The Frisian trade in the Dark Ages; a Frisian or aFrankish/Frisian trade?*

Stéphane Lebecq 1992. In: Carmiggelt, A.,(ed). Rotterdam Papers VII, pp. 7-15

This paper will address itself to three questions. The first, suggested to me by recentdevelopments in historiography, consists in asking whether one can legitimately speak ofa large-scale Frisian trade from the seventh to the ninth centuries. Since I maintain thatone can, I shall then examine whether, since the climax of this trade occurs around 800,that is, when the whole of Frisia falls under Carolingian domination, one should notrather speak of large-scale Frankish/Frisian trade, as did Herbert Jankuhn.1 Havingestablished that Frisian trading owed much of its success to Frankish influences, I shallthen examine what might have been the role of the Frisians themselves in the origins andin the early development of their commercial ventures.

Did the Frisians really engage in large-scale, long-distance trading during the Dark Ages?Formerly Henri Pirenne attributed a role to those he called the 'bateliers Frisons', whomhe credited with stimulating the rather small scale commercial exchanges which herecognized in Northern Europe after Charlemagne and the forces he represented had beenforced by Mahomet and the expansion of Islam to turn their back on the Mediterranean.2

Nor have historians of Frisian trade, from H.A. Poelman and Peter Boeles to BarbaraRohwer and Dirk Jellema,3 neglected these arguments: sometimes even anticipatingPirenne's ideas, they have most often confirmed and indeed amplified them; all of thesehistorians have detected the traces of Frisian traders in various out-of-the-way places - theRhineland especially, but in England, in Neustria and in Scandinavia as well - betweenthe seventh and the ninth centuries, without any break. But some authors (and not alwaysthe least of them) exaggerated the evidence, forcing the texts to say more than theyactually did, making inconsiderate use of linguistic, and even of legal evidence, or inter-pretating with insufficient care the distribution in Northern Europe of coins and otherarchaeological material which came from the Middle and Lower Rhine.

After years of intellectual sloth during which the Frisians continued to receive the main,and even the exclusive credit for developing long-distance trading in the whole ofNorthern Europe during the Early Middle Ages, a healthy reaction began during the1960s. Sometimes this was formulated with moderation (for example in the treatment ofthe Meuse region by Georges Despy),4 and sometimes in a much more systematic manner(for example in the works of Aksel Christensen on the Baltic and Scandinavian areas).5

The time has surely come to sort out these various contradictory viewpoints and toattempt to give a general interpretation which will avoid the excesses of historicalidealism on the one hand, and those of the hypercritical historical methods on the other.After a long investigation of Frisian merchants and sailors during the Dark Ages,6 andthanks to the help of the books and papers recently published by the best scholars,7 I thinkthat it is possible to draw some conclusions. After a period of moderate growth during theseventh and most of the eighth century, Frisian merchant activity reached its climaxtoward the end of the latter century and the beginning of the next.

* Many thanks to Judith Van Heerswynghels and Bailey Young, who helped me to translate this paper.1. Jankuhn 1953.2. See for instance Pirenne 1951.3. Poelman 1908, Boeles 1951, Rohwer 1937, Jellema 1955.4. Despy 1968.5. Christensen 1966 and Christensen 1969.6. Lebecq 1983a and b; Lebecq 1986.7. Among the historians: Claude 1985, Devroey 1985, Johanek 1985 and 1987, Verhulst 1970, 1985, Verhulst

and Doehaerd 1981. Among the archaeologists: Ellmers 1985 and 1990, Hodges 1982 and 1988, Hodgesand Whitehouse 1983, Müller-Wille 1985, Van Es 1980, Van Es and Verwers 1980, Verwers 1988.

Though in the early days this commerce was run from various bases (like Walcheren/Domburg, the Handelsterpen and so on), it tended to become concentrated on Dorestad(which reached its maximum growth in the period 770 to 830), with Frisian merchantsacting as the main exporters of Rhenish agricultural and craft products towards easternEngland and Jutland. Beyond this area rather strictly limited, in fact, to the southern partof the North Sea, they had a more episodic presence in the English Channel (particularlyat Hamwih and in the Seine valley up to the Saint-Denis fairs), and in the Baltic, notablyalong the seaway between Haithabu and Lake Mälaren.

