The contrast between the experiences of Wulfstan and Knut in the Baltic was, of course, that between the merchant and the warrior, or the seaman and the ruler. Both reflected the experiences of those from England and Scotland who traversed the Baltic waters in the six centuries or so after Knut. There is no other record of any men from Britain taking part in any naval action in the Baltic until the seventeenth century, though merchants may have become involved in privateering, either as aggressors or as victims.

The record of British involvement in the Baltic in the Middle Ages is thus mainly commercial. Without a powerful British military or naval presence in the region these visitors had to conform to local laws and customs. Until after about 1500 it is clear that the merchants of the British Isles who chose to operate in the Baltic did so on local sufferance. There was no possibility that the kings of England or Scotland would be able to come to their rescue if they got into trouble. No big stick was available; soft talk meant diplomacy.

Two factors dominated British–Baltic contacts in the Middle Ages. In the eastern Baltic by the fourteenth century contingents of English warriors took part in the Northern Crusades, in effect a primarily German attempt to conquer the modern regions of Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, using as justification the defiant paganism of the people there. Meanwhile, on the southern Baltic coast, also subjected to considerable German colonization, there developed a series of trading cities, often originally Slav foundations, stretching from Lübeck to Prussia. Truso was one of these, later replaced by Elbing, which was then overshadowed by Danzig. In the twelfth century these cities developed their own political–commercial organization, the Hanseatic League.

This sort of organization was primarily defensive. Merchants and ships operating individually were vulnerable; by banding together they could better protect themselves and their goods. The initial organization was among German merchants settled on the island of Gotland; it evolved into a quasi-federation of trading cities, which in 1370 was able to inflict a comprehensive defeat on the Danish kingdom, including the destruction of Copenhagen. The prize of the war was to take over the management of the great herring fair in Skåne.