In the eleventh century whatever did remain of Julin belonged to the Christian Germans. German merchants, crossing the Elbe from the west, colonized the Oder valley and other Slavic lands on the shores of the Baltic. At Thorn in Poland they exchanged cloth and other goods for ermine, sable, fox and calabar (grey squirrel). They even penetrated Russia deeply for trade. At Novgorod they had a fur trading settlement active enough to prompt expressive protestations from the pious Canon Adam of Bremen. “Pelts are plentiful as dung” in Russia, he wrote, but they are “for our damnation, as I believe, for _per fas et nefas_ we strive as hard to come into the possession of a marten skin as if it were everlasting salvation.” According to him it was from this evil source in Russia “that the deadly sin of luxurious pride” had overspread the west. Indeed, by comparison with the self-mortifying Christian standards of the time, luxury in dress was very pronounced among the rising German merchants and their wives. It was even more so among the men than among the women. The most conservative patricians and councillors wore cloth hoods ostentatiously trimmed with beaver and other fine fur, and long fur cloaks of exquisite quality. So proud were they of their finery that the Councillors of Bremen once forged a document pretending to prove that Godfrey of Bouillon during the First Crusade had vested them with the right to wear fur and gold chains. The Church frowned upon the use of fur by the laity or any except the highest ecclesiastics. In fact, since early in medieval times the wearing of fur by the common man had been regulated by severe laws. But even among the Christians a man’s wealth and standing permitted its use in some degree. As always in the past, fur was a symbol of power and prestige. And, these German merchants were becoming a real power as they gained a monopoly of the Baltic trade. They formed a strong federation of the towns they had founded at the river mouths along the south shore of their sea. Their luggers plied the North Sea and the Thames in Britain. At Wisby on the important Isle of Gothland they early established an emporium. From the first Christian centuries barbarian Gothland had been the most active center of Baltic trade. Now it was under the control of this Hanseatic League of German cities which dominated the Baltic Sea and was soon permitting no carrying bottoms there other than its own.