What strikes me most is the permanence of the network of searoutes leaving Frisia, andthe correlative importance of certain trading colonies in foreign lands. One can hardly failto be impressed by the number of exchanges linking Rhenish Frisia and Northumberland,for example, exchanges echoed in the hagiographical literature - especially in the VitaLiudgeri 8 - as well as in the poems and letters of Alcuin. It is symptomatic that the latter,writing around 800, can think of no other natural trading link between the region ofAachen, where he was then living, and the distant city of York, where he came from, thanthe naves Fresonum.9 Archaeology and numismatics have recently brought forward newevidence of these links: Peter Addyman claims to have identified a Frisian quarter in theNorthumbrian town,10 and Michael Dolley has been able to reconstruct a hoard of coinsfrom Dorestad discovered along the Ouse River during the eighteenth century,11 Nor is apossible confirmation from the study of runes to be excluded, for there appear to havebeen simultaneous and identical modifications in the Northumbrian and the Frisianalphabets at the end of the eighth century,12 changes which one is inclined to attributemore to the influence of the trading milieu than to 'the milieu of missionaries.

As far as the longer-range trading activities of the Frisians are concerned, I note that thepresence of the Frisian traders at Saint-Denis is cited only once (in 753), in company withthe Anglo-Saxons who are cited more often, and since well before that date.13 This leadsme to wonder whether Hamwih did not serve as the stepping-stone which led them,thanks to a well-known shipping route hitherto much used by the Anglo-Saxons,14 toextend their activities to the lower Seine valley. On the other hand, I maintain that onemust not underestimate, let alone deny, as did Aksel Christensen, the Frisian presence inthe Baltic. First of all, it is now practically certain, thanks to the excavations of HerbertJankuhn and Heiko Steuer,15 that the Frisians took part in founding the southernsettlement at Haithabu - that is to say the first permanent trading settlement on the Balticshore of the isthmus of Jutland; and that they were thus among the first (mid-eighthcentury) to grasp the economic value of the portage which, linking the upper valley of theTreene to the Schlei Fjord, eliminated the long circumnavigation of the Danish peninsula.Would the Frisians have taken an interest in opening this window on the Baltic if theywere not motivated by a desire to send their ships farther out among the lands washed bythis sea? I think not. And one cannot avoid associating with the founding of this firsttrading link the importation first at Helgö (in the second half of the eighth century) then atBirka (in the first half of the ninth) of an impressive number of products which originatedfrom the Rhineland or from more distant parts of the West.16

8. Lebecq 1983b, p. 109; Lebecq 1990b.9. Lebecq 1983b, p. 23.10. Addyman 1976, p. 29.11. Dolley 1965-1966.12. Elliott 1980, p. 37-38.13. Lebecq 1983b, p. 400-405.14. Lebecq 1983b, p. 90; Hodges 1981.15. Jankuhn 1986; Steuer 1974.16. Holmqvist 1961- 1972; Lundstrom 1968; Arbman 1937; Ellmers 1985; Müller-Wille 1985.

It is also quite symptomatic that if Christensen quotes from the Vita Anskarii thecomplaint of the old man from Birka, evidently a Swede, who toward the middle of theninth century deplores that his people can no longer reach Dorestad,17 he omits mentio-ning the story of the old Christian woman of Birka, whose name, Frideburg, has nothingSwedish about it, and who requested her daughter Catla to make the journey to Dorestadafter her death in order to distribute her fortune among the churches and the poor.18 I amconvinced that an act of redemptive charity of this sort could only have come from aFrisian woman living in Birka, - and that there must have been a Frisian colony on thedistant shores of Lake Mälaren.So I think that the scope of Frisian trading ventures should not be underestimated, andthat the concept of 'trader-farmers', which has been invoked by authors as scrupulous asEdith Ennen, Jan Dhondt or, more recently, Richard Hodges,19 is too ambiguous.

