2 Mark - Carl XI

Reval — modern Tallinn — was a Swedish-controlled Baltic port for most of the seventeenth century, and its municipal coinage operated under licenses negotiated with the Swedish crown rather than by independent civic right. Carl XI came to the Swedish throne in 1660 at age four; the regency government that actually authorized this issue was navigating the financial pressures left by decades of Swedish imperial expansion in the Baltic. Municipal silver of this type was produced to address chronic small-denomination shortages in the region's trade economy, not as prestige coinage.