User blog comment:The Milkman/Phantasy Philosophy: Elder Scrolls/@comment-3025184-20120913195304/@comment-3492791-20120914224341

Way back in ye times of old salt was a lot more valuable. People did get the idea of refrigeration (or the idea of infection), so salt was the only way to preserve food. This made it extremely valuable if you wanted to have food for longer than a few days. Thus this made salt something to be desired, and so it was traded for other goods and services. This is where the phrase "Any sailor worth his salt" came from, meaning would the person's usefulness be worth the cost of the salt to preserve the extra food for them. However salt wasn't really "money". I'll go over what "money" means in a minute.

Gold is relatively rare (but not as rare as they'd have you believe) and hard to get to. It's soft, and it's dense. So it can't be used for building because it's weak and heavy. It's only real quality is that it will almost never tarnish. Gold will remain shine for almost forever. It's only real practical use is it is an excellent conductor.

"Money" is a very strange concept. It is basically something that represents value, but itself is not valuable. Thus Gold, as anyone that has played minecraft can tell you, has very little practical use, especially in that time with any electricity. Salt has a lot of practical use. So gold makes better money because it difficult to acquire and has little use outside being money. Salt must be used, as a literal living expense.

Salt is valuable, but not for the reasons you believed. It is valuable for trading, but not actual "money".