Swanning around

 

 Perhaps this should be entitled, In Praise of Walking! As I am not yet back swimming every day, I walk almost every day for an early hour, usually towards, then alongside, one or other of the canals. The glorious weather has simply gilded the lily. Hippocrates declared that walking is the “best medicine” and though so far not in need of medicine, I do find that walking gives me joy. Sights, sounds, smells; all combine to give a delicious freedom to think things through, to remember recent events and anticipate the day or the morrow. I can have a quiet dialogue with myself though, truly with lock-down, that is possible at most times of the day! It’s just that the walking early provides a glorious private theatre to enact the process. Somehow, this mundane activity in a far-from-mundane setting elevates the ordinary and adds hugely to my sense of contentment and well-being.

I also have the opportunity to notice more details I have otherwise missed and to relish anew the normal sights of Bruges. This last week seems to have been dominated by swans; they have possibly been following me! Again and again, I seem to have walked past congregations of swans near bridges and below parapets, always busy dipping, stretching, swimming silently and with unseen effort, flapping occasionally, making majestic consort in smoothly-moving convoys. I got very excited two or three months ago when I saw a swan, sitting on what looked like a little pile of sticks, with another swan solicitously hovering. I decided that it must be a couple with one preparing to give birth. I observed, as I passed, over two days but on day three, they had gone, removed I suspected by an employee of the commune to a more distant place. Though behind a wire fence, they were probably too near to passing traffic.

I hadn’t thought until now of the word, Flaneur, but that is what I might be posturing as!! Flaneur is a French noun literally meaning stroller, lounger, saunterer, loafer. Wikipedia suggests that a flaneur is “an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander, detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of contemporary life.” This almost nails my daily activity but does not begin to suggest the joy I feel during the experience nor the main original reason for my activity which is to help me keep healthy.

Le Flaneur 1842
Paul Gavami.

I aassociate the word, ‘flaneur’ with Paris and now know that it was a description of a literary type from 19^th century France and carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure; the idler; the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. Walter Benjamin, drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, first made this figure the object of scholarly interest in the 20^th century as an archetype of urban, modern experience. A certain detachment was suggested as if the person was slightly set back from what they saw around them. Thus the flaneur has become a symbol for artists and writers. I rather fancy being a female flaneur but think I lack a certain artistic gravitas. Flaneurs just were or are; not in search of health and well-being at all. There to observe an often familiar urban scene and notice unfamiliar aspects, at a distance, and with exquisite judgement or, equally importantly, to be observed by others as a man of taste.

Swans resident in Carmersstraat

And more along the Langerei.

Oosterlingenhuis, Krom Genthof 4.

 I am currently reading a quite marvellous book: Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280-1390 by James M. Murray. It is a an amazingly researched, scholarly study of how Bruges became the commercial capital of Northern Europe in the late fourteenth century. Murray argues that a combination of fortuitous changes, such as the shift to sea-borne commerce and the extraordinary efforts of the city's population, served to shape a great commercial centre. In effect, Murray's book works not only as a case study in mediaeval economic history, but also as a social and cultural history of mediaeval Bruges.

Murray suggests that the greatest single difference in the economy which was taking shape by 1300 was that instead of Brugeois or Flemish merchants journeying to their customers, their customers were journeying to them. Increasingly, economic success depended on attracting the largest possible number of foreign merchants from the widest diversity of places with the greatest variety of goods. The important economic magnet that Bruges became, meant that it was imperative for merchants to either live there or at least, have an intermittent presence there. 

The Beurseplein showing Ter Beurse, the hostel
belonging to the de Beurse family since 1276

What Murray refers to as " the commercial infrastructure" of Bruges, much of which came to be situated in the Beurse square on Vlaamingstraat and its environs along Zouterstraat, [now Academiestraat] towards St Jan's Bridge, [now Jan Van Eyckplein] comprised hostels, money exchanges, notaries, law courts. The Beurse square was dominated by the hostel, or commercial house, named after the Van de Beurse family; a hostel comprised a number of businesses and by definition occupied a substantial house of many rooms and several storeys, probably with capacious cellars for storage of goods, stables and a courtyard. The significance of a building signified importance of identity and was always a centre for trade. Thus hostels were quite separate from inns which served food, drink and offered lodging,and from other centres like taverns, cabarets, brothels and churches where merchants might also meet and do occasional business. These hostels were owned or rented by foreign merchants as residences for them and their households, and for business, or by wealthy members of the Bruges brokers' guilds. Murray gives examples of the former, such as the English wool merchant, William de la Pole, who rented large premises in Bruges to pursue the wool trade. From 1339-1340 he rented eight houses for sixty five weeks, to store and distribute 2,400 sacks of wool at a cost of less than one third of that in his native Hull.

Engraving showing  part of the
majestic new Oosterlingenhuis
circa 1481.

Somewhat later, a well-known Hanse merchant, Siverd Veckinchusen, owned a complex of houses in the Krom Genthof which, in 1442, became the site of the Oosterlingenhuis, the seat of the Hanse community of merchants within Bruges. Bruges was the only one of the Hanseatic cities [Cologne, Novgorod, Lubeck] which permitted ownership of property by foreigners. A little is known of the history of this building which came into being because of the frustration experienced by  the merchants from the Hanseatic cities, in Bruges. In 1451 the disaffected group left Bruges to move to Utrecht. An important delegation from the city followed them and offered many favourable conditions for their return which included a palatial building for them, constructed and financed by the city of Bruges. They were persuaded, returned and the impressive hostel was built at the rear of the Spanish Loskaii where boats could moor and goods be unloaded and loaded. In 1478 the original, partly wooden, building was demolished and the new monumental Oosterlingenhuis was built under the leadership of Jan van den Poele and completed in 1481. It was sufficiently noteworthy to be included by the painter, Pieter Claeissens, in his 1560 painting dedicated to the Seven Wonders of Bruges. 

Today's remains of this historic building.
Genthof, 4.

I live in Woensdagmarkt off which lies Oosterlingenplein and Krom Genthof. A rather regal flag adorning a handsome building at Krom Genthof 4, clearly the remains of a much larger building, caught my eye recently and I noticed it had the name Oosterlingenhuis displayed. It wasn't until I saw the same name in Murray's book that I suddenly becane alert to the historical possibilities, always almost a given in Bruges. I feel quite thrilled to have stumbled upon a little of its long narrative and am reminded of the dazzling historical continuity of this extraordinary little city.

Mediaeval merchants, weighing barrels.

 Seven Wonders of Bruges
Pieter Claeissens 1560
Included was the Oosterlingenhuis.