The Baltic Trade 213
At the traditional meeting places of the farmers at Skanör on the penin-
sula of Falsterbo, at Dragør on the island of Amager, or later Malmö, the early
Hanseatic merchants met a big and rich crowd, desirous to buy western goods
and to sell herring. The allure of that trade was so great for merchants that in
1201 the entire Lubeckian elite assembled there—which proved to be an easy
prey for the Danish king, who successfully brought the town under his rule.
Between 1201 and 1224, Lübeck was part of the Danish empire, and during
this period its merchants were able to transfer their Rugian market privileges
to the Scanian markets. These early privileges secured four central points: first,
the security of merchants and merchandizing in Denmark and on the ways to
and from the fairs in the case of jettison or shipwreck, second, stable and cal-
culable customs, third, affording of own jurisdiction to the merchants, includ-
ing the jurisdiction of their home-town, and fourth, exemption from the rule
discouraging any activity to disturb the quietness of Sundays and holydays.
(See the chapter of Mike Burkhardt).
But the Scanian Markets were not only herring fairs. They also got their
importance from the fact that at the beginning of the thirteenth century, mer-
chants from England, the Low Countries, and other western nations perceived
that they could deal with their Baltic partners directly at the markets under
very propitious conditions. As a result, the Scanian markets developed into
Northern Europe’s most important trading fair in the beginning of the thir-
teenth century. At this place western cloth and luxury goods were traded with
fur, wax and eastern products, including top-quality Scanian herring.
Until the end of the thirteenth century, the Scanian markets were so impor-
tant, that the Lubeckians neglected the Rugian fairs and the sale of any herring
other than Scanian herring was forbidden in the Netherlands to control the
quality of herring imports. The height of the Scanian markets lasted until 1370,
when the Hanseatic regiment at this place disturbed the interchange between
west and east.69 (See the chapter of Jurgen Sarnowsky). After this time, the
Wendian merchants tried to expel their competitors from the market. As a
result of this political decision, the English and Dutch recovered their old fish-
ing grounds at the Dogger Bank and the triumph of the Dutch Matjes began in
the fifteenth century.
Because of the diversity of fishing places and commercial partners at the
Scanian Fairs we are not able to estimate concrete figures of the herring export
from the Baltic. But we can calculate a minimum trade between the Scanian
Markets and Lübeck for some years of the fourteenth century:70
69 Carsten Jahnke, Silber des Meeres, 90–103.
70 Carsten Jahnke, Silber des Meeres, 421.