17. For the Vita Anskarii, see Lebecq 1983b, p. 134-135. Christensen 1966 and 1969.18. Lebecq 1983b p. 131-133; Lebecq I 990a.19. Ennen 1975, p. 47; Dhondt 1968, p. 165; Hodges 1982, p. 88.

Fig. 1. Great Frisia during the Dark ages

How could a trader who made one or more voyages every year between Dorestad andYork, or between Dorestad and Haithabu, or between Dorestad and Alsace, even if onlyduring the summer season, and who from time to time settled down in a distant tradingsettlement, be still considered to be a peasant, when he must necessarily be away fromhome during the critical agricultural works of the summer?

In any event, the historian ought to know exactly what he is talking about when he refers,on the particular authority of written sources, to Frisian traders or seamen. If we arejustified in raising this issue, it is because some sources lead one to think that the use ofthis word was not always unambiguous. This is the case, for example, of the diploma bywhich, in 829, Louis the Pious confirmed the concession to the Bishop of Worms of therights to all the tolls levied in his city on the 'negotiatores vel artifices seu et Frisiones',as if the Frisians were the only foreign merchants who frequented this great Rhenishmarket, whereas the term may have only been employed as a mere synonym for long-distance traders.20Another example is provided by a West Saxon poem, no doubt writtenduring the tenth century, in which the poet chooses to invoke the example of the wife of aFrisian seaman to praise conjugal fidelity: it would seem that in this case the Frisian issimply the archetype of the long-distance sailor.21 One gathers therefore that the use of theword Frisian need not always imply a particular ethnic or geographic identity. I do notunderstand, however, how one can derive from a legitimate scepticism of this sort anargument against the historical importance of the Frisians' historic role in stimulatingmaritime exchanges during the earliest part of the Middle Ages. On the contrary, if theirname has become a synonym for a long-distance merchant or sailor both in Anglo-Saxonpoetic literature and in a Rhenish diplomatic formula, the Frisians must have justified thisidentification by their activities.Notwithstanding, there is little doubt that for most writers - at any rate for thoseuntouched by poetic conventions or the usages of the chancellery - the Frisians wereconsidered to be people who came from Frisia. But does it mean that they were Frisiansin the ethnic sense of the term, that is to say people whose origins, recent or remote, wereto be found in those maritime regions where, notably upon the terpen, an original culturehad developed22 and where the Frisian language had begun to separate itself from the oldcommon speech known as Nordseegermanisch?23

Certainly not, especially since the Frisian expansion during the fifth to seventh centuriestook place to the detriment of such pre-existing peoples as the Caninefates, the Batavesand the Chamaves who were not necessarily subjected to a complete acculturation;24 andfurther because this expansion was halted, then rolled back during the seventh to ninthcenturies by a Frankish reconquest with the result that, at the time of the climax of Frisiancommerce, let us say about 800, Frisia itself was totally contained within the empire ofCharlemagne.25

Frisia in its heyday, then, that is Carolingian Frisia, was immense: as the terms of the LexFrisionum of 802 indicate,26 it retained the boundaries of the period of independence. Itstretched from the Weser up to Sincfal, that is to say as far as the point where the currentBelgian-Dutch frontier touches the sea: the whole of the Zeeland archipelago was thusincluded. We must not imagine a straight frontier: often, where the country was practi-cally uninhabited, it came close to the sea; elsewhere, especially along the lower Dutchrivers, the natural and inevitable passageways between the hinterland and the coast, itplunged deeply inland. The limits, which were clearly defined later during the MiddleAges, of the diocese of Utrecht which Willibrord created in 695 as the diocese of the

20. Lebecq 1983b, p. 422. Lebecq 1990c.21. Lebecq 1983b, p. 37-39; Lebecq 1990c.22. Halbertsma 1963; Lebecq 1980.23. Kuhn 1955.24. Blok 1979, with many bibliographical references including a number of works by the same.25. Blok 1979; Lebecq 1978.26. Siems 1980.

