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:
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)