Welcome to the weblog about research into the late medieval and early modern international trade on the North Atlantic islands. It investigates the economic and cultural connections of merchants from Northern German cities, such as Bremen and Hamburg with the North Atlantic islands of Iceland, Shetland and Faroe during the 15th to 17th centuries. The research is based at the German Maritime Museum (Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum) in Bremerhaven in cooperation with the University of Highlands and Islands in Orkney. The research is carried out by four team members, each with their individual research objectives and disciplinary background. With this blog we want to provide information about the current state of our research, and create a platform to make available results and new knowledge. Read more...
During excavations in 2011 in the former defense ditch of the city of Bremen huge amounts of animal bones have been found. The material has been analysed in the course of the Hanse Project since it contained a large amount of cod (Gadus morhua) bones. But there were also other interesting finds pointing to a trade connection with the North Atlantic. Of particular interest is a bone of a razor bill or lesser auk (Alca torda) with cut marks. This bird does not live on the North Sea coast and must have been brought to Bremen from North Atlantic regions e.g. from Shetland, Iceland, the Faroes or Northern Norway, probably as a by-product of the Bremen North Atlantic trade for stockfish.
Julia Schmidt, public relations officer of the Landesarchäologie Bremen, has written a blog about this find (in German) that can be accessed on the Facebook page of the Landesarchäologie.
Bart Holterman presentated the project and his own research on August 5 in Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen. Matthias Holthaus was there as well and wrote the following article about it in the Weser Kurier of August 21, which gives a nice overview of the situation German merchants had to deal with when trading in the North Atlantic in the late Middle Ages (in German).
A short article about the workshop we organised in Stade about the cultural impact of the German trade in the North Atlantic at the end of October appeared in Stader Tageblatt on 5 November 2016.
Last week Aoife Daly came to the museum in Bremerhaven to take samples of the wood of the so-called Bremen Cog, our famous 14th-century ship wreck, to use them for dendrochronological research. Martina Albert came along to see what she was doing and wrote a nice article (in German) about the work on the ship, published in the Nordsee-Zeitung, 22 April 2016. With kind permission of the author.
A photo impression of the dendrochronological sampling can be seen on our facebook page.
Finally a summary of our project written in Icelandic! Published in Morgunblaðið, 15 December 2015. With kind permission of the author Guðni Einarsson.
