German merchants and the Hanseatic town

In the 1300s Turku is Finland’s gateway to the world, and many of its merchants speak German. Ships carry fish and furs out and salt and wine in. A rubbish pit shows what a rich household ate.

High Middle Ages · Gothic

The big story

Cogs on the Aura

In the 1300s Turku was the largest town in Finland and its gateway to the world. Broad-bellied ships from the German trading towns came up the Aura, and many of the merchants waiting on the riverbank spoke German themselves.

A town of merchants

How big? Perhaps about 2,000 people lived in Turku in the 1300s. Nobody counted them, so the figure is an estimate Likely. It was still the largest of Finland’s six medieval towns, and today it is also the oldest and the most thoroughly excavated Well documented.
The town plan. The town spread around the Cathedral and the Old Great Square on the east bank of the Aura, with a smaller quarter, Aninkainen, across the river. Most houses were of wood; only a few rich burghers and the Church built in stone or brick. The Old Great Square stayed the heart of Turku until the great fire of 1827 Well documented.
German burghers. In the 1300s about two-thirds of Turku’s burghers seem to have been German. Many came from the Hanseatic towns around the Baltic and kept their family and business ties there. Of the town councillors known by name from before 1400, 70–90% were of German origin Likely.
Guilds and the poor. Merchants and craftsmen formed guilds that held feasts, looked after members who fell ill and paid for Masses for the dead. On the edge of town, St George’s hospital took in people with leprosy Well documented. Of everyday life outside the records we know little.

The Hansa and its ships

What was the Hansa? A loose league of German merchant towns, led by Lübeck, that ruled Baltic trade from the 1200s to the 1400s. Its merchants had trading stations from London to Novgorod Well documented.
Was Turku a member? No. Turku belonged to the Hanseatic world of trade, but it was never a member town of the league Likely.
The cog. The workhorse of the Hansa was the cog: a broad, high-sided ship with one mast and one square sail. It was slow but carried a lot of cargo Well documented.
The harbour. The burghers’ storehouses lined the river. The rapids at Halinen blocked the way upstream, so in the later 1200s German trade settled lower down, around Unikankare hill by the Cathedral, where the cogs moored Likely.

What went in and out

Out: dried and salted fish, salted Baltic herring in barrels, and furs. Fish stayed Finland’s most important export until the 1500s Well documented.
In: above all salt, without which fish and meat could not be kept through the winter. Also wine, cloth and other luxuries Well documented.
A privilege for Turku. According to the port’s own history, a royal law of 1347 let Turku’s ships sail freely abroad, while other people in Finland could sail only to Turku or Stockholm Likely.
From Lübeck to Danzig. Lübeck was Turku’s first main destination. From the early 1400s Danzig (today Gdańsk) took over. In the 1500s about half of the ships leaving Turku sailed to Danzig and a quarter to Stockholm Well documented.

How do we know?

The ship counts come from records of the 1500s. For the 1300s historians have only scattered letters, laws and town records. Archaeology fills the gaps: pots, glass and coins dug up in Turku show where goods came from, even when no document mentions them.

870 years of the port

In 2024 the Port of Turku celebrated 870 years. It counts from 1154, when the Arab geographer al-Idrisi, working for the king of Sicily, marked a place called Abuwa on his description of the world. Abuwa is probably Turku, but nobody can be sure Debated.

Line width: share of the ships

In the 1300s Lübeck was Turku’s first main destination. Stockholm and Tallinn were close partners. There are no ship counts from this time, so the line widths are only a rough guide.

Out of Turku

Into Turku

Click a town or a cargo.

Turku’s sea trade in the 1300s and the 1500s. Switch the period, then click a town to send a cog there, or click a cargo.Simplified map. Line widths are a rough guide; ship counts exist only for the 1500s.

Why it matters

For centuries Low German was heard in Turku’s streets and harbour. Swedish borrowed hundreds of words from it in this era, such as betala (to pay), språk (language) and fönster (window), and many reached Finnish through Swedish Well documented. The trade also tied Turku to the rest of Europe: the town lived on what the sea brought in.

On the lighter side

Dinner, read from a rubbish pit

In 2017 archaeologists working under the Aboa Vetus museum found a pit full of rubbish. Around 500 years ago a well-off household had thrown in its kitchen waste, its broken drinking glasses and a whole broken window.

Where and when. The pit lies under the Monastery Quarter (Luostarikortteli) by the river. Radiocarbon dating and the finds date it to about 1470–1520, most likely 1470–1490 Well documented. That is more than a century after the 1350s, but it is the best single snapshot of a Turku dinner table we have.
Whose rubbish? A prosperous household. It may have been a prebend house, a house whose income supported one of the Cathedral’s priests Debated.
Meat. Beef was the most common meat that could be identified, followed by mutton or goat. There were very few pig bones. Duck, goose and chicken were on the table too Well documented.
Fish. About a fifth of the bones were fish: pike and perch from the local waters, and cod, a sea fish that may have been bought dried or salted Likely.
Fast days. On roughly a third of the days of the year the Church forbade meat. Fish was the fast-day food, which is one reason fish was such big business Likely.
Bread and beer. Only two charred barley grains survived in the soil sample. Barley was the main grain of south-west Finland and went into bread, porridge and beer. Beer was the everyday drink; wine was an expensive import for feasts and for Mass Likely.
A fine table. Green drinking glasses and a stoneware vessel from Saxony show a household that could afford imported tableware Well documented.

Spices to hide rotten meat?

A popular story says that medieval cooks used spices to hide the taste of rotten meat. Historians doubt it. Pepper, saffron and cinnamon cost far more than meat, and anyone who could afford them could afford fresh food. Meat and fish were kept by salting, drying and smoking. No spices were found in this pit Likely.

How a rubbish pit is dated

Two sheep or goat bones were radiocarbon dated. All living things take in carbon, including a little radioactive carbon-14, which starts to decay at death at a known rate. The two bones gave the ranges 1440–1490 and 1470–1530. Together with the style of the glass and pottery, the researchers think the pit was most likely filled in one go around 1470–1490.

Whose bones? 638 fragments, one square = 1%

Fast day

Click a colour or a find.

The finds tray

What one rich household threw away. Click a colour to see whose bones they are, switch on a fast day, or click a find on the tray.Bone counts from Aalto et al. (2024). One square is one percent of the 638 bone fragments.

Sources and further reading

Spotted a mistake? Know more?

This site is open and free. Corrections and additions are welcome — every page lists its sources so you can check them.