October 2020

I love smoked eel. My kind sister-in-law stuffs me with smoked eel from Germany every Christmas, to the point where I actually can’t eat any more. Well, it is rather rich and oily. I like it even better than kippers, although I love them too. I am fond of smoked salmon, and I won’t say no to a bit of smoked mackerel, or pickled and salted herring. Perhaps I should have been a Viking?

Preserved fish is really the reason why I visited Lübeck, Queen of the Hanseatic League, in 2018. I got involved with a local project which included trade with the Baltic. During medieval and early modern times, Orkney and Shetland traded stockfish and other salted and dried fish such as ling and tusk with towns in the Baltic area, including Bergen and Lübeck, and during the course of researching my contribution I got really interested in the Hanseatic League. Why on earth did nobody teach me about the Hanseatic League before? I can’t remember any mention of it in our school history lessons although for hundreds of years the Hanse was a major force in North West European trade. Beginning in the 12^th century and lasting for about 600 years, a confederation of merchants from areas speaking Low German built an extensive trade network which crossed political borders. They dominated the Baltic markets and their trading range extended as far as Southern Europe. The League had enormous power. They received protection and “privileges” from local rulers, and enforced their wishes and their monopolies by means of trade embargoes.  “Privileges” were deeds granted by a ruler allowing the Hanse a trading post, lower customs duties, free import/export of goods, freedom to trade with all locals & foreigners.  Their principal kontors or trading enclaves were at Bergen, Bruges, London and Novgorod, although there were many smaller ones.

From the mid-14C, representatives of the Hanseatic towns and cities held assemblies called “Hansetage” to take joint political & economic decisions. The first Hansetag was in 1356 and the last in 1669, the official beginning and end of the league. By the 17^th century the Hanse was winding down, eclipsed by the rise of new territorial states whose rulers wanted their law followed without special economic or political status for merchant towns.  The Thirty Years War (1618 – 48) and the rise of trade with the New World also contributed to the end of the League.

But getting back to fish, since there weren’t any freezers in medieval Europe, drying, salting and pickling were the only ways to preserve fish. Salt herring and stockfish were very important for the many fast days demanded by the church, at one point Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and all of Lent and Advent, and for long sea voyages. Stockfish is cod, which is not very oily and can therefore be salted and air-dried until it is as hard as a board and keeps for years. It is possible that being forced to eat salt cod for such a large percentage of the year might become a little tedious, especially as to reconstitute it, you have to soak it for hours and beat it with a mallet.  I think I might lose my Viking foodie tastes if I really had to eat it so much of the time.

Lübeck was founded in 1143 CE, and from 1230 to 1535 was one of the leading cities of the Hanse. The city was a major port in the lucrative salt trade dominated by the Hanse. All that salted fish meant that salt itself was a vital commodity, and it came mostly from the inland town of Lüneburg where it was mined from a geological formation known as a salt dome, and sent to Lübeck to be shipped on to Scandinavia for salting herrings. One of the sights of Lübeck is the “Salzspeicher”, a group of six salt warehouses built between 1579 and 1745, used for storing the all-important salt.   

So I decided to visit Lübeck, and its wonderful Europaische Hansemuseum (European Hanseatic Museum).  Today the old quarter is still a very pretty town, built on an island in the river Trave near its outlet into the Baltic Sea. I went there in spring when the trees were green with young leaves, and flowering cherries overhung the main bridge.

Lübeck is famous for its Brick Gothic architecture, characteristic of the area around the Baltic Sea, which has little suitable stone for building, and in spite of extensive damage during World War II is a Unesco World Heritage Site.  The 13^th – 14^th century Marienkirche is a striking example of the Brick Gothic style. It has the highest brick vault in the world, twin spires and pointed arches over huge windows. The style was derived from France and the Marienkirche was the prototype for around seventy brick Gothic churches in the Baltic area.

The streets of Lübeck are lined with tall gabled brick houses up to seven stories high. The gabled houses which survive today are mostly 15^th and 16^th century and would have belonged to the elite but they were building brick homes as far back as the 13^th century here. Around 1200 CE Lübeck was mainly wooden houses, but by about 1300 CE, seven hundred to thirteen hundred houses had been built of brick, with gable ends facing the street & lots of storage space. Those merchants were mega-rich to afford all those bricks!

The island city was surrounded not only by the river but by a town wall with four massive gates, two of which survive, the15th century Holstentor, and Burgtor, also built of brick.  The Hansemuseum is located in part of a large Dominican monastery, founded in the 13^th century on the site of the original castle. I particularly liked the town hall (Rathaus) which started life as a brick Gothic building but with Renaissance additions. The round shields visible from the side of the Market Square designate the city’s status as a Free Imperial City. In the 13^th century the Holy Roman Emperor gave it the status of an imperial free city, which added to its importance.

Having enjoyed the standing buildings and indulged in an orgy of medieval brick and German stoneware jugs inside the museum, I turned my attention to food. The culinary delight for which Lübeck is most famous today is marzipan. It even has a marzipan museum. You can buy excellent marzipan in practically any form, including some rather nice marzipan coffee. But the food I enjoyed most was a fischbrot (fish roll) filled with salt herring which I ate sitting in an open-air café beside the river, washed down by a large glass of German beer. Lovely!