Kontors and Outposts 159
The outposts in Lisbon and the French towns La Rochelle, Bourgneuf,
Bordeaux, and Nantes were used as export ports for the Bay salt, a cheaper alter-
native to the expensive salt from Lüneburg. Here large convoys of Hanseatic
ships gathered in early summer. The ships sailed back to the Hanseatic ports
in the salt fleet, because on their own, they would have been an easy target for
Dutch or English pirates. However, even traveling in a fleet did not guarantee a
safe journey, which became clear in 1449 when the English captured the whole
Hanseatic salt fleet. This action caused major political and economic distur-
bances between England and the Hanse towns.
Although Bruges was the central market for cloth trade in Western Europe,
other towns in Flanders were also regularly visited by Hanse merchants. Among
these we find Sluis, Gent, Bergen op zoom, Hoeke, and Dortrecht.
Also in the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, there were additional out-
posts besides the kontor of Bergen and the Scania fairs. Oslo and Tönsberg, the
trading centers of southern Norway, were important knots in the trade mesh of
merchants from Rostock, Wismar, and Stralsund.86 The most important com-
modity trade was herring from Bohuslen, the region southeast of Oslo at the
shores of Kattegatt. The outposts were run by two aldermen, but they were
much more restricted in their liberties than the kontor in Bergen. Hanseatic
merchants were only allowed to stay in the towns for a maximum of six weeks
and until 1447, they did not have the right to trade with each other or with the
local peasants.87
Further south, Copenhagen, Landskrona, Kalundberg, Naestved, Ystad,
Rønne, and Åhus, all situated at the Danish Isles or in Scania, hosted Hanseatic
outposts. Here a small quantity of trade was carried out, comparable to the trade
between Hanseatic towns and short-distance trade in all other coastal areas.
Even in these towns, it was not necessary to have a permanent occupation.
In the eastern European outposts in the Baltic interior, the merchants found
a completely different situation. Places like Kaunas, Vilnius, Witebsk, Polotsk,
and Smolensk were far away from their hometowns and could only be reached
by a special effort. These outposts needed to be more organized in the way
the kontors or the outposts in France were. One of these trading places was
Pleskau (Pskov), in modern Russia. Situated south of the mouth of the river
Welikaja into the lake system leading to the Baltic Sea, the site was already
used as a trading place in the early Middle Ages.88 As in many other places of
Hanseatic trade area, low German merchants started to visit Pleskau regularly
86 Thierfelder (1958).
87 Schubert (2000), 36.
88 Sedov (1992), 143ff.