Materialising Scottish networks in early modern Europe

In sixteenth-century Netherlands, the Scottish staple port at Veere had a legally protected community called the ‘Scots Nation’ with their own kirk and governor. Here Scottish merchants traded Scottish and European goods across the North Sea, and along European rivers. Flemish Bruges had been the Scottish staple the previous century. Such Scottish communities flourished throughout the Low Countries and northern Europe, connected with home and each other through familial, mercantile, scholarly and mercenary networks that reached into the eastern Baltic. In Rotterdam, Gdansk, Krosno, Amsterdam, traces of Scotland linger in the built and archival environments. From a museum perspective, materialising those ephemeral connections is challenging. How can such intangible links be communicated through displays dependent on material culture for their narrative?

This paper explores the evidence for such Scottish networks in northern Europe through a few objects in National Museums Scotland collections: a tankard with the Rotterdam-based Cockburns of Caldra’s crest, a Danzig merchant’s chest, the carving on the Dun pulpit. How might objects like these visualise Scottish connections in Europe? What do they suggest of the impact of borders crossed on expressions of identity? And what do they say about the mobilities and materialities of Scottish networks in early modern Europe.