Which trade routes and placemarks were there once in the inland area of the Hanseatic League? The digital platform “Viabundus”, which covers the period between 1350 and 1650, is now available for research into economic and transport history. The international development team has now made the interactive map with the historical routes over streets and rivers as well as over 10,000 entries on placemarks freely accessible on the Internet.
“Lucrative trade has always been linked to the bridging of long distances – the basis for this was formed by certain traffic routes,” says project coordinator Niels Petersen from the University of Göttingen. In this context, the Hanseatic League was of great importance in late medieval and early modern northern Europe. This economic association is primarily associated with shipping in the North and Baltic Seas. But this is a limited perspective, says Petersen: “Many people are surprised when they learn that the majority of the Hanseatic cities were inland. These cities relied on carts or inland waterways to bring their goods to long-distance trade ”.
The highways of the premodern
The historian illustrates the importance of long-distance trade inland using an example: “In 1525, 575 freight wagons loaded with Swedish herring passed through the customs office in Eilenburg near Leipzig. This shows how naturally goods were traded across the continent, how efficient the transport network was and how high the traffic density was on some routes, ”says Petersen. With this in mind, he and his colleagues launched the Viabundus project. Together with the research center for the history of the Hanseatic League and the Baltic Sea region in Lübeck, the universities of Magdeburg, Aarhus and Nijmegen, the Göttingen researchers set up this digital platform for long-distance trade routes in Northern Europe between 1350 and 1650. In recent years, the team has systematically compiled relevant data from various sources and converted it into an interactive atlas.
“The result was a kind of open street map during the Hanseatic era,” says co-author Bart Holterman from the Institute for Historical Research at the University of Göttingen. As the researchers explain, the system can now serve as a basis for research into economic and transport history. With the map it is possible, for example, to calculate routes and travel times for the Hanseatic economic area, to overlook fair dates and to analyze the accessibility of places in the historical transport network. In addition, customs offices, markets, river and sea ports, bridges and ferry stations are listed on the route of the goods.
A tool for historical research
In combination with further information, a wide range of questions can be dealt with, say the scientists. As they emphasize, the trade routes were not only important for the economy, but also pilgrimage routes, military routes and formed the connection between villages and the nearest towns. They were therefore also the basis for movements of people and ideas. The researchers say that the map should give anyone interested – even aside from scientific questions – the opportunity to gain historical insights.
As they conclude, the project is still in development. The transport network in today’s Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt is currently the most developed. “International cooperation is the key to a European map. We are therefore pleased that our project partners in Denmark and the Netherlands will have completed their processing in a few months and will thus expand the map significantly, ”says Holterman. He and his colleagues will present the previous version of the Viabundus map on April 19, 2021 at 4 p.m. as part of an Internet presentation in English. Anyone who would like to participate can contact launch@viabundus.eu. Sign in.
Source: University of Göttingen, Platform “Viabundus”