Introduction: German trade in the North Atlantic

Mark Gardiner,Natascha Mehler

doi:10.31265/ams-skrifter.v0i27.282

Abstract

Trade from 1400 onwards had an impact upon the North Atlantic region quite out of proportion to its volume. The opening of a ready market for dried fish, in particular, but also cloth, train oil and sulphur encouraged the production for export on a much larger scale than before. In return, a greater range of finished goods and raw materials was supplied by German merchants. Initially, trade was channelled through Bergen, but this system broke down, largely because English merchants sailed to Iceland. From the 1470s onwards, the number of German ships travelling to Iceland and Shetland increased. The Danish government struggled to control the trade in their North Atlantic territories, but first in the Faroes and later in Iceland, they sought to impose greater restrictions on foreign merchants. The Danes licensed ships to trade at certain ports and from 1601 attempted to restrict the trade to their own merchants. The introduction summarizes the history of German trade in the North Atlantic, and outlines its economic and cultural impacts.

Highlights

German trade in the North AtlanticMARK GARDINER AND NATASCHA MEHLERGardiner, M., Mehler, N. 2019
Though scale of trade from Germany to the North Atlantic remained moderate in size, even at its height, the impact it had on the North Atlantic was disproportionate in political, economic and cultural effects
The items sold and recorded in the mid-sixteenth-century account book of the Bremen merchant, Clawes Monnickhusen are hardly different. They are considered in greater detail elsewhere, but they may be summarized briefly: food in the form of flour, beer and wine, items of clothing, raw materials, including iron, cloth and wood, and manufactured goods, including pots, knives and horseshoes.[8]. All these goods may have been available before, from merchants trading with Bergen but, with the advent of German and English merchants engaged in direct trade, the volume of goods flowing into the North Atlantic islands increased significantly

Summary

Introduction

German trade in the North Atlantic is emeshed with cultural impact is stressed by Belasus who draws attention to the economic pressure that led to improvements in ship building techniques, for example with the technological improvement of vessels to make them ocean-going and fit to cross the North Atlantic. Most of the papers published here arose from a conference held at that place on the subject of ‘German traders in the North Atlantic’ in May 2013. It is appropriate that the question of the nature of this site, a temporary base established by Germans who had left Bergen, should be thoroughly examined in the papers here. Gautavík in south-east Iceland, another place studied here in detail, is one of the few other localities in the North Atlantic, apart from Bergen where a trading place has been excavated in detail. That work took place more than forty years ago when Gautavík was not connected with German trading activities. A re-examination of the evidence is presented here, interpreting Gautavík as a sixteenth-century German trading site

Conclusion