Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages attempts a broad overview of a number of elements of seafaring activity in medieval northern Europe. Dirk Meier seeks to demonstrate the decisive influence of the sea on the economic development of northern Europe and the symbiotic relationship between trade and developments in maritime technology. The geographic concentration of the study is the North Sea and Baltic regions with particular focus on the Germanic and Scandinavian areas. The size of the task is made no easier by the broad chronological framework covered under the term “Middle Ages,” with examples ranging from antiquity well into the early modern period. Despite the title, Meier is more concerned with the interaction among environment, commerce, and technology than the role of the mariners themselves. No one would question the importance of maritime trade for the economy of medieval Europe nor the extent to which the furtherance of such trade acted as a stimulus to the development of medieval shipping. One would have perhaps expected a greater examination of the role warfare played in maritime developments.

The opening three chapters provide a discussion of naval technology and developments in navigation. Starting with the Neolithic raft and ending with the Carvel and compass, Meier takes advantage of recent archaeological discoveries as well as iconography and contemporary accounts to outline the journey. Chapter 2 on shipbuilding is particularly lucid, revealing developments in naval construction and design in an accessible manner. The numerous well-produced illustrations are particularly helpful in this respect, with photographic representations of excavations and reconstructions of medieval shipping illuminating the account. More could have been said on the interaction between earlier Mediterranean developments and northern European shipbuilding. The following two chapters deal with early trading ports on the North Sea and Baltic. Archaeological evidence leads the discussion, with prominence given to those ports of which there have been fairly extensive excavations. Consideration is given to geographic factors in the emergence of ports and the role of technological developments in shipbuilding in their decline. Chapter 6 brings to life the enabling role that increasingly lengthy sea journeys played in cultural interaction. As an illustration we are given a description of the route entitled “From the Varangians to the Greeks,” ending in the emergence of Scandinavians in Constantinople. The role of rivers at a time when navigation was primarily coastal is brought out effectively.

As the book passes the halfway point attention turns to the first of the maritime empires covered, namely, the Vikings. This is by no means their first appearance; thanks to extensive archaeological discoveries covering the period 700–1000, they occupy a prominent role in the earlier sections on shipbuilding and early medieval ports. However, in the two chapters devoted to them a somewhat one dimensional picture is presented. For a people who would perhaps fall under all three headings of the book's title, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates, we are given no sense of the role they played in trade, with the focus very much on a well-worn narrative of their role as explorers and plunderers. The one-dimensional portrayal of Vikings is made all the more disappointing by its failure to capitalize on the earlier evidence presented of wide-ranging cultural interaction and trade revealed by the diverse grave goods. Instead in the caption of a photograph of a hoard of a large quantity of treasure we are told, “Through pillage and tributes like Danegeld, vast quantities of silver and jewellery came into the hands of the Vikings” (114). From the Vikings we move on to a very different maritime Empire, that of the Hanseatic League, whose aim was the acquisition of commercial privileges rather than booty and plunder. It was always going to be a tall order to synthesize the story of the Hanse into a chapter. Rightly placing its beginnings in the Baltic, Meier notes its development from an association of merchants to a confederation of towns. However, he does not sufficiently bring out the diplomatic status of the Hanse and the nature of the franchises on which their prosperity in foreign markets rested. We are simply told, “By combining forces when in a foreign land, they were better placed to complain if cheated in money-changing” (118). In the final chapter we are presented with a narrative case study of the activities of the Vitalienbrüder in the Baltic and North Sea. Within the chapter the terms “pirate” and “privateer” are used interchangeably with no sense of historical context. We are informed that the alliance of Denmark with commercial shipowners was “the first time in the history of Nordic hostilities that use had been made of pirates” (146). Reference is made to the attempts to combat this form of hostility, largely by denying these Vitalienbrüder markets for their goods, but ultimately this specific chapter is insufficient even to scratch the surface of what may be termed piracy in the Baltic and North Sea.

This is clearly a book born out of an interest in the subject rather than any sense of academic inquiry. It is intended for a general audience, and the absence of footnotes to some extent precludes further scholarly investigation. We are provided with a section containing further reading adapted for English readership, but this is notable for its omissions. The main strength of the book is in its description of ships throughout the period with a competent treatment of recent developments in nautical archaeology. Despite its geographic focus covering the North Sea, there is little mention of Britain, which only appears as the object of Hanseatic trade or Viking attacks. We are given no opportunity to see the English at sea. The plates are well produced, providing useful illustration of the text; the captions, however, are of mixed value. Brugge is described somewhat misleadingly as a Hanseatic city, a Hans Memling painting is dated four years after his death, and a pictorial representation of a fourteenth-century naval battle is dated to the thirteenth century. As noted earlier the remit of the book is broader than the title suggests, and we still await a satisfactory overview of the medieval sailor. For those wishing to read a scholarly account of the interaction between man and environment in maritime technological development, albeit in the context of Mediterranean warfare, might I suggest John H. Pryor's Geography, Technology, and War (New York, 1988). Those wishing a general account of European maritime expansion would be better served by G. V. Scammell's The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires (Berkeley, 1981).