ty
pairs of oars.

If the Vikings had had national organization under one head, they
might well have laid the rest of Europe under tribute. In the 11th
century, Cnut, a descendant of the Vikings, ruled in person over
England, Denmark, and Norway. But their ocean folk-wanderings seem
to have ended as suddenly as they began, and the effects were social
rather than political. Where they settled, they brought a strain
of the hardiest racial stock in Europe to blend with that of the
conquered peoples.

_The Hanseatic League_

During the Middle Ages, peaceful trading gradually gained the upper
hand over piracy and conquest. From the Italian cities the wares
of the south and the Orient came over the passes of the Alps and
down the German rivers, where trading cities grew up to act as
carriers of merchandise and civilization among the nations of the
north. The merchant guilds of these cities, banded together in
the Hanseatic League, for at least three centuries dominated the
northern seas.

Perhaps the most extensive commercial combination ever formed for
the control of sea trade, the Hanseatic League began with a treaty
between Luebeck and Hamburg in 1174, and at the height of its power
in the 14th and 15th centuries it included from 60 to 80 cities,
of which Luebeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Danzig were among the
chief. The league cleared northern waters of pirates, and used
embargo and naval power to subdue rivals and promote trade. It
established factories or trading stations from Nishni Novgorod to
Bergen, London, and Bruges. From Russia it took cargoes of fats,
tallows, wax, and wares brought into Russian markets from the east;
from Scandinavia, iron and copper; from England, hides and wool; from
Germany, fish, grain, beer, and manufactured goods of all kinds.
The British pound sterling (Oesterling) and pound avoirdupois, in
fact the whole British system of weights and coinage, are legacies
from the German merchants who once had their headquarters in the
Steelyard, London.

In the early 15th century the league attempted to shut Dutch ships
from the Baltic trade by restricting their cargoes to wares produced
in their own country, and by coercing Denmark into granting the
league special privileges on the route through the Sound. This
policy, culminating in the destruction of the Dutch grain fleet
in 1437, led to a naval struggle which extended over four years
and ended in a truce by which the Dutch secured the freed