Truso

Truso, situated on Lake Drausen, was a trading post on the Amber Road , and is thought to be the antecedent of the city of Elbing.

Truso was situated in a central location, upon the Eastern European trade routes, which led from Birka in the North to the island of Gotland and to Visby in the Baltic Sea and later included the Hanseatic League city of Elbing. From there further south to Carnuntium in the Alps . This was called the Amber Road (Bernsteinstrasse) . The ancient Amber Road or roads led further south-west and south-east to the Black Sea and further on to Asia.

On an east-westerly direction the trade route went from Truso, along the Baltic Sea to Jutland, from there inland by river to Hedeby (Ger. Haithabu), a large trading center in Jutland. Hedeby, which lay near the modern city of Schleswig in Schleswig-Holstein, was pretty centrally located and could be reached from all four directions over land as well as from the North Sea, the Atlantic and the Baltic Sea.

In circa 890 (876?) Wulfstan of Haithabu (by his own account) reportedly undertook took a boat journey from Hedeby to Truso at the behest of king Alfred the Great. One possible reason for maintaining such relationships was because he needed aid in his defense against the Danes or Vikings, who had overtaken most of England; however, the reasons for this journey are fundamentally unclear. Truso was little more than a trading center and Alfred the Great of the West Saxons already kept in close contact with the continental Saxons and the Franks.

/Talk