The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd. Wrote:Compared to the drama of dragon-dug underground canals and dragon-forged skyscrapers, the Financial Revolution in the century and a half after Hiccup Haddock's taming of dragons is generally overlooked, but is perhaps even more fundamental to an understanding of the economic structure he left behind.  Prior to the taming of dragons, bullion currency was comparatively rare; while gold and silver coins were certainly in circulation, as witnessed by the famous bride price paid for Hiccup's wife Astrid, overall, the Europan economy was cash-starved and functioned primarily on the barter economy at the lower levels.  After the taming of dragons, however, an even more scarce commodity currency entered the economy in the form of dragon scales. 
As is common knowledge, dragons shed their skins each spring; prior to domestication, they used these materials for the construction of nests for newly hatched young.  Under human auspices, however, the shedding amounted to the annual input of pure currency into the economy.  Properly treated and cured, dragon leather and dragon scales can last for decades of use before wearing out.  While the leather itself acted as a trade commodity, the single scales from hide that wasn't of sufficient quality to be made into leather were not worthless.  On the contrary, they functioned as currency, quickly displacing bullion metals as the currency material of choice. 
In this role, dragon scales offered numerous advantages, including being nearly impossible to counterfeit or debase, being easy to substantiate as genuine, and naturally removing themselves from the money supply over time as they wore out or were repurposed (such as for industrial use, decoration or even insulation).  However, even with this removal, the most productive gold or silver mine could not hope to match the net output of dragon shedding, and the resulting injection of funds into Europa's economy—spread by the effects of the Dragon Mail and the existing trade network—caused rampant inflation, averaging between 3-8% a year over the next century.  While this would cause problems to the modern developed economy, in the cash-starved environment at the time, it was an economic blessing, allowing for a rapid shift from the barter economy and feudal taxation system to a market economy and currency taxation system, giving even the peasantry access to funds with which to pay their expenses and taxes and receive payments. Increasing per-person productivity from Haddock's innovations and the agricultural impact of dragon labor pushed urbanization, as demand for labor—human and dragon alike—exceeded the available number of hands and wings for most of the next several centuries…

Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396 Wrote:…the machinations surrounding the Alban Red King, Mac Bethad mac Findlaích (~AD 1005—18 April, AD 1043), were complex.  Despite the efforts of apologists who wish to paint the king as an innocent dupe of Jarl Mildew the Vicious' manipulations in his efforts to trigger war between Alba and Berk, the fact remains that Mac Bethad's hands were hardly clean.  He became the Mormaer of Moray in AD 1032 after the previous Mormaer, Gille Coemgáin, was burned to death along with 50 of his men, and there is little question that Mac Bethad either participated in or organized the atrocity, although the question of his sense of guilt is open, due to his marriage to Gille Coemgáin's wife, Gruoch, and adoption of his son, Lulach, as Mac Bethad's own heir.  He also killed his own cousin, the previous king of Alba, Donnchadh mac Crìonain, on the field of battle in August of AD 1040, and took the throne.  While Donnchadh mac Crìonain had initiated the battle that resulted in his death, there is evidence of provocation on the part of Mac Bethad specifically to spur his cousin into invading and allow Mac Bethad to fight with the moral upper hand and on his own territory.  Similarly, Mac Bethad's efforts with regard to Berk included various attempts to cripple the nascent power…

Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396 Wrote:What is known of Jarl Mildew the Vicious mostly comes from secondary sources—journal entries from the Hooligans, observations from King MacBeth and his court, and others—due to the fact that the man was apparently a recalcitrant loner and hermit.  A multiple divorcee and rumored to have had various unsavory habits, he was generally ostracized by the community by his early adulthood, formally outcast from his birth clan (Hofferson) in AD 976 and forced to take a new name. 

The only reason why he had not been entirely banished from the tribe decades before the end of the Dragon War, according to the general consensus from Hooligan accounts, was that he was one of Berk's most effective and lethal dragon slayers during the last decades of the Dragon War.  According to the records, he was surpassed in dragonslaying only by a handful of his contemporaries, chief among them his younger brother, Rikard clanhead Hofferson.  However, despite his substantial attested kill record, his personality was such that he was relegated to the fringes of the tightly knit tribe, rather than being held up as one of their elites.