Frisians, indicate that the Lek and Waal valleys were Frisian as far as and includingTeisterbant (or, if one prefers, the Tiel region) since the Annales Fuldenses still refer in885 to these 'Frisiones qui vocantur Destarbenzon' - of these 'Frisians said to be ofTeisterbant'.27

This is as much as saying that Dorestad, situated at the point where the Lek and the Rhinediverge and the undoubted largescale trading centre at the heyday of Frisian commerce,was in Frisia (the Cosmographer of Ravenna clearly makes it at the end of the seventhcentury the 'patria Frisonum'),28 and that its inhabitants were unanimously considered tobe 'Frisians' (in the Annales Fuldenses in 837 as well as in the so-called Annales ofSaint-Bertin in 863).29 Nonetheless the famous emporium is presented by these sameauthors as a specific place in regard to the rest of Frisia. The so-called Annalist of Saint-Bertin describes, for example, how in 836 the Normans devastated both Dorestad andFrisia; more especially, when relating the proposed partition of 839, he clearly distin-guishes within Lothair's part the' ducatum Fresiae usque Mosam' and the 'comitatumTestrabenti cum Dorestado'.30 It appears from this that, if Dorestad at its height unquestio-

27. Lebecq 1983b, p. 324.28. Lebecq 1983b, p. 206-208.29. Lebecq 1983b, p. 318-319 and 313-314.30. Lebecq 1983b, p. 310.

Fig. 2 Frisian trade routes during the 7th-9th centuries.1. Great routes. 2. Secondary routes. 3. Places where the presence of Frisian traders is eithertestified or can safely be presumed.

nably belonged to Frisia, it was perceived as relatively marginal, or in any case asspecific, since it was expressly named in the proposed partition alongside much vasterterritorial holdings.

Dorestad's specificity can be attributed to two kinds of reasons. In the first place - and it isin this regard that the special dispositions concerning it in the proposed division of theEmpire and consequently of its wealth appear particularly significant -, the town had anenormous importance in the eyes of contemporaries, which made it a real stake in thepower struggles. Around 790/ 800 Luidgar, recounting the life of Gregory of Utrecht,presents it as the' vicus famosus',31 and in 834 the so-called Annalist of Xanten refers tothe' vicus nominatissimus'. 32 This emphasis was soon to reach its highest point whenRimbert came to speak of the town's 'many churches',33 and when a tradition took shapewhich would carry their number as high as fifty-five!34

From all appearances, contemporaries were struck by the topographic and economicimportance of the site. This ought not to surprise us because, since 779 at the latest,Dorestad harboured one of the principal customs stations of the Carolingian empire, thenorthernmost at any rate,35 where merchants from the North had to pay to the procura-tores or ministeriales a 10% levy on all of their cargo.36 Dorestad was likewise the homeof the most prolific Carolingian mint after that of the Palace; issues struck there havebeen found from York to Haithabu,37 and these types were imitated often enough, as theywere at Haithabu from 825 on, thus furnishing Scandinavia with its first monetary instru-ments.38

This evocation of the Carolingian presence at Dorestad leads me to speak of the secondfact which could explain why the settlement appeared to be special in the eyes ofcontemporaries: I mean its ethnic character. If the whole southwest of Frisia, fromZeeland up to Teisterbant - what Bede calls 'Fresia Citerior'39 had been for centuries azone of contact between Franks and Frisians, and even if the former had launched amilitary colonization since the end of the seventh century the better to control the latter,40

