The Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds in Northwestern and Central Europe, came to dominate the trade of salted and dried fish in the Baltic and North Seas. Operating from cities like Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bergen, Hanseatic merchants used their fleet of cogs to transport vast quantities of herring and cod, preserved by salting and drying to survive long voyages. This trade in preserved fish was a vital source of protein for a growing European population and demonstrated the power of advanced preservation techniques in enabling long-distance food transport.

The Hanseatic League's fish trade created the economic conditions for the prosperity of many northern European cities, which in turn became centers of literary and cultural production. The imagery of the sea, ships, and the salted fish that sustained sailors and townsfolk appears in the poetry and ballads of the period. While not directly related to wine or olive oil, the Hanseatic model of organized, long-distance transport of a preserved staple food provides a crucial parallel for understanding the logistics that would later be applied to other commodities.