2 Mark - Eric XIV

Reval (modern Tallinn) struck these coins in the early 1560s during a period of acute political instability, when the city was navigating between the collapsing Livonian Confederation and competing claims from Denmark, Poland-Lithuania, and Sweden. In 1561, the city's council formally submitted to Swedish suzerainty under Eric XIV, triggering this coinage as a declaration of the new political reality. The submission was partly pragmatic — Swedish protection offered the best defense against Ivan the Terrible's westward campaigns during the Livonian War.

Eric XIV was deposed by his brother John in 1568 and died in prison, likely poisoned, in 1577. His Swedish reign lasted just over a decade, making Reval issues struck under his name a narrow documentary window.