it is certainly at Dorestad that we perceive most clearly the rapprochement of the twopeoples. This is particularly true of our central concern here, the merchant population ofthe town. If it was in fact the merchants globally considered as 'Frisians' who fleddefinitively from the town in 863, according to the Annalist of Saint-Bertin,41 it seemsthat these merchants might individually come from a Frankish or from an authenticallyFrisian background.I shall quote two pieces of evidence: first, the only merchant from Dorestad whose namehas been preserved, the 'black Hrotberet' with whom Alcuin may have voyaged fromYork, and who in any case refused to welcome him under his roof in 780, bears anindisputably Frankish name.42 Secondly, even if it seems sure that the terpen area was thestartpoint of the first merchant expansion of the Frisians towards Scandinavia, at the sametime as the ethnic migration towards 'Northern Frisia' Dorestad had just as certainlybecome by the time of Ansgar (first half of the ninth century) the main point of departureto Haithabu and Birka.43 How can one avoid concluding from these two facts that thetrading population to whom the vicus owed its fame derived just as much from the

31. Lebecq 1983b, p. 99.32. Lebecq 1983b, p. 335.33. Lebecq 1983b, p. 132; and Lebecq 1990a.34. In the Passio Friderici written by Odbert in the beginning of the eleventh century: see Lebecq 1983b, p. 117.35. Lebecq 1983b, pA19: or Atsma and Vezin 1986, p. 38-41. See Verkerk 1988, p. 166.36. Lebecq 1983b, p. 411-413; Verkerk 1988, p. 167.37. Enno van Gelder 1961; Morrison and Grunthal 1967, p. 90-91,126-128,160-162; Lebecq 1983a, p. 60-66.38. Malmer 1966, p. 60-63 and 204-209.39. Lebecq 1983b, p. 234.40. Blok 1979.41. Lebecq 1983b, p. 313-314.42. Lebecq 1983b, p. 21.43. Lebecq 1983b, p. 132-135; Lebecq 1989; Lebecq 1990a.

Frankish countries south and southwest (one thinks naturally of the lower Rhine andMeuse valleys) as from the distant Frisia of the terpen to the North?

Before we ask whether the Pippinids had set about deliberately - and successfully -attracting to Dorestad the commercial dynamism of the North and settle it there byassociating with it the force of Austrasia, we must acknowledge that the Carolingian Statewas the main beneficiary of the success of Frisian commerce - at least during the periodof its greatest activity. The most obvious gain was certainly economic. The State was thefirst to benefit, which is as much as to say the Carolingian family. The revenues resultingfrom coinage, and especially those, which are much easier to perceive, deriving fromcustoms duties must have been considerable. To be sure, out of concern for the salvationof their souls, the Pippinids had abandoned (at the latest from the time of Pippin Ill, moreplausibly since the day of Pippin II, in 695) one tenth of their revenues to the church ofUtrecht, which thus acquired the ripaticum along the bank of the Lek;44 to be sure, for thesame reasons, this or that ecclesiastical establishment might be dispensed from payingcustoms fees - as was the case with the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in 779.45

But it is significant that one of the rare tolls that Louis the Pious continued to collect fromthe merchants supplying his palace in 828 was precisely the one perceived at Dorestad.46

Beside the State, the whole of Carolingian society drew profit from the commercialdynamism of the Frisians. The success of the latter in obtaining and then in defending forso long their positions in the distant marketplaces of Northern Europe, stimulated theeconomic growth of their own hinterland. This was particularly true of the Rhineland: theFrisians guaranteed the distribution of the products of the many glassware-, pottery- andmetallurgy-workshops of the Cologne basin and the Eifel country. The Austrasianaristocracy, the principal social basis of Carolingian power, must have derived enormousbenefits from Frisian trading. It was without doubt the principal consumer of the luxurygoods imported from the British Islands, from Scandinavia and from the far-distantOriental hinterland; more particularly, it also supplied the Frisians with their returnfreight: the considerable surpluses of their estates in grains and wine.47 Nor is it to beexcluded that the existence of these distant markets prospected and then serviced by theFrisians was directly connected with the undeniable growth of agriculture, and perhapsmore precisely viticulture, experienced in the Rhenish regions during the 'CarolingianPeace', between 750 and 830.48

