Free The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are by Michael Pye

sake of business, chasing profit and not serving
     religion’. 51
    The merchants made an inland headquarters at
     Dorestad, some two hundred kilometres upstream on the Rhine where the river splits in
     two. They had a natural beach at first, perfect for landing their boats, but the river
     was beginning to meander and it formed a wet, slippery shoal between the water and the
     land; so they built causeways into the river, one jetty to each house, jetties which
     grew longer over the years as the bed of the river dodged to the east. Roadways of
     wooden planks ran over the causeways so goods could be loaded and unloaded. Those goods
     were rich: elegant glass and expensive weapons, pots of the style that buyers wanted
     wherever it was made,and not the rough local
     stuff. Even the wood barrels that lined their wells were imported: from Mainz up the
     river. The houses were long and boat-shaped, wider inland and narrower on the waterfront
     where they stood at right angles to the water, each claiming a private, personal access
     to the business of the river. 52
    Dorestad was so important to making money
     that it had the second most-active mint in the empire after the one in
     Charlemagne’s own court. 53 In Charlemagne’s time so much
     business passed through that the town became one of the main customs posts for the
     empire; most likely, it was along its harbour that cargo was shifted from sea-going
     boats to river-going boats, which would make it much easier to check value and take the
     Emperor’s share. The town was a turntable for travellers, too, on the long haul
     from the upper Rhine to the sea, which implies some sort of schedule for services and a
     fair amount of traffic, and maybe somewhere to stay while you waited. Not all travellers
     found the welcome they expected. The scholar Alcuin of York told his friends in a poem
     to raise their sails and get out of Dorestad quickly because it was very likely a
     merchant called Hrotberct wouldn’t open his house to them, just because
     ‘this greedy merchant doesn’t like your poems’. Alcuin clearly
     expected merchants to do their duty and offer a bed to distinguished strangers, so
     ‘
niger Hrotberct
’, ‘wretched Hrotberct’, let
     everyone down. 54 In doing so, mind you, he got a minor kind of immortality; his
     very Frankish name is the only name we have for a merchant in Dorestad.
    Look a little closer, and the port is much
     odder: a port that only men from the
terpen
could have imagined. The houses by
     the Rhine were packed closely but each made itself into an island: there was a wood
     palisade to mark its boundaries and a gallery that ran round the outside of the building
     to look out towards the neighbours, all the connection and the isolation of the
terpen.
There was not just one well to provide water, but two: one for
     humans, one for animals. In the north of the town there were substantial farms, linked
     by wooden plank roadways, and they raised more meat than the town could possibly eat.
     Each merchant house made things on a small scale, tanned leather or carved amber or did
     basic blacksmithing, produced ropes and baskets and maybe also cloth. The warehouses
     were storinggoods, but also producing more
     goods than the town could use. 55 Dorestad was a port and a market
     town which kept the habits of the
terpen:
raise animals, make anything you can,
     go into business with what you have and then go as far as you can with the business.
    All this required organization. Frisians
     sailed in convoys, which means they had to time and plan their voyages and share the
     information; we know this because the priest Ragenbert was sent north to what is now
     Sweden by way of Schleswig, ‘where there were ships and merchants who were to make
     the journey with him’ (and it was just bad luck that he was set upon by robbers
     and never made it alive). 56 Later they definitely had guilds,
     sworn brotherhoods; but perhaps they always had