Hanseatic League Routes
The Baltic and North Sea network of the Hanseatic League that dominated northern European trade for four centuries.
Overview
Lubeck led a loose confederation of eventually more than 200 towns, from Novgorod's German trading post to London's Steelyard, Bruges, Bergen and the Scanian herring fairs. Rye and wheat from the Baltic hinterland, timber, furs and wax from Russia, salt from Luneburg and cloth from Flanders moved on the league's cogs. Its power was legal as much as naval: privileges, safe conducts and standardized law protected member merchants abroad. Dutch shipping, shifting herring stocks and the rise of territorial states eroded the league after 1500, and the last general diet met in 1669. The word hansa still means merchant guild.
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