But this peace, as we know, was only relative, and the Carolingians had several chancesto feel the threats that were brewing to the East and especially to the North before thestorm really broke. This enables us to devine the political advantages that the Frisiancontrol of the Northern seaways and of certain river-systems in central Europe put in thehands of the Frankish rulers. Nor did they fail to use them: in the first place in the field ofmilitary techniques, by requisitioning Frisian boats and men. Charlemagne did so twice:once in 789, on the Elbe and the Havel, against the Wilzes; and later in 791 on the Rhine,the Main and the Danube, against the Avars.49 Furthermore, they used Frisian traders asambassadors to distant lands reputed to be hostile: this was probably the case in 809during a period of tension between Charlemagne and the Danish King Godfred.50 At theleast, they carried useful information.51 From this point of view we can hardly imaginethat Charlemagne, and even more Louis the Pious did not grasp the opportunity that the

44. According to the diplomas given in 777 and 815 to the church of Utrecht. Lebecq 1983b, p. 409-412.45. See above, n. 35.46. ccording to the Praeceptum Negotiatorum. Lebecq 1983b, p. 437.47. Cf. a famous poem by Ermoldus Nigellus: Lebecq 1983 b, p. 26-30. See Devroey 1985.48. Lebecq 1983a; Devroey 1985.49. According to the Annales Regni Francorum and the Annales Laureshamenses: Lebecq 1983b, p. 295 et

301-302.50. According to an interpretation of the Annales Mettenses Lebecq 1983b, p. 330-331.51. Just as, at the end of the IXth century, Alfred was to use the information given to him by the merchants

Ohthere and Wulfstan: Lebecq 1987.

Frisian traders provided to penetrate into the Scandinavian world which they soonperceived as the source of great dangers to the Empire. It is enough to read through theVita of Ansgar to measure to what extent the successive missionary ventures of the Saintin the North, whether actually directed by Louis the Pious or merely followed by him,were dependent on the movements of long-distance traders.52

Whether the Carolingians made the best use of the advantages the Frisian traders offeredthem, or whether they served as a really effective instrument, is another story. What isimportant to remember is that Frisia at the climax of its commercial success, was in fact aprovince of the Carolingian Empire, and that the activities of its traders, whetherexploited by the ambitions of Frankish power or not, were particularly stimulated by theprosperity of the Frankish-Rhenish hinterland. Finally, perhaps for this very reason, theFrisian center of gravity shifted markedly to the South, to Dorestad, that is where underthe authority of Imperial and Episcopal officials, business was carried on by a populationthat was Frankish as well as Frisian.

Since Frisian trade in its heyday seems to have been in fact a Frankish/Frisian affair, andsince the period was also marked by the pre-eminence of Dorestad over all other tradingcenters, it is tempting to ask whether, on the one hand, the latter's rise was not a productof the Frankish conquest, and whether, on the other, the settlement was not indeed aFrankish foundation, or at any rate a re-foundation. To begin with, it is probable thatbefore the earliest Frankish attempts at expansionism had achieved any success theFrisians had already extended their antennae in the three fundamental directions whichwere to be durably marked with the seal of Frisian mercantile dynamism. For the firstcoins that the Frisians struck in great quantities, beginning around 600, those goldtrientes conveniently known as the 'Dronrijp type', have mostly been found (outside ofFrisia of the terpen, where they were presumably struck) in southeast England (Kent, EastAnglia), along the east coast of Jutland from the mouth of the Elbe up to Limfjord, and inthe Rhineland, up to Coblence and even as far as Lake of Constance.53 We have everyright to doubt that a priori the distribution of these finds is a reliable proof of the activepresence of Frisians abroad, but we cannot but be struck by the fact that this distributionforeshadows with great precision the triple fields of Frisian activity during the great daysof their trading. Furthermore, there are other links with the overall history of the Frisianpeople: England, after all, had been the destination of migrations during previouscenturies; the western coast of Jutland was in the process of becoming a colony of a Frisiawhich was by all evidence overpopulated; and the Rhineland was the natural hinterlandwhich produced the very items (wood, wheat and wine) which Frisia itself lacked. Theseconsiderations enable us to suppose that since the beginning of the seventh centuryFrisian traders had been sailing in the wake of earlier migrants or accompanying theircontemporaries in search of new lands; and that for them maritime ventures raised noinsurmountable difficulties since boats had always been present in their homeland,indispensable instruments of communication, and even of survival.54

