IT was a European union of its times.

For over three centuries, the Hanseatic League brought trade and delivered prosperity to communities in Scotland’s most northerly islands. 

Led by cities in Germany, the Baltic states and Scandinavia, the alliance created a trading link that spanned Northern Europe and brought a flavour of continental goods to the people of Shetland and, it’s believed, Orkney. 

In exchange for fishing gear, beer, fruit and ceramics, Shetlanders provided their trading partners with plentiful supplies of fish, grain and wool. 

However, shifting tastes and trends plus hefty import duties imposed following the Act of Union on salt – vital for curing fish – meant the Hanseatic League would eventually stutter to a halt. 

Now a three-year international study is set to examine the full extent of the Hanseatic League’s influence on Shetland and Orkney’s people, economies and culture. 

The ‘Looking in from the Edge’ study will seek out archaeological and historical evidence of the islands’ place within European trade networks from the 15th to the 18th centuries.

It will initially have particular focus on the Hanseatic League’s presence in Orkney where there is less known about how it may have operated. 

The study, involving an international team of researchers from the University of the Highlands and Islands, alongside academics from Germany and England, will also look at the League’s impact on Caithness, as well as exploring the different path Orkney may have taken.

Dr Ingrid Mainland, of University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, said: “There is evidence from ship records of German ships going down in the area, and of traded goods coming in to Shetland in the form of cereals and flour for baking, clothing and fishing gear.

“There’s evidence that Orkney might have taken a different path in terms of development of trade or trading with different partners – particularly Scotland and Norway. 

“We will be trying to explore more about the evidence for trading in Orkney and how it compares to Shetland, and the influence of German and other trade partners.”

The research will focus on trade between the 15th and 17th centuries by which time various trading organisations were spanning the globe, bringing a flow of goods between far flung countries and communities, and transforming peripheral places from low-level trading economies to commercialised, surplus-producing ones.

Work at Orkney Library and Archive has begun, with historical documents linked to trading operations being analysed. 

Archaeological material is also being examined and work carried out to identify new sites, such as those with place names which hint at continental connections, which can be excavated as part of the research. 

The research will also look for biological evidence in midden material - an archaeological term for historic dumps of waste - to help identify what people were eating in the hope of finding links to traded goods.

The Hanseatic League emerged around 1150 and was initially made up of German merchants.

By the 15th century, it had expanded into the North Atlantic and forged connections with traders in Scandinavia and the Baltics. 

It created a network of warehouses in cities spanning Northern Europe and Russia, and closer to home at Aberdeen, Berwick, and Scalloway in Shetland. 

Merchants from cities such as Bremen and Hamburg set up well organised marketplace booths from which they could sell their goods and buy items from local people to take with them when they left.

Goods included timber from Scandinavia, rowing boats from Norway, fishing gear and even brandy and gin from Germany and other countries.

One German merchant, Adolf Westermann from Hamburg, is recorded as beginning trading in 1668 on the waterfront at Hillswick, with his ships, St Johann and St Peter, spending every summer trading between crofting and fishing families. 

In return, according to Dr Mainland, Shetlanders offered butter, feathers and wool for sale. 
“There is some suggestion in Orkney there was a grain trade although we might not think of Orkney as being an exporter of grain.”

Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon, of the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, who is leading the UK element of the study, said: “The project will give us an opportunity to look into the mechanisms of early modern trade and how the Northern Isles adapted to a changing economic world. 

“How did this emerging international trade change the islanders’ way of making and trading their wares and products? 

"What were the consequences of this rapidly changing and expanding world on the social and economic ways of life for the islanders?”

As European governments took control of trade in the early 1700s, private organisations such as the League ceased to exist.

Dr Mainland added: “We want to understand the impact of trade on farming practices, fishing and dietary customs – they were importing flour, which could well have changed the kind of diet that people ate.

“But while quite a bit is known about Shetland, less is known about the trade in Orkney.”