Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday, 24 April 2022

A Hanseatic Cog in Tallinn


The Mail Online reports the discovery on a building site in the Estonian capital Tallinn of the very substantial remains of a Hanseatic cog dated by dendrochronology to 1298. It is not far from another such wreck discovered two years ago and both were originally in the mouth of a now silted up river. 


By coincidence I was looking at some YouTube  videos about the Hanseatic League a few weeks ago. These give insight into the history of the League, the lives of its members and its legacy today.

What Was the Hanseatic League? and Hanseatic League provide an introduction to the history of the Hanseatic League and how it operated. 

There is a more academic lecture to the Legatum Institute by the distinguished historian David Abulafia which is splendidly lucid and informative, and really worth watching, at Lubeck and the Hanseatic League: The Birthplace of the Common Market with David Abulafia

Once you get past the sponsors advertisement for online gaming Life of a Hansa Merchant : Hanseatic League History looks in a slightly humerous cartoon format whilst still being informative at the life of a young recruit to the Bergen kontor of the League in the fifteenth century - a subject touched upon by Prof. Abulafia.

The origins and nature of cogs is shown in What Type of Ship Is a Cog?

Medieval Sailors vs Modern Day Sailors looks at, and indeed goes sailing on, a reconstructed cog based in Kampen ( the home town of Thomas à Kempis ) in the Netherlands which regularly sails on the Ijesselmeer.

I acquired a greater awareness of the part played in late medieval English and European trading life through looking at the life of Boston in Lincolnshire where the future Bishop Fleming was Rector from 1408-20. After the Steelyard in London the Boston Kontor was probably the most important of the Hanseatic centres in England, and trading especially with Norway through Bergen - the merchants were the Bergenfahrer.

These ties were not just commercial as can be seen in linked artistic styles in England and Norway - most notably the piers with their curling flourishes along their shafts in the thirteenth century choir of Lincoln cathedral that are replicated, uniquely, in that at Trondheim.

However as the ship in Tallin demonstrates the Hanse bound together a much wider series of  routes and commodities, linking the Baltic and the North Sea, the Gulf of Finland to The Wash - a salutary reminder in our present uncertain times.


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