Charlemagne’s clever negotiations and strategic alliances ensured these safe trade routes across Western Europe and spurred prosperity in his lands, most of it coming from new trade with the Middle East and Central Asia via Russia to the Black Sea, bypassing areas along the Mediterranean blocked by Arabs or the Byzantines. Trade in northwest Europe at this time was based on silver coinage that was used for 500 years. Frisian woman adorned in gold, above.

As goods went east, silver objects flowed northward and westward where they were reminted in Dorestad into Charlemagne’s coins, the silver denarius. He controlled northern Germany and the North Sea coast as far as Hamburg by 800. This system allowed access to better trade between interior regions and to the existing cities such as Aachen which had grown up around old Roman garrison cities and were therefore dependent on neglected old Roman road systems. Cities could now grow around the newly founded monasteries, and the monasteries and churches in turn would accumulate great wealth and large pieces of land. For the sake of organization and profit, Charlemagne introduced a system whereby large areas were given to followers trusted to govern as they wished, as long as they paid for the privilege in hefty taxes.

From 760 to 820 AD, Dorestad’s houses, wharves, and warehouses stretched a long way along the banks of the Rhine, and Frisian traders shipped goods coming down the Meuse and the Rhine from Strasbourg, out of Dorestad all over the Rhine delta, west along the French coast, east via coastal cities such as Emden and Hamburg, to Denmark and into the Baltic, then north along the coast of Britain as far as Northumbria. Dorestad exported pottery, glass, bronze goods, wine, and silver coin in exchange for wool and fur. Problems with the Danes after Charlemagne’s death, and then the Viking incursions on northwest Europe drained money and ruined trade. The Vikings had burned and looted every seaport between Hamburg and Bordeaux. The Frisian trade from Dorestad was destroyed. Dorestad was sacked in 834, and repeatedly raided until it vanished.

The Frisians are a Germanic people living in coastal parts of The Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia. Tall, big-boned and light-haired people, they have a history rich in folklore. In the 8th century, Charlemagne freed the people of Friesland from swearing fealty to foreign overlords: “That all Frisians would be fully free, the born and the unborn, so long as the wind blows from heaven and the child cries, grass grows green and flowers bloom, as far as the sun rises and the world stands.”

East Frisia, or Ostfriesland, inhabited since paleolithic times, is the coastal region in northwest Germany’s Frisia which includes Schleswig-Holstein, and it embraces the districts of Aurich, Leer, Wittmund, the city of Emden and a string of East Frisian Islands. As early as 1000 BC, the Frisians started building large dikes along the North Sea shore, and in 12 BC, Drusus sailed a Roman fleet up part of the Ems river and returned. Ostfriesland remained independent of the German states until the late Middle Age. Frisia was a kingdom for a short time, and East Frisia then became part of the Frankish Empire under Charlemagne, who divided East Frisia into two counties and Christianized the area. Later, the independent Frisians,with their self-governed districts, never established of a feudalistic system during medieval times. Frisian representatives of the districts of the coastal areas met annually. Later catastrophes and plague destabilized the local governments, and the area entered into a period of clans and chieftains, somewhat like Scotland. Oldenburg tried to subjugate East Frisia during the 12th century but the Frisians repeatedly defeated them, and when even Heinrich the Lion failed to subjugate them, Oldenburg gave up and only randomly invaded.

The East Frisian chieftains protected pirates, and this led the Hanseatic League to send an expedition against Frisia in 1400, and it successfully discouraged the chieftains from harboring the pirates. Emperor Friedrich III made one of the last chieftains a count in 1465, and he accepted the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. East Frisians, meanwhile, had come into an abundance of gold through the years, and jewelry makers learned the Byzantine filigree technique from traders bringing such jewellery home from their journeys. Long before, Charlemagne had permitted them to adorn themselves with as much gold as they could carry without having to pay taxes, and so they did, even when notoriously “armor like” in weight as the picture of the woman above illustrates.

In 1514, unhappily for the East Frisians, the emperor ordered that a duke of Saxony should be the heir to the count of East Frisia, and Count Edzard of East Frisia refused to accept this order. Frisia was invaded by the German dukes with their armies, but they failed to defeat Edzard, and in 1517, the emperor had to accept Edzard and his descendants as counts of East Frisia, and by 1654, the counts were elevated to the rank of princes. During the reformation, the Frisians’ love of gold declined. In 1744, East Frisia came under Prussian rule, ending its independence. Their last prince died without issue. The Frisian language is almost extinct and found only in a remote area where it is spoken by about 1,000. Famous Frisians include Mata Hari, born as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle.