The Fish Lands: German trade with Iceland, Shetland and the Faroe Islands in the late 15th and 16th Century

The late medieval German trade with the North Atlantic islands, in the margins of the Hanseatic trade network, has received only limited scholarly attention. Merchants from predominantly Hamburg and Bremen established direct trade relations with these islands in the late 15th century, and managed to control the international trade with Iceland, the Faroes and Shetland for much of the 16th century. However, the Hanseatic commercial infrastructure was absent in the North Atlantic, which forced these merchants to develop new trade strategies. Besides a critical re-evaluation of the economic and political conditions, this volume offers a comprehensive study of the organisation of the trade and the methods used to establish and maintain networks between islanders and German merchants. Moreover, it analyses the role and socio-economic position of the communities of merchants with the North Atlantic in their home towns. The book shows that the North Atlantic trade was anything but insignificant. It was a dynamic and integral part of the trade network of the northern German cities, and its study is highly relevant for the economic history of Northern Europe

The Fish Lands

Based on newly uncovered archival sources as well as archaeological studies, this book offers the first extensive overview of the German trade with the North Atlantic in English. It challenges assumptions about the backwardness of the German North Atlantic trade, and argues that merchants did not so much rely on an old model of trading, but were adapting their trading system to the special natural and socio-economic circumstances on the islands

Does ChatGPT have Theory of Mind?

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand human thinking and decision-making, an ability that plays a crucial role in social interaction between people, including linguistic communication. This paper investigates to what extent recent Large Language Models in the ChatGPT tradition possess ToM. We posed six well-known problems that address biases in human reasoning and decision making to two versions of ChatGPT and we compared the results under a range of prompting strategies. While the results concerning ChatGPT-3 were somewhat inconclusive, ChatGPT-4 was shown to arrive at the correct answers more often than would be expected based on chance, although correct answers were often arrived at on the basis of false assumptions or invalid reasoning

Does ChatGPT have Theory of Mind?

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand human thinking and decision-making, an ability that plays a crucial role in social interaction between people, including linguistic communication. This paper investigates to what extent recent Large Language Models in the ChatGPT tradition possess ToM. We posed six well-known problems that address biases in human reasoning and decision making to two versions of ChatGPT and we compared the results under a range of prompting strategies. While the results concerning ChatGPT-3 were somewhat inconclusive, ChatGPT-4 was shown to arrive at the correct answers more often than would be expected based on chance, although correct answers were often arrived at on the basis of false assumptions or invalid reasoning

Geospatial Methods and the Premodern Economy: Mapping the Institutional Landscapes of Northern Europe, 1350–1650

The premodern European transport network was accompanied by a number of institutions that affected the transaction costs related to commercial travel, such as fairs, staple markets and toll stations. With digital techniques and big datasets, it is now possible to study these phenomena on a grand scale and to reveal patterns in supraregional economic exchange. Using the Viabundus dataset on premodern transport and mobility in northern Europe (13501650), this article explores the possibilities that such data offer for understanding large-scale economic activity. By employing GIS mapping for visualisation purposes and methods of network analysis such as the calculation of betweenness centrality, the data on fairs, staple markets and toll stations can help us understand the institutional structure of the premodern economy in which merchants operated

"Nicht zu unterschätzen" – Überlegungen zu "kleinen Städten" in der Hanse

Siegemund J, Ashauer C, Holterman B. "Nicht zu unterschätzen" – Überlegungen zu "kleinen Städten" in der Hanse. Hansische Geschichtsblätter. 2021;139:189-217