Kullassepa (Kullassepp)

Goldsmith. Known earlier as vicus institoris (1327), platea institorum (1345) or kremerstrate (1389), translated variously as merchants’, grocers’ or haberdashers’ street, this may be artificially upping their game somewhat. The medieval Tallinn concept of Latin institor is not easy to convey. The Roman institor ranged from business manager or agent to anything from shopkeeper to peddler to huckster dealing in merx (merchandise, often from abroad, or mercis sordidae, denarius-store junk). Given the Tallinn trades indicated by property-transfer records in low German and Latin: sutor: mainly cobbler, but most anything sewn; pannicidale: rag merchant; penesticale or hokerboden (from MLG hȫkære, hȫker, etc., retailer, cf. Ger. Höker, stall-holder): seller of staples such as apples, cabbage, onions, salt-fish and other cheap foodstuffs, these were likely on the bottom rung of those with premises. Likewise, judging by the references to bodis institricibus, etc. (institrix is the feminine of institor), a good number of them were women. Their stalls or bodae were often of wood (see Raekoja tänav). And yet these often Estonian traders still occupied prime real estate. One suggestion is that they had already been Christianized before the Order arrived allowing them to maintain stakes already claimed. The street eventually became Kannengeter Strate in the 16^th C, after the tinsmiths or pewterers (see Tina), gradually climbing the social (and financial) ladder to silver for brooches, ouches (perhaps ettekenmakeren, see Ehte), and similar embossed work and thence to Goldschmiedestraße in the 18^th C, although the Russians continued calling it Серебряная ул. (silver street) until at least 1872.