The names of Swedish monarchs and members of state have been rendered in their Swedish versions. The Swedish spelling of place names has also been used, unless a common and accepted English equivalent exists. For example, ‘Gothenburg’ is used instead of ‘Göteborg’. The only exception is ‘Skåne’. British names in Swedish sources have been spelt in their English equivalent, and when it is not absolutely clear what contemporary English spelling would have been used, an educated guess has been taken. Swedish and other nationalities that appear in Swedish sources where there is more than one variant of a person’s name have been standardised into modern Swedish. Names with one consistent spelling and no variants where there is no commonly accepted modern equivalent have been retained in their contemporary spelling. Swedish names in English sources have been rendered into a modern Swedish equivalent. Swedish Baltic ports and non-Swedish Baltic ports have been spelt in their original Germanic forms in order to avoid confusion. For example, ‘Danzig’, ‘Königsberg’ and ‘Reval’ have retained their contemporary spellings instead of using the modern day ‘Gdansk’ ‘Kaliningrad’ and ‘Tallinn’. This has also been applied to ports such as Viborg and Nyen which are now in modern day Russia.
Dating of archival and printed primary sources has been left as they were found in the original. The one exception is that January has been counted as the beginning of the new year. Therefore, where a date might have originally stated 16 February 1695/96, this has been rendered as 16 February 1696.
As England and Sweden’s relationship overwhelmingly focused on the Swedish trade area, and given that the main body of commercial sources consulted in this study are from Sweden, in this study the use of “exports” refers to the export of goods leaving Sweden or the Baltic. Similarly, here the use of “imports” signifies goods being imported into Sweden or the Baltic.