The first lecture I gave as a student teacher was about money. History of money, from gifts to money, why we use money, what items societies have used as money. I started the lecture by projecting some words from the bible on the overhead projector and I started with discussing how the ban on interest charging in the bible strictly enforced in the middle ages had let to a situation where members from another religious group, the Jews, who did not have this kind of restriction in their religion would take this moneylending function in Northern European societies. This was at a time when few trades outside guild control were open to Jews. They were not the only people to lend money on interest in that region, there were also the Lombards and the Cahorsins of southern France and the Catalans.
Maybe I should translate part of the article History of Banking to Icelandic.
