Old Salt Route - History

History

Historians generally recognize the Old Salt Route as part of a much longer path, which functioned as an important connection between the northern and southern reaches of the country. One of the oldest documents that confirms Lüneburg and its role in refining and transporting salt dates back to 956 A.D. According to that document, King Otto I the Great granted the St. Michaelis Monastery the customs revenue from the saltworks. Even at those early times, the city’s wealth was based in large part on the salt found in the area. However, the Old Salt Route attained its peak of success between the 12th and the 16th century.

The trade route led from Lüneburg northward to Lübeck. From that port city, most of the salt was shipped to numerous destinations that also lie on the Baltic Sea, including Falsterbo, with boasted a Scania Market. There it was used for the preservation of Herring, an immensely important food in the Middle Ages, as well as for other foods. The salt trade was a major reason for the power of Lübeck and the Hanseatic League.

Read more about this topic:  Old Salt Route

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
    Mao Zedong (1893–1976)