The c.11th Century language textbook Ælfric's Colloquy gives us the following exchange between a teacher and a merchant:

Teacher: What have you to tell us, merchant?

Merchant: I embark on board ship with my wares and I sail over remote seas, sell my wares and buy precious objects that are unknown in this country. I bring these things to you over the sea enduring great danger and shipwreck with the whole of my goods hurled overboard and with me hardly escaping with my life.

Teacher: What sort of wares do you bring us?

Merchant: I bring purple cloth and silk, precious stones and gold, various sorts of clothes and dyes, wine and oil, ebony and brass, tin and brimstone, glass and like products.

That a merchant would be included in the types of 'typical' trades one might expect an early medieval English student to encounter suggests that maritime trade was a fairly significant phenomenon. Further discussion with the merchant in the Colloquy suggests that these men were likely to have been 'commoners', so to speak, although potentially quite wealthy ones, something approaching a middle class. The rapid growth of trade hubs like Chester in the tenth century suggests as well that maritime trade could be extremely lucrative.

A good merchant would most likely have set out with a specific destination, commodity and target market in mind. Bristol, for example, was an important hub for the purchase of Welsh slaves, tin, and precious metals. Icelandic ports were central to the import of walrus ivory into Europe which was in high demand for everything from book bindings to combs, reliquaries to game pieces. Scandinavia was a ready market for Welsh and Irish slaves, English metalwork and personal wear and precious metals, and a major exporter of ivory, while also sitting at the end of a riverine network from the Baltic to the Black Sea, an important avenue for Asian goods; silks, fine clothing, spices and precious stones.