September 2025

I have just had another happy holiday in a Hanseatic League town. In 2018, I had a wonderful trip to Lübeck, ‘Queen of the Hanseatic League’.  I made a resolution that someday I would visit Lüneburg, which supplied much of the salt traded by the League. Covid and a few other things got in the way, but I finally made it this year. Why did I never hear of the Hanse until I moved to Orkney? In spite of their importance in medieval Europe, I don’t remember them being mentioned during my school history lessons, nor during the years I spent working on medieval and early modern history. I was in my sixties when I finally came across the Hanse.

The Hanseatic League was a confederation of trading towns in North Germany from the 12th to the 17th centuries. During that period the Hanse dominated trade around the North Sea and the Baltic, and their operations extended as far as Southern Europe. It was originally formed in 1158 in Lübeck as a union of individual merchants. The first Hansetag (Hanseatic council meeting) was in 1356 and the last in 1669, the official beginning and end of the League. The merchants of the Hanseatic towns became so powerful that they were able to throw off the rule of the local rulers and answered directly to the Holy Roman Emperor.  They had ‘kontors’ or trading centres in towns in many European countries, the most important being Bergen in Norway; London in England; Bruges in the Low Countries; and Novgorod in Russia.  Such was the power of the Hanse, who used trade embargoes and even outright warfare to enforce their demands, that these enclaves were given special privileges by the local rulers.

One of the Hanse’s main trade items was salt fish. This was an essential commodity at the time, because the Catholic Church required its members to avoid meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and the whole of Lent and Advent. Fish was usually substituted. For those living inland, or during seasons when fishing was not possible, this meant fish preserved by salting and drying. There were, after all, no freezers or tins in those days.

Shetland was a major supplier of the fish. Merchants from the Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg are known to have traded regularly with Shetland for stockfish (dried cod and ling). Records show that in 1539 more than 20% of the stockfish declared to the customs at Bremen came from Shetland*. The tiny stone ‘bod’ (booth) at Symbister on Whalsay in Shetland was built for this trade, as were those at Hillswick on the Shetland mainland and Greenwell’s Booth on Unst. These merchants were supposed to trade through the Bergen kontor, but as time went on, a lot of them dealt direct.  Shetland is easy to visit from Orkney, and I have made several short trips there

The trade in salt was just as important as the fish itself, and salt was so valuable that it was sometimes referred to as ‘white gold’. At Lüneburg, 71km to the south of Lübeck, rock salt was obtained from a geological formation known as a ‘salt dome’. An underground salt-water spring was exploited from the 12^th century or earlier. The strong brine was directed through wooden pipes to boiling houses where it was put into large shallow lead trays with fires underneath them, and boiled until the water had evaporated. Wood for the fires was imported via the river Ilmenau, a tributary of the Elbe, which runs through Lüneburg. The work was continuous, 24 hours per day, and the town was noticeable for the clouds of steam and smoke rising from the salt works.  It seems highly likely that the salt so produced would have been contaminated by lead, and therefore so would the fish it was used to preserve. Might this have been another important source of lead poisoning in medieval Europe, besides lead-glazed pottery? Food contamination is not a new problem.

The salt was initially transported from Lüneburg to the Baltic port at Lübeck along a 100km track known as the ‘Old Salt Road’ which connected the two towns. In the late 14^th century, a small canal was built connecting tributaries of the rivers Elbe and Trave, which allowed the salt to be transported all the way from Lüneburg to Lübeck in boats.

The Hanse usually used cogs, small clinker-built ships with a single mast and a single square sail. They had flat bottoms which allowed them to settle on a level at low tide on a beach or harbour. Their squat shape allowed them to carry more cargo than the Viking vessels they replaced during the course of the 13^th century. They also had a rudder mounted on a stern-post rather than a steering oar, which made them easier to steer. The well-preserved remains of a 14^th century Hanseatic cog were recovered from the mud during dredging work on the river Weser near Bremen in 1962. The preserved timbers are now on display in the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven.

Lüneburg was the main town of the principality of Lüneburg, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1247 the Lüneburg town charter was confirmed, giving privileges to the burghers or citizens. However, in 1371 the citizens of the town expelled their territorial sovereign and destroyed his castle on the Kalkburg. In 1412 the first Hansetag of Lüneburg was celebrated in the town. The salt masters, from the small number of merchant families who leased the salt works, came to dominate the town. They grew extremely rich, and were able to afford beautiful imported glass and pottery, silver cups and salt-cellars; and to build magnificent tall brick houses and public buildings in the ‘Brick Gothic’ style.

Brick Gothic is slightly simplified Gothic architecture, with tall windows, high pointed arches, rib vaulting and flying buttresses, but built in brick. It was common during the medieval/Hanseatic period in northern and central Europe in the Baltic area where there is little building stone available. The buildings are a beautiful warm red colour, and in Lüneburg were decorated with glazed bricks, roof furniture etc. as well as some expensive imported stone. I saw some excellent glazed brick in the town museum. The tall churches are fiendishly difficult to photograph, though, because you can’t get far enough away from them in the narrow streets.

