Kontors and Outposts 153
The Role of the Kontors in the Organization of Hanseatic Trade
Hanseatic trade was much more than trading activities of Hanseatic mer-
chants within the kontors. The most important trade in terms of quantity of
goods transported was inner-Hanseatic trade. Many more goods were shipped
from Wismar to Rostock and from Lübeck to Danzig than were traded in the
four kontors. And one part of the Hanseatic trade that is notoriously under-
represented in Hanse research is domestic trade in the interior. Merchants
from towns like Melle, Havelberg, Krakow, Naumburg or Werben, all at one
point recognized as Hanse merchants, might never have been seen at any of
the kontors. Their trade was much more concentrated on the local scale and
the interregional inland fairs at for example Frankfurt, Nuremberg, or Leipzig.
South German merchants participated in the trade in Hanse towns as well.
One of the most famous examples is the Mulich family from Nuremberg with
strong business connections to the town of Lübeck. We often forget this part
of Hanseatic trade when we concentrate on the trade of Lübeck and Danzig or
the English and Falmish connections of merchants from Cologne.
Still, the kontors were important to the Hanseatic trade system. They pro-
vided many merchants and Hanseatic towns with goods that otherwise would
have been hard or nearly impossible to access. This is especially true for the
northernmost Hanseatic towns situated at the shores of the Baltic Sea. As sea
transport was much cheaper and much more efficient that road transport
the advantage of trade at the kontors was their access to the open sea. Even if
goods had to be transported from the kontor to the Baltic Sea by boat on rivers,
as in the case of Novgorod, this was still much cheaper than carrying the same
quantity of goods by wagon from somewhere in Russia to the Hanseatic region.
As trading centers for goods that were not available in the Hanseatic region in
the same quantity or quality London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novgorod supplied
many people in this region with much demanded and needed commodities. In
Novgorod, besides furs, much of the wax needed in medieval churches, guild
halls, and households was purchased. Bruges and London supplied the region
with fine cloth, spices, literature, and a lot of luxury goods. From Bergen, stock-
fish, a durable fish needed as food during several of the 140 fasting days pre-
scribed by the medieval church calendar, reached the markets at the continent
and the British Isles. Many other goods were also transported in Hanseatic
ships from the kontors to the towns, but the merchandise listed above com-
prised the most important commodities and attracted thousands of Hanseatic
merchants’ interest every year.
In exchange, the kontors provided a welcome customer market for prod-
ucts overproduced in the Hanseatic region. Here the Hansards could sell their