At all events, if they possessed at Walcheren/Domburg a good port of embarkation forEngland, in use from the end of the sixth century according to the testimony of. thecoins,55 and if the northern terpen soon the Handelsterpen, served as a good departurepoint for the Baltic and Scandinavia beyond,56 we cannot perceive until about 630/650 theemergence of a good shipping base for trade with the Rhineland. When one does appear,it is on a site whose Celto-Roman place-name is a clear indication of its antiquity,57 but

52. Lebecq 1983b, p. 128-129 and 136; Lebecq 1989 and 1990a.53. Lebecq 1983a, p. 50-53.54. Lebecq 1983a, p. 165 sq.; Ellmers 1990.55. Roes 1954; Jankuhn 1958; Lebecq 1983a, p. 142-144.56. Halbertsma 1963; Brandt 1985.57. Blok and Gysseling 1959; Blok and Koch 1964.

which does not seem to have played an important role during the Roman and earlyMerovingian period. The site was Dorestad, whose name appears for the first time oncoins struck by Frankish minters who came from Maastricht 58 According to a well-established tradition, 630 was the time when Dagobert established positions in the lowerRhine valley, created a church in Utrecht, and as numismatists have recently discovered -enabled the minters Rimoaldus and Madelinus to transfer their mints from Maastricht toDorestad.

The Frankish seizure of the lower Rhine valley in the second quarter of the seventhcentury had a number of different implications: no doubt the ambitious desire to recoverthe old Roman frontier along the Rhine, with its numerous forts (notably that one ofLevefanum, close by Dorestad)59 was part of it; maybe the spirit of religious proselytismplayed a role; in any case it meant a desire, from the part of the Franks, to attract aprofitable commerce into their orbit, by making of Dorestad the necessary 'relaismonetaire' - to adopt Jean Lafaurie's phrase - between Gaul and the northern lands.60

But, lacking the means and the perspectives, the Merovingians failed to capture thatcommerce: it was a Frisia which had entirely reconquered its independence that gaveunmistakable signs of mercantile expansion during the second half of the seventh century.These range from the first explicit mention, by Venerable Bede, of a Frisian merchant in aforeign marketplace (London, 679)61 to the prodigious production in Frisian workshops ofthose small silver coins which one should rather call 'proto-deniers' or 'proto-pennies'than' sceattas', which were struck, circulated, imitated and discovered everywhere aroundthe North Sea.62 But the most telling sign is without a doubt the renewed vigour ofDorestad itself. For, the evidence leaves no room for doubt, the new port and the newsettlement created to the east of the earlier dwelling area, built up along the Rhine whichhad itself shifted notably to the east, preceded by two decades the victorious return of theFranks, under Pippin II, to Dorestad. The combined testimony of archaeology and ofdendrochronology agree that the renewal of the port of Dorestad dates to around 675,particularly the first phase of construction of the remarkable river front reconstructed byW.A. van Es and W.J.H. Verwers consisting of a continuous wharf backed by buildingswith quarters for the traders.63 These installations were in use fifteen years before strugglebegan again in the vicinity of Dorestad, twenty years before Pippin's definitive victoryover the Frisian King Radbod, and forty years before the Franks gained firm anddefinitive control over 'Citerior Fresia' thanks to the decisive victory of Charles Martel.64

