Segers-Glocke, Christiane [Hrsg.]; Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege [Hrsg.]; Institut für Denkmalpflege [Hrsg.]; Balck, Friedrich [Bearb.]: Arbeitshefte zur Denkmalpflege in Niedersachsen: Aspects of mining and smelting in the Upper Harz Mountains (up to the 13th/14th century) - in the early times of a developing European culture and economy (St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verl., Heft 22.2000)

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Medieval Metal Trade in and around the Harz Mountains -
Markets and Routes of Transport
Andreas Bingener
The Harz region in the 10th and 11th century
Since medieval times the Harz region owes its significance to its wealth of
natural resources. The landscape as we know it today has been shaped by
centuries of intensive mining and smelting activities. The landscape of the range
of mountains in northern Germany is characterised by vegetation transformed
through woodcutting and emissions from the roasting of ores, by slagheaps and
mining artefacts, and particularly by numerous small reservoirs (KLAPPAUF
1996a, 433-439). The following considerations are an attempt to outline the
routes by which the metals from the Harz were traded.
Excavations at the early medieval manor of Düna, not far from Osterode,
confirm that local iron, copper, lead and silver ores were smelted at this settle-
ment from late Antiquity (3rd and 4th century AD) until the later Middle Ages1.
Whether the mineral resources of the Harz region played a role already in the
conflicts between the Thuringians on the one hand and the Saxons and Franks on
the other can not be clarified from these sources. However, the Liudolfmg
dynasty is known to have taken a great interest in this region from the 9th century
onwards. The Liudolfmgs owned vast areas of land extending from the Harz to
the Unstrut, a tributary of the Saale. Until the end of the 9th century they
continued to increase their influence in East Saxony and Thuringia. Around
780 AD, a comes Liutolf de Saxonia placed his Brunshausen estate, not far from
the Liudolfmg ancestral seat of Gandersheim, at the disposal of Benedictine
monks for the foundation of a monastery for missionary work (NlQUET 1963,
200-213. KLAPPAUF 1996b, 95). Count Luidolf, a grandfather of the Liudolfmg
King Henry I. (919-936) held the Duchy of Eastphalia temporarily around the
year 850. In 852, he and his wife Oda founded a convent for canonesses in
Gandersheim, which was later endowed with the estate of Bishop Altfrid of
Hildesheim (851-874), another member of the Liudolfmg dynasty (BRACHMANN
1992, 8). By the beginning of the 10th century, Otto the Illustrious, the son of

1 Klappauf 1985, 61-64, esp. 61; 1991, 211-232, esp. 219 and 223-226. Regarding
the archeometallurgical studies cf. Brockner, Klappauf 1993, 177-182.