Fish and Ships

Weblog about pre-modern international trade in the North Atlantic

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...

Meet the team

Project:Looking In From The Edge (LIFTE)

The German team

Natascha Mehler

The German side of the project is led by Natascha Mehler, professor of medieval archaeology at the University of Tübingen. She is an archaeologist specializing in the remains of the medieval and post-medieval periods. Her work is characterized by a highly interdisciplinary approach and she often focuses on the archaeology of the North Atlantic.
Contact details, CV and list of publications

Bart Holterman

As the project historian, Bart Holterman is responsible for the work with the written sources. He wrote his PhD thesis about the German trade with the North Atlantic for the preceding project Between the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Bart specializes in the history of pre-modern travel, interdisciplinary research and the combination of digital methods with historical research.
Contact details and CV

Philipp Grassel

Philipp is a maritime archaeologist who will work on the maritime remains of seafaring in the Orkney and Shetland waters. He wrote his PhD thesis on the submarine archaeological evidence of German trade in Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland at the University of Kiel in 2017. He has undertaken several archaeolocial and geological submarine research projects.
Contact details, CV and list of publications

The Orkney team

The University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute research team involved in the LIFTE project. From the left: Paul Sharman, Dr Ingrid Mainland, Dr Jen Harland, Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon, Julie Gibson, Professor Neil Simco, (UHI Vice-Principal [Research and Impact]) and Professor Jane Downes (Director of the UHI Archaeology Institute). Dan Lee, Dr Siobhan Cooke and Anne Mitchell are missing from the picture.

The research team at the University of Highlands and Islands, Orkney College, consists of:

Between the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea

Next to Natascha Mehler and Bart Holterman (see above), the team of Between the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea consisted of the following researchers: