landowner according to the law of finders, that is, legal principles concerning the finding of objects."
Now, since the treasures of Averorn was certainly lost under the sea, along with all its owners being killed by the kraken, the laws on treasure seems to give the finders or discoverers of such treasure sole title to it. Yes, Niels, Tauno, Eyjan couldn't just load the gold on their ship and sail to Denmark to use it--because powerful and greedy men could use experts in the laws to find ways of their getting their hands on it. Which of course is why Niels consulted a friendly bishop. The Church, as you said, had a judiciary independent of the secular courts.
Ad astra! Sean
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