160 Burkhardt
in the twelfth century. They used to come during the winter with sledges from
the mouth of the river Düna,89 which was the place where German merchants
eventually founded the town of Riga. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centu-
ries, trade in Pleskau intensified, mainly due to the increasing importance of
the kontor in Novgorod. Pleskau was situated on the travel road of the winter
traders who came from Riga or Dorpat. The latter town showed vital interest
in the affairs of the outpost of Dorpat and by this could gain some influence
on the kontor in Novgorod as well.90 But Pleskau was not only a stopover on
the Hanseatic merchants’ travels from the Baltic Sea to Novgorod. A lot of mer-
chants stayed in the town for their own trading activities. Some of them never
traveled as far as Novgorod, but stayed in Pleskau for business or continued to
Polotosk of Smolensk. Those who stayed in the town for a longer time rented
rooms in houses at the “German banks.”91 This term only suggests that the
number of Hanseatic merchants who regularly visited Pleskau for economic
affairs was large enough to make an impact in local perception.
Eastern Europe to as far as Smolensk was not the only region regularly pen-
etrated by Hanse merchants and not considered within the range of Hanseatic
trade. There are many other trading centers which for a longer time saw a
steady stream of Hanseatic merchants and goods coming in. If we think of
trade in upper German towns—like Frankfurt and Nuremberg; Lemberg and
Krakow in nowadays Poland; Notow, Stockholm, and Iceland in Northern
Europe; or Venice in Italy—Hanseatic merchants are hardly those who come to
mind first. But our records show that they had a vital interest in these regions.
Sometimes they were important for economic and social development of the
town and its hinterland. For example, in Stockholm,92 sometimes only risk-
taking merchants would try to get a share in the local market, as was the case
of the quite famous Venetian company of the Veckinghusen-brothers.93 These
examples show how diversified Hanseatic trade was, how different Hanseatic
merchants acted and how difficult it is to define Hanseatic trade on the back-
ground of this diversity.
89 Hoffmann (1989), 37.
90 Angermann (1988), 273–276.
91 Angermann (1973), 277.
92 Wubs-Morzevicz (2007).
93 See: Stieda (1921).