By the 17^th century, the power of the Hanse was declining. The rule of the merchants was replaced by the rulers of new territorial states and new trade routes, for example with India and America. The last Hansetag was in 1669.  Lüneburg was once again ruled by a local prince, and the town, having lost much of its salt trade, declined. The extraction of salt continued, however, and this has left a lasting legacy. So much salt was extracted, especially during the 19^th century, that the land above the dome, on which part of the town had been built, started to subside and is still doing so. Many buildings in the area have collapsed or had to be demolished. The salt works was finally closed entirely in 1980. They now only produce very small amounts of salt for the town spa, and to sell to tourists.

(*ref. panel text, Pier House Museum, Symbister, Whalsay)

I first came across the term “hügelkultur” during an internet search on a gardening topic. This time, for once, my interest wasn’t sparked by a book. Basically, it involves growing vegetables on a compost heap with a base formed by a pile of logs. The idea is an interesting one, although I should stress that I have no personal knowledge of how well it works, as I have never seen one in action and it isn’t suitable for my own garden. Although frequently referred to as an ‘ancient technique’ in Europe there seem to be no references to either documentary or archaeological evidence for hugelkultur earlier than 1962. If anybody has any such references, I would be interested to hear them.

The word ‘hügelkultur’ is German for ‘mound cultivation’. It refers to building a raised bed on a base of logs, filled in with small twigs and bark, and covered with layers of straw, compost, grass clippings, dead leaves, chicken bedding etc and finally topsoil, in which you plant your vegetables. You can either build it freestanding i.e. completely above ground level, or sunk in a trench, or partly sunk. Some are gently sloping, some have almost vertical sides. As the logs rot and the various layers of leaves etc. compost down, a rich soil is produced. The porous logs retain moisture efficiently so the bed needs less watering than conventional beds, but it doesn’t become waterlogged. The slowly decomposing organic matter provides a slow release supply of nutrients. It doesn’t need digging over, so the soil structure remains undisturbed and it is expected to be rich in soil bacteria, fungal mycelia etc. It’s a good way to recycle organic waste into compost, and it is very much part of the permaculture movement, in that it is supposed to take care of itself and produce food for years. 

It is generally admitted to have some disadvantages. A certain amount of heavy labour is needed to set up, digging up the turf and moving logs into position, and you need to leave it for a year or so to become established. It doesn’t last forever and needs to be rebuilt entirely after five or six years. The bed slowly subsides as the compost material rots down, so planting fruit trees and bushes on top is not really practical. You need a source of logs (bark chippings alone won’t do) and a good deal of compostable materials to start it off with. Areas like Orkney and Shetland, with very few trees would have a problem. I am not sure that driftwood well-soaked with salt, or conifers full of resin, would really make a good base for a compost heap.  Holes will appear as the underlying logs rot down, which will need to be filled in with small stuff. It is also said to be an attractive habitat for rats. And you need a large enough plot of land. There is something scientific about wood needing extra nitrogen as it starts to rot; I have no idea whether this is really likely to have a significant effect in a garden bed or whether it is of purely academic interest.

Not everybody supports the method. An article written by an urban horticulturist and associate professor at Washington State University argues that ordinary raised beds are a better option and that the logs would be better used on the surface, as ‘nurse logs’ for wildlife, standing around the garden, or made into chippings for mulches.

An interesting side effect of my researches on this particular topic was that it brought my attention to the way my preferred search engine works and its AI summary is produced. My background research this time relied entirely on the internet, since the method doesn’t appear in any of the books I have got hold of. At one point I noticed that the sites that usually appear when I search on gardening topics, such as the RHS, Henry Doubleday, and various sites run by universities or botanic gardens, did not come up this time. Even Wikipedia was only on the second page. Instead, I got hardly anything except blogs from ‘alternative’ groups or individuals. I have no objection to druids and some of them did look practical, but I like to have a more orthodox point of view as well. When I did find Wiki and some of the blogs dealing with the disadvantages of hügelkultur, they stated that there have been no properly-designed scientific studies on whether it actually works.

I asked about how AI works at present, and it turns out that it relies on the sites which come up most frequently and which attract the attention of search engines most efficiently. It has no way at the moment to assess the reliability or the academic standards of its sources. The AI designers are well aware of this, and you can find out about it if you ask, but it is not immediately obvious to the casual user, or at least not to one of my age. In some ways this can be a good way of avoiding censorship on the internet, and it hardly matters if you are building a raised bed on top of a log pile, but it does mean that I would not like to bet on how well this technique works without trying it myself or visiting a garden where it has been used.

So, am I going to try building myself a hügel? No. It sounds as if it might be suitable for some environments, but Orkney has (a) an abundance of fertile agricultural soil and (b) a serious lack of trees. And I only have a small garden. I shall stick to tiny raised beds and containers and composting my kitchen waste. But I would like to see one in action.