3 - New urban beginnings and the Viking raids (eighth–ninth centuries)

Summary

The emporia on the southern North Sea and Channel coast

As of the last quarter and perhaps even the middle of the seventh century, there was a considerable amount of traffic – and seemingly increasing commercial traffic – between the coasts of southern and south-east England and of the Continent from the mouth of the Seine to the mouth of the Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine. On the Continent that traffic emanated from several ports often located some distance from the coast in the estuaries of large or smaller streams: from south to north those ports were Rouen on the Seine, Amiens on the Somme, Quentovic on the Canche, Domburg at the Scheldt estuary on the north-west coast of Walcheren, Witla on a connecting watercourse between Scheldt and Meuse in their estuary area, and Dorestat at the bifurcation of Rhine and Lek. This development in the late seventh century was new and contrasts with the lack of written information about this area in the sixth and a large part of the seventh centuries. It is, however, unrelated to the development of urban agglomerations or non-rural centres along the rivers in the interior into centres of supra-local or supra-regional trade, signs of which did not begin to appear in the sources until three-quarters of a century or a century later. The above-mentioned coastal ports, with the exception of Rouen and Amiens which were in fact civitates of Roman origin, did not develop into medieval cities. The question is whether their existence and their activity had any influence on the inland places along the rivers, primarily the Meuse and Scheldt, which did develop into centres of trade in the eighth–ninth centuries.