Teutonic merchants at Visby

1140

German merchants began settling in Visby on the island of Gotland, establishing a trading post that would within decades become the most important Baltic entrepot. The fusion of German traders and native Scandinavian townsmen was the quiet seed of the later Hanseatic League. Visby's stone warehouses and Gothic churches, many still standing, testify to the extraordinary wealth that flowed through the Baltic herring and fur trades.