It seems then that if the Franks under Dagobert were the first to develop Dorestad, hopingto use it to draw some part of Frisian commerce closer to their own power-centers, it wasthe Frisians themselves, having regained independence, who most fully exploited thenatural advantages of this site strategically located in the delta, making it the focal pointof their trading ventures. It may have been from here that Bede's Frisian set out forLondon; no doubt Wilfrid disembarked here from the merchant vessel before spendingthe winter of 678/679 in Frisia;65 certainly many of the so-called 'sceattas' were struckhere. At the same time the settlement became the focus of Frisian military power. ThusDorestad, which in the seventh century written sources is called only a castrum 66 (surelyreferring to the ancient Levefanum of the Table of Peutinger),67 or as the 'patria

58. Zadoks-Josephus-Jitta 1961, p. 8-10; Lafaurie 1967.59. Blok 1979; Lebecq 1978.60. Lafaurie 1967, p. 198.61. Lebecq 1983b, p. 232.62. Dolley 1976, p. 352; Zadoks-Josephus-Jitta 1961, p. 10; Hill and Metcalf 1984.63. Van Es and Verwers, in Dorestad 1978; or Van Es and Verwers 1980, vol. I, p. 294-303.64. Blok 1979; Lebecq 1978. 65. Though the Eddius Stephanus 'Vita Wilfridi' is not so precise, I agree with Hodges 1982, p. 88 and 90, that

Wilfrid landed in Dorestad in 678.66. [text note 66 missing in original]67. Van Es 1980, p. 181; Verhulst, in Verhulst and DeBock-Doehaerd 1981, p. 204.

Frisonum' (this is the expression, as we have seen, of the distant Ravenna Cosmographer)68 became the principal stake in the wars of 690/695.

Only after the area had fallen definitively under Frankish control was the term castrumreplaced by the use, which became rapidly systematic, of the terms portus (firstappearance in 779),69 vicus (from about 790/800),70 and emporium (used from 834).71

It was also under their authority that the major work of building the port complex wasaccomplished: phase 2/A of the Archaeologists, dated between 700/725 and 750/775.72

Under Frankish power the mercantile dynamism of the Frisians from the North and theFranks from the South were made to converge in this single, favoured site. Similarly, onecentury later (808), the Danish King Godfred would attract to the new settlement ofHaithabu Danish, Slavic and Saxon merchants as well as Frisians.73 Under the Frankishdominium, finally, Dorestad became the obligatory point of concentration for trafficcoming from or bound for the Rhineland, eastern England or the Scandinavian market-places, reducing the other ports - whether within greater Frisia or on its frontiers - to mererelay-stations.

In summary, it seems that the mercantile potential of the area, perceptible and to someextent developed during the days of independence, was expanded and above allconfirmed and made highly profitable by the integration of Frisia into the regnumFrancorum. It thus benefited from a prosperous and soon pacified hinterland, which wasinterested, moreover, in the development of distant markets; a major gain was the morerational organization of the site of Dorestad, where unprecedented structures were built.The 'large-scale long-distance Frisian trading' of the Early Middle Ages, which succeededin turning the North Sea and sometimes some of its annexes (the Rhineland to be sure,but the Baltic and the English Channel as well) into a unified commercial space in theeighth and ninth centuries, seems to have resulted from the encounter of Frisiandynamism and technical skills (principally nautical) on the one hand, and the ambition ofthe early Carolingians, who succeeded in pacifying the Frisian hinterland and stimulatingits growth, on the other. Furthermore, at the same time, the Frankish power sought, bywhat was to start with a diffuse form of imperialism mixed with a certain concern formissionary work, to penetrate the foreign and threatening Northern realms. In fact, the'great Frisian trade' was in its heyday, but only then, the 'Frankish/Frisian trade ofDorestad'.

68. Lebecq 1983 b, p. 206-208.69. In a diploma to Saint-Germain-des-Pres: Atsma and Vezin 1986, p.38-41.70. According to Luidgar Vita Gregorii: Lebecq 1983b, p. 99.71. In the so-called Anna1es Bertiniani: Lebecq 1983 b, p. 307.72. Van Es and Verwers 1980, vol. I, p. 303.73. According to the Annales Regni Francorum: Lebecq 1983 b, p. 303-304; and the excavations of the main

settlement: Jankuhn 1986.

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