222 Jahnke
fur trade to the Hanse, no research into it has been conducted until recently.105
One reason could be that we are missing evidence for the value of exported
fur from the Baltic. The custom-lists normally used to quantify exports listed
fur only sporadically,106 so we do not know the position of fur in the Baltic
trading system even though we can state that this trading-good was important
and expensive. In 1406, English pirates captured three ships from Riga alone
with 394,864 pieces of fur on board in a value of £ 3,373 16 ß and 4 den. (after
a later exchange rate c. 33,730 ml.), and R. Delort, together with M.P. Lesnikov,
estimated for the same time an export of 1,500,000 pieces of fur annually from
the Eastern Baltic.107
What is known is that at the end of the fifteenth century108 and in the middle
of the sixteenth century the trade in fur shifted to the North and the South of the
Baltic. The Novgorodian fur trade system disintegrated in the third quarter of
the fifteenth century, which was caused by Hanseatic reluctance to import sil-
ver to Novgorod and a change in consumption patterns.109 In the next decades
the fur trade relocated in the Estonian and Livonian towns Dorpat, Reval, and
Riga.110 In the second half of the fifteenth century, Dutch merchants tried to
buy fur in Arkhangelsk and other northern Russian entrepôts,111 and begin-
ning in the end of the fifteenth century the Leipzigan fairs became more and
more important to the fur trade.112 So it is no wonder that in 1558/59 Hanseatic
merchants only exported furs in the value of 26,606 m.l. from Russia via Viborg
compared to wax in a value of 81,580 m.l.113
105 In general see R. Delort, Le commerce des fourrures and M.P. Lesnikov, “Hansischer
Pelzhandel,” 219–222.
106 K.L. Goetz, Handelsgeschichte, 256 f; Georg Lechner (ed.), Die hansischen Pfundzollisten
des Jahres 1368, Quellen und Darstellungen zur Hansischen Geschichte, N.F., x (Lübeck:
Verl. des Hansischen Geschichtsvereins, 1935), 53.
107 R. Delort, Le commerce des fourrures, 1042f.
108 For the Russian development see R.H. Fisher, Fur trade, 9–16.
109 J. Martin, Treasure of the Land, 81–85.
110 Norbert Angermann, “Zum Rußlandhandel von Dorpat/Tartu in der Zeit seiner höchsten
Blüte (Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts).” In Die baltischen Länder und der Norden, Festschrift für
Helmut Piirimäe zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Mati Laur and Enn Küng (Tartu: Akadeemiline
Ajalooselts, 2005), 82–93.
111 A. Attman, Den ryska marknaden, 58f.
112 Herbert Eiden, “Die Hanse, die Leipziger Messen und die ostmitteleuropäische
Wirtschaft,” Hansische Geschichsblätter 120 (2002), 73–95; Manfred Unger, “Die Leipziger
Messe und die Niederlande im 16. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Hansische Geschichsblätter 81
(1963), 20–38.
113 Gunnar Mickwitz, “Die Hansekaufleute in Wiborg 1558/1559,” Historiallinen Arkisto,
Toimittanut Suomen Historiallinen Seura xlv (1939), 107–193, here 116. By an exchange rate
of 10 ß l. of 1 m.l.