Given the dominance of subsistence farming in Iceland, there was a lack of specialisation and commerce among farms. As testified in some of the Icelandic sagas, domestic trade seems to have been suspect as a type of usury from the age of settlement. Trade with foreign merchant ships was lively, however, and vital for the economy, especially for cereals and honey, alcohol, and (later) tobacco. Fishing ships from the coastal areas of Europe stopped for provisions in Icelandic harbors and traded what they had with the local people. This would include stale beer, salted pork, biscuits, and chewing tobacco, sold for knitted wool mittens, blankets, etc. Merchant ships put in occasionally from Holland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Spain, to sell their products, mainly for stockfish. A ship is prominently displayed in the royal seal of Iceland.