Viabundus pre-modern street map (1350-1650) published online

A digital platform has now been built which reveals long-distance trade routes in Northern Europe between ca. 1350 and 1650. The Research Center for Hanse and Baltic History, and the Universities of Göttingen, Magdeburg, Aarhus and Nijmegen worked together in the Viabundus project to make this possible.

The map features historical road routes as well as a database with more than 10,000 entries on locations along the way, freely available under Commons license CC BY-SA on the website.

The map enables users to calculate routes and travel times, to gain an overview of fairs, and to consult the database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller. The data can be downloaded, linked to other databases, and opens up a wide range of new research possibilities in different fields of the Humanities.

The transport network in what is now Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt is currently the most developed; work on Denmark and the Netherlands are well advanced. At Radboud University, Maartje A.B. and Willy Piron worked together with Bart Holterman, Afra de Mars, Leendert van Prooije, and Annemarie de Vreese on roads and places in the Netherlands.

The project was funded by Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur (Pro*Niedersachsen), the Friedrich-Christian-Lesser-Stiftung, Kulturministeriets Forskningsudvalg, and the Radboud Institute for Culture & History.