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The Sound Dues (or Sound Tolls; ) were a tariff on the use of the Øresund, or "Sound" strait separating the modern day borders of Denmark and Sweden. The tolls constituted up to two thirds of Denmark's state income in the 16th and 17th centuries. The dues were introduced by King Eric of Pomerania in 1429 and remained in effect until the Copenhagen Convention of 1857 (with the sole exception of Swedish ships between 1658 and 1720). Tolls in the Great Belt had been collected by the Danish Crown at least a century prior to the establishment of the dues by Eric of Pomerania.
In order to avoid ships simply taking a different route, tolls were also collected at the two other Danish straits, the Great Belt and the Little Belt; sometimes non-Danish vessels were forbidden to use any other waterways but the Øresund, and transgressing vessels were confiscated or sunk.
The Sound Dues remained the most important source of income for the Danish Crown for several centuries, thus making Danish kings relatively independent of Denmark's Privy Council and aristocracy. However, the dues were an irritant to nations engaged in trade in the Baltic Sea, especially Sweden. Sweden had initially been exempted from the dues at the time of their introduction because it was then in the Kalmar Union along with Denmark. However, after the Kalmar War and the Treaty of Knäred in 1613 Denmark-Norway introduced dues on cargoes from Sweden's Baltic possessions and on non-Swedish ships carrying Swedish cargo. The friction over the Dues was an official casus belli (reason for war) of the Torstenson War in 1643.
In 1658, at the Treaty of Roskilde, Denmark-Norway had to cede her provinces east of the sound (Scania, Halland, Blekinge, Bohuslän, and the island of Ven) to Sweden as a consequence of the Second Northern War. Swedish shipping also became exempt from the Sound Dues by the terms of this treaty. The exemption was withdrawn after Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War and the Treaty of Frederiksborg of 1720, although the eastern shore of the Sound was now Swedish.
| 1479 | 795 |
| 1537 | 1897 |
| 1560 | 2731 |
| 1581 | 4262 |
| 1583 | 5400 |
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