ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the formation of a transgenerational agency and the role of professionalisation in the office of the city scribes in Tallinn before the beginning of the Livonian War in 1558. Traditionally studied through national and ethnic standpoints of Baltic-German and Estonian historiography, the age and formation of urban settlement, the burgher community and civic authority in thirteenth-century Tallinn are today viewed as a complex process, where various developments took place from the late twelfth century to the mid-sixteenth, and where the consolidation of authority and administration happened in several stages. Crucial for the development of the role of Tallinn and other merchant cities of the Baltic Sea area from the mid-thirteenth century was the structure of executive power.
