Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League was a confederation of North European merchant towns and guilds that dominated Baltic and North Sea trade from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, centered on Lubeck and embracing cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, Danzig, and the foreign kontors in Bergen, London, and Novgorod. Using the cog and later larger ships, it controlled the trade in grain, timber, salt fish, furs, and cloth and enforced commercial privileges across the region. Its warehouses and harbor districts survive as heritage sites.