196 Jahnke
Prussian and Livonian cities and, by beginning of the sixteenth century, grew
into the main route in and out of the Baltic.4
The way to the Skaw led from the Baltic through the Sound as the main sea-
way, where the Danish kings levied a custom beginning in 1429,5 or through the
Danish Belts, where the kings of Denmark also tried to levy a similar custom
from all passing ships. So the kingdom of Denmark gained a key position in the
political and economic considerations of the Hanseatic League, because it was
very easy for the Danish kings to close the Sound and the Belts and thereby
strangle Hanseatic trade, even though the royal exchequer got most of its
income from the custom at the Sound.
But international trade to and from the Baltic was only one side of the
coin. On the other side were regional and sub-regional business areas along
the Baltic Sea. Because of the Baltic’s geography, the line between Scania and
Pomerania ran between the Jutish-Danish-Wendian and the Prussian-Swedish
trade-area, while the Gulf of Bothnia together with the Gulf of Finland and
Estonia comprised another area. These different areas had their own trade
centers and rhythms as well as their particular products. Certainly these areas
were not strictly separated from each other, but instead often overlapped as
they took part together in supplying the international trade and worked as
sub-distribution centers for imported goods.
All in all, these areas acted as well-rehearsed components of the great
northern European and Hanseatic trade: The hinterland supplied the regional
sub-centers with commercial goods, where they were then sent to the closest
center and then to the great entrepôts. In this system, the goods were bundled
into larger and larger units until they could be formed into international car-
goes in the big sea harbors. On the other way around the large cargoes were
broken up on their way from the entrepôt to customers in the hinterlands. The
result was that international trade and the regional trade areas of the Baltic
were merged together seamlessly.
4 Carsten Jahnke, Netzwerke in Handel und Kommunikation an der Wende vom 15. zum 16.
Jahrhundert am Beispiel zweier Revaler Kaufleute (Unprinted Habilitation: University of
Kiel, 2004).
5 Kai Hørby, “Øresundtolden og den Skånske Skibstold.” In Middelalderstudier, Tilegnede Aksel
E. Christensen på Tresårsdagen, 11. September 1966, (Copenhagen: Munksgård, 1966), 245–272.