Travelling inside Hamburg.

What to read while travelling Northern Germany?

• Can you recommend an intelligent, entertaining book about the Hanseatic League? I'm travelling to Northern Germany in a couple of weeks, heading to Hamburg and Lübeck and Stralsund and places around there. It strikes me this is exactly the territory from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_league. So to enjoy my visit more I'd like to read up on the history and culture of that place and time. I also visited Bergen a couple years back, would be nice to connect that in context. I like intelligent books but I'm also a bit of a lazy reader; I don't want to wade through a dry history. I'd prefer entertaining non-fiction but historically based fiction is welcome too. Books like this I've liked in the past include http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394753666/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ (Australia) and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001OOTLQ/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ (Cathar France). This http://www.metafilter.com/123308/Old-Hansa recommends Dollinger's http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804707421/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ but that seems a bit too academic for me as well as hard to obtain.

• Answer:

  Well, since you didn't like my Dollinger suggestion (tsk!) (just kidding--it is a bit dense), here are some others you might like. Helen Zimmern's http://archive.org/details/hansatowns00zimmgoog is a bit old but still informative (Archive.org free download) If you're interested in the Hansa and their relationship with England, http://archive.org/details/germansinengland00colvuoft is a good source. (Archive.org) I haven't read http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1405100516/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ but it seems useful. Musn't forget the Teutonic Knights. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140266534/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ a good book about them. Finally, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0870440756/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ has a section on the Hanseatic League that first piqued my interest on the subject when I was a high school junior, so I'm including it for sentimental reasons. Also: travel to Visby if you can! That's the center of early Hansa activity and is, I'm told, one of the most well-preserved medieval towns. Take lots of photos!