Hansabruk
Dear Francis, Tore, Dirk and others,
Let us sum up our position of the word Hansa/Hanse.
The word is used in the Gothic Bible translated by Wulfila about 370
The word is used in the title Hansa Graf in Regensburg 12 century
The word is used in London in connection with a Flemish Hanse from London 1267
The word Hanse does not appear in the middle Baltic until after 1356
So far the Gothic list members. Thanks a lot for the help.
There are a few complicating factors.
One is that at first it is used of tradesmen, and later as a groupword for merchant towns. Some towns contained hanseatic tradesmen, and did a lot of trade, but were not hanseatic towns, as Bergen and Stockholm. Later a group of towns were formally organised as a Hanse, with an organisational constitution and such paraphernalia.
"London's Cannon Street Station was formerly the site of the hanseatic steel-yard, and remained hanseatic property until 1853." (Heer p. 64.) So it was a long-lived organisation.
The origin seems to be a company of traders calling themselves "Gotland merchants of the Holy Roman German Empire" or something the like. In the beginning they cooperated with the Gotland farming merchants (farbönder) on the Novgorod trade.
There are traces in Visby of an old wall encircling at least three church ruins, and two profane buildings, an old town hall and the oldest profane building in Scandinavia, the "Gunpowder tower" located just at the entrance of the harbour. This small town is conservatively dated about 1000. It is probable that there lived Gotland tradesmen, Russians and Germans. The Germans expanded their quarters to the south.
1293 was the Hanseatic office for Novgorod trade moved from Visby to Lübeck.
Here were a lot of people doing a lot of work and by no means keeping to themselves. And people are usually called something. There are two descriptive names for these traders. They differ those who stayed the winter from them coming back next season; mercatrores frequentes and mercatores manentes respectively.
I am telling this because if you should happen to see The Lone Trader, on a bench in a bierstube or a tap hall, giving such an impression of extreme honesty and trustworthiness that you might be tempted to give him your account number of your Cayman Island Bank, don’t do it. Instead you should ask the landlord what he is called; not by what name, but by what profession. Even if you have to pay for his bier, it could be worth it.
Heer, Friedrich: The Medieval World. Europe from 100 – 1350. First published in Germany 1961 under the